u/That_Firefly

Ishq de Ghungroo Paake Bullah Yaar de Wede Nachhya..

✨Bhagavad Gita, Verse 3.34 ~ Transliteration:
Attraction and aversion reside in the senses’ respective objects.
One should not come under their control, for they both are obstacles on one’s path.

The first part of the verse here refers to seeing. It’s referring to the relationship between ‘sense object relationship’ & ’subject-object relationship’. On the other hand, the second part of the verse is about seeing coupled with intent.

Now, if we consider the ‘sense object relationship’ here, then this is Prakriti’s design stationed in that way by Prakriti itself.. it's systemic.. It's non-volitional. Life includes the sense object chemistry, and it belongs to no-one in particular like for eg. The skin is designed to meet material, the lungs are designed to breathe air, etc. The ego has no agency, no doer-ship at all in that.. therefore, this thing is not something to be ashamed of with any attitude whatsoever. It is just the secular happening as this is not any particular feature of any particular sense. So, this is happening all over the place, as if the entire organism in itself is expressing it somehow in a particular way. It’s not a fault, or anything to be proud of as it’s there in every possible sense. It just exists!

Therefore, it’s not about one particular sense, but it’s about all the senses. If one sensory route is blocked, then some other sensory route will open up.. no suppression will work, because the one doing the blocking is also doing some excessive demand on another route. It is not about a few types of objects, it’s actually about the very nature of the machinery.

This is the universe.. and the body is its fragments. So, the body will behave in a particular way within the universe. If lungs are demanding air, that's not an egoic intervention at all. You are nobody to impede it.. Remember you are not ‘sense’ in the sense-object relationship, but you are the ‘subject’. The ‘sense object relationship’ completely lies in the domain of Prakriti. Let the body and the mind do their own thing and you just step back. Universe predates the ego.. and what comes before the existence, is not for anyone to ask!

Spirituality is not about policing the body, but it is actually to let the apparatus free.. The ego has no role to play there, as the apparatus called the body is self sufficient to flow. Ego is not any layer on the apparatus, but the design of the apparatus predates you.. 
You have nothing to do with the apparatus! 
So, Just Chill. 
You are truly not responsible for any of this! 

If we take a pen for example while writing, then the relationship is between the ‘eye’ and the ‘pen’.. but what the ego does is that it gets identified with the eye and treats only the pen as the object. Ego is the subject of both the objects ie., the eye and the pen. But due to Avidya, the ego(subject) identifies with the sense(eye).

The verse here is advising the “I” to step back.. and then let the relationship be between the ‘object’ and another ‘object’.
It’s saying that “Please don’t seed control.. there is nothing there for which you can trade your freedom. Therefore, the real power is with the ego as its ‘sovereign’. Intent is the key!

If the ego is ‘captive’, then this is its own decision, and therefore the ego now doesn’t have the luxury to play ‘victim’.
So, if you are in bondage, then surely you have signed the document of your bondage. 

More doing will not take you out from what is created by doing more.

▫️Acharya Prashant made the above statement during an interactive session with youth in 2013, titled “Don't be so serious; nothing is too important”.
He explained that when people treat worldly outcomes, social status, or daily events as excessively important, they become heavily invested in the results. This over-seriousness creates deep anxiety and fear of loss.

Often while running a race, we start mimicking others to win the race. Winning could have its own laurels but firstly, we need to ask ourselves a few questions:
“Why are we even running any race?”,
If at all we happened to land on a race, why is it important to mimic the other participants to outgrow that race?”,
Does outgrowing necessarily mean winning?” &
Maybe outgrowing is more important than winning?”

If the outgrowth has to happen, it will happen on its own. But, what’s the point of running on any track, if one can’t express his spontaneity of love for the track itself while running over the track. If the running is beautiful, then that itself will fulfil the runner without even thinking about the laurels of winning. What's the point of being labelled as the winner, if one didn’t immerse whole heartedly in the competition with love to explore oneself spontaneously! And spontaneity can’t be justified by ‘labels’. 

Maybe that's what the speaker is trying to express through his contrasting words above. When he says “Don’t be so serious!” Then it’s not pointing towards laziness of complete abduction of actions or annihilation of the will to thrive, but he is actually taking our attention towards an inner source which we often ignore. Sometimes, over-seriousness can bear you expected results but what will be the point of getting those results if the process of getting them itself makes you drift apart from love. If the process makes one deeply anxious and filled with fear of loss, then no matter how ‘amazing’ could be the results of such a process, but at the end the one getting those results will be a ‘fearful & anxious’ creature. 

On the contrary if one is loving the track and running without fear on the track just to express his love for the track, then no matter whatever the results could be but at the end he will be a ‘loving’ person without fear and anxieties who got those unpleasant results. And the fact is that running happens every day.. and the result arrives just for one day, so what's the point of compromising love everyday just for the sake of one day’s pleasing outcome.

Maybe the track itself is an illusion and the results will never come.. and what matters is the running! I mean who knows? Do you know?

A quote by Rabindranath Tagore which says: "Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree."
Source: This aphorism is part of Tagore's collection of short, poetic thoughts and stray aphorisms titled Fireflies.

Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore was published in 1928. 
This slim treasure of a volume brings nature and spirit to life metaphorically.

Now if you read the above quote for the first time, you might get confused by the word “freedom” itself.. You might start thinking that: “How can freedom in itself bear any kind of dependencies?” Or you might think: “What if the dependency itself is an illusion for a fake understanding of freedom?” But, that’s where exactly Rabindranath Tagore wants to take your attention, he is saying that freedom is not always about becoming free from everything one can ever be in contact with.., in fact that will be a loveless statement to strip you away from the true emotions of life forever. 

When you witness a beautiful, large and healthy tree, you fall in love with it. This love would be impossible for the tree to radiate if it’s not in love itself. How can a source disperse love if it doesn’t have love already within it. And having love would be impossible if one can’t be the lover himself. The tree loves the soil.. so much so that it’s deep rooted within it all over making itself completely soaked and flavoured in the soil’s essence. The tree is not separate from the soil.. it’s actually the soil which has taken another form in the beauty of the tree.

So just like if you uproot a tree from the soil, it will be no longer freedom for the tree but it will actually result in the death of the tree; similarly there can’t be any love if the lover is uprooted from the beloved. It is the love of the lover which nourishes it to grow stronger and higher every moment. Therefore it’s not about staying bereft of emotions and bondages forever, but it’s more about being rooted and absorbed in the ‘right’ bondage.

If the bondage is like that beloved who only roots you when you are ready to grow towards the sky along with it, then such a kind of bondage should be gracefully welcomed and worshipped. It will become that endless prayer where the lover is actually accepting its proposal in gratitude for the love itself.

Samne Hove Yaar, To Nachna Painda hai..
Aaja Yaar De Deedaar!
~ A bhajan by saint Bulleh Shah

😍 We’re having Fun.
🤔 Where are you?

This is my first eclipse and I really like how this turned out and I hope y'all like it as much as I do

:)

All images were shot on a canon 4000D and a 75-300mm lens and edited on affinity

Music truly immerses you in it when one is free.. Maybe it’s not about the ‘perfect’ singing at all, but it’s rather more about the expressions of ‘freedom’!

We often celebrate Independence Day as an occasion when our country became free and came out of the clutches of colonialism.., but true independence can’t only rely over the dependency of external chains. If you consider India as a country, then the main message that India has given the world is the message of “inner freedom” via it’s rich contribution of wisdom literature.

So, let’s analyse the meaning of true ‘freedom’ this Independence Day with Indian music.
Let’s analyse a very beautiful classical Hindi Cinema song in the light of non dual wisdom:

🎶 Humsafar mere Humsafar ➖ Oh my dear life partner (referring to my highest possibility)!
Pankh tum Parvaaz Hum ➖ You are the wings behind by flight.. whenever I am flying, its because of you!
Zindagi ka Saaz ho Tum ➖ My life is able to sing the songs of freedom because you are there as the mediator instrument of that music..
Saaz ki Awaaz Hum ➖ Although the voice is mine.. but without the mediator, there is no rhythm to hold my wings in freedom.
Zikr ho ab Aasmaan Ka Yaa Zameen ki Baat ho ➖ Whenever I feel my flight towards the sky or whenever I am fainting mid way to rest in the land,
Khatm hoti hai Tumhi Par, ab Kahin ki Baat ho ➖ I am grateful for your presence everywhere.. there is no fainting or flying without you!
Pyaar ki Tum Imtehaan ho, Pyaar ka Agaaz hum ➖ When you are the test for my ‘freedom’, only then love sings out of me.
Humsafar mere Humsafar ➖ Ohh my dear beloved! Thank you for giving me these wings in this Independence day.

In the recent Exclusive session of Acharya Prashant, one important question grappled my attention that was asked by one of the questioners to him.

▪️Questioner: Whenever children are engaged in giving entrance exams, few children outperform and get amazing marks in comparison to some children who couldn’t suffice the competition, so is it some ‘past karma’ of those brilliant students which plays its role in this lifetime as a blessing for them to get those marks?

◽️AP: Results depend on various factors, like for eg., you need to see how many people were involved in writing that exam.. And then what was the level of pressure which fell upon those people and still they managed to outperform. It’s possible that you had just two bad days and you completely reduced your result to nothing because for those two days you couldn’t handle the pressure!

So, it’s not about the blessings of any ‘past life’ or ‘past moment’ which decides the results but its actually the ‘present’ which decides everything which you get in the present. It's more about what you are doing in the present.. Is it even sensible that instead of thinking about the present, you are following your past whether it's any event of the past or any imagination related to past lifetime’s karma.. the fact is that the ‘past’ is gone and its no more there to decide anything of the present. If your stomach is aching right now, then you can’t blame the cause to what happened with you two years ago..  you can’t do that because the pain needs your attention right now. It’s not possible that the stomach is aching because you ate something in the past.
 
Life is happening right now! So, you have to reply to it right now. The moment you shift the ‘cause’ to the past, that means you are very cunningly escaping the present’ responsibility from falling upon your shoulders in the now. The power lies right now.. and whatever be the situation, but always one have that power to exercise one’s choice in the ‘now’. So, don’t play the victim card.. and always see what you can do right now!

What you have become inside in the now will exhibit outside through your actions.. there’s nothing mystical here, and this is the principle of ‘karma’. If you are being a dog from inside then you will bark from outside.. this is the law of karma! The law of karma says that karma is inseparable from the ‘doer’, but instead of focusing on the doer, we shift our focus on fixing and judging the actions.

Jung sometimes feels to be like a philosopher more than a psychologist.
Its an interesting combo!

Approximately 13.8 billion years ago, a rapid and massive expansion took place from a singular dense point and the universe itself emerged. This was not any ordinary event, but this event actually created all the matter, energy, space, and time which we perceive to be as ‘existence’ now. Raw energy rapidly expanded and cooled to create space, time, and fundamental subatomic particles which soon combined to form the universe's first basic atomic nuclei like hydrogen and helium.

And you know what? All these ‘ingredients’ of the universe just got created in “10⁻⁴³ seconds”. The timeline of this event is famously known as to be an ‘epoch’. Spanning up to a few seconds, quarks bounded into protons and neutrons dominated by radiation and high-energy photons until the universe cooled enough for neutral atoms to form. It’s impossible to even imagine how nature is capable of incorporating so much ‘change’ in just a few moments of time.. It’s like a bang in the moment, and this whole timeline with space got created.

Most of the humans live mechanised lives following blind rules and patterns handed over to them by older generations without ever stepping out of those patterns and trying for a change. We never ever test those patterns to know whether or not they are even relevant to be implemented in our lives, and we just keep on following them blindly. Now, the question which arises is: “If the same nature which we are also a part of, is capable of implementing such a huge change to create this vast universe in just ‘few’ moments of seconds, then why aren’t we able to make huge changes in similar parts of the moment?”

Maybe Yes! That is indeed possible.. and that is where the concept of ‘choice’ comes in.. If you read the works of many modern & ancient philosophers, then they have multiple times talked about how your single decision can turn entire events of your life into immensely different directions. Apart from philosophy, if you consider the recent data of modern science, then many experiments done in the fields of quantum physics have also shown how the presence and behaviour of a single ‘observer’ can cause the entire experiment to change its results according to the state of that respective observer.

The Big Bang is not just a vague event of the past which is just an eye candy to our imaginations, but it actually reveals many questions in front of us which we never dared to ask ourselves. It reveals a ‘possibility’.. a possibility of something entirely new to emerge from nowhere!! And this new possibility demands no huge amount of time to be manifested, but just only a few fraction of seconds. But, maybe we have become too lazy to walk on new paths which science is showcasing us to be a possibility here. Or, maybe it entirely depends on the ‘chooser’ as quantum physics suggests us.. ie., the one who will ‘choose’ the change to happen will encounter that result and a different ‘observer/ chooser’ who wouldn’t choose that particular change will miss that opportunity to turn the events of his life forever.

What do you want to choose?

Taken under Bortle 6/7. Final image is based on 27hr of Halpha + Oiii data and 22.5hrs of Sii + Oiii data. All subs are 1,000s.

Equipment

• Scope: Askar SQA70
• Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
• Mount: ZWO AM3
• Guiding: ZWO ASI220MM Mini + WO 32mmUniGuide Scope
• Filters: Optolong L-Ultimate + Altair Sii Oiii DualBand Ultra 4nm