There are no short cuts in life

Observing the lives of self and others at close quarters for more than five decades, I am fortunate to grasp the basic truth of life; that there are no short cuts. I definitely got the divine grace to understand this, because every day I watch septuagenarians and octogenarians who are looking for short cuts, forget about the youngsters!

It is prevalent in every walk of life. As a dentist, I know that majority of dentists do short cut in doing root canal treatment. In infected cases, short cut approach will not remove the infection, so they give systemic antibiotics to compensate for the work that they have not done. Who is bothered about the grave problems that irrational antibiotic prescription will cause for the future generations?

As a Reiki master I encounter again and again Reiki channels asking whether they can do the self healing by short cut. I have seen many of them who do short cut healing not receiving the full benefit of Reiki, which can be beyond imagination when one does proper self healing every day.

The interesting aspect is that the short cut is solicited only in the efforts one has to put in. What about happiness, enjoyment, material aspects one wants in life? They have to be available in full measure, no short cuts here, please!

When you want a mango tree in your garden, it takes years after you plant the sapling, for getting a fruiting tree. To enjoy the full taste of mangoes, it has to ripen naturally. But we get tasteless mangoes in the market because they have been plucked prematurely and ripened by artificial means.

One becomes obese after years of over eating, but weight reduction is sought overnight. This gives opportunity for many to come up with ingenious ideas to earn so much money from these culpable individuals. I know some of them getting irreversible problems from usage of such weight reduction products.

We will stop looking for short cuts when we start liking what we are doing. And how can we start liking what we are doing? And that is another complicated question!

To start living in the present

How can we start living in the present? By totally accepting the present moment and also being grateful for all the blessings in life. This in no way means that one should become complacent and stop doing one’s duty in life. But to aspire something too badly and going madly after it, neglecting other aspects of life, will only bring misery to life.

When I was around 16 years of age, my parents took me to a Malayalam drama, which had a great impact on my life. It was named ‘Raktarakshas’, which means an entity that drinks blood. The story was of an ugly daughter of a great Ayurveda physician. He was a well acclaimed man, to whom people came from far and wide and got relief from their problems. The daughter used to pester him to make some potion for her to become beautiful. He just used to pacify her saying that the inner beauty was more important than the physical beauty and she was beautiful according to him.

When the father dies, she searches through his medical literature and to her surprise she saw that there was really a technique, though a difficult one, to turn ugliness into beauty. She religiously followed the technique for twelve full moon sessions and became a very beautiful lady. Some time later, while cutting vegetable, her finger got cut and some blood fell on the floor. Soon her body started transforming into a grotesque figure and she ran out of the house and killed the first man she encountered on the street to drink his blood. Then it was shown that in the medical book, the last line written was “If some body becomes beautiful by this technique, she has to take care that her blood never falls in the earth, or she will turn into a ‘Raktarakshas’.

If we aspire for something and work for it for a reasonable amount of time and do not succeed, we should understand that our path must be different and take a detour. We can adamantly keep following the same path and we may achieve it, but by them we will be so exhausted that we don’t derive as much enjoyment as we had expected.

This aspect became absolutely clear to me when I became a past life regression therapist. Now I know from experience that at the soul level we decide our path for this life time. On taking birth we forget our life path and start aspiring for different things. If we really look into this, we understand that this originates from comparison. ‘If he/she can have it, why can’t I?’ And comparison is sure way to invite frustration and depression.

We are all different, beautiful beings, here on this plane to accomplish different things. Live on a day to day basis, be happy at the end of each day for what you have done to the best of your ability, and be thankful for the higher guidance. Then the life starts blooming!

‘Kitanu’ (Bacteria) phobia

Majority of the advertisements one sees on television give vivid graphics of the dangers of living with bacteria. One has to remove all the bacteria from the mouth, from the plates used for eating food, even from the floor.

If you take a look at the Wikipedia, you see that “Populations of microbes (such as bacteria and yeasts) inhabit the skin and mucosa. Their role forms part of normal, healthy human physiology, however if microbe numbers grow beyond their typical ranges (often due to a compromised immune system) or if microbes populate atypical areas of the body (such as through poor hygiene or injury), disease can result.”

Many people consider  that human beings are separate from the other beings on the earth. It is not so. We are just a part of the whole Universe, and are supposed to have a commensal existence. Of course, some basic hygiene is necessary in life, but there is no point in taking things to the extreme.

Bacterial cells are much smaller than human cells, and there are at least ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body.  The mass of microorganisms are estimated to account for 1-3% total body mass. Though members of the flora are found on all surfaces exposed to the environment (on the skin and eyes, in the mouth, nose, small intestine), the vast majority of bacteria live in the large intestine. So how are we going to sterilize our intestine?

The solution is not to make ourselves bacteria free, but to strengthen our immunity. But this approach will not help to rake in money for the advertising companies.

Trying to guard one away from bacteria has led to the situation that when he/she falls sick, it is difficult to recover. Because the lack of exposure to bacteria diminished the formation of antibodies in the body and it cannot cope up with the infection. In such situations, fecal matter from a healthy human was introduced into the gut of the diseased person, which led to the cure! “Fecal implant’ now looks to be a promising cure.. ha ha…

And, what’s more, fecal implant is now available in pill form (http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/IDWeek/42044).

The choice is yours. Learn to live with the microbes, develop your immunity OR be ready to eat sh-t.