The Law of Attraction is a dangerous thing

The Law of Attraction states that you can manifest whatever creations you want in your life through a combination of mental techniques including visualisation, affirmation and repeated, emotive concentration on whatever it is you want. For instance, if you want a green Mercedes, then you see it in your mind, feel yourself possessing it on a regular basis and concentrate on the idea of owning it repeatedly until, voila, the universe ‘conspires’ in a way which brings it to you.

Does this technique work? Yes, with the right kind of concentration, because the mind is a very powerful tool. The mind controls the physical world and can ‘make’ things happen on an external level. But I think the whole arena of trying to attract material things into your life is dangerous thing. This is because we already are practising the law of attraction unconsciously and creating everything in our experience that will help us organically grow towards our goals. Taking away negative thinking habits and practising positive attitude is a good thing, but consciously deciding to attract material goods can be contradictory to what we are trying to achieve on a deeper level. For instance, if we want to have a very simple life on a deeper level, but consciously choose to attract all kinds of complications like demanding jobs and relationships, then we will ultimately not be able to manifest what we really want because our ‘signals’ to the universe will be contradictory.

To practise the law of attraction, a person really has to know themselves very well. And a person who is very knowledgeable rarely hankers after worldly things.

Apart from all this, there is the issue of karma. We have a history with various people and some of our past decisions will have future consequences which we can’t just change. What we can change, however, is the way we react to situations and consequences, and that in turn will effect a future change.

The beauty of silence

There is constant noise in the world around us. And then there is constant noise inside us too: the mind which does not stop. If you’re like most people, you’ll notice your mind is making judgements about everything. Before you even realise it, the mind has flown to this place and that, and you’re definitely not in control of where it goes.

Sometimes the noise outside is a comfort. It distracts us from ourselves, and it stops us having to face our own thoughts. Sometimes we contribute to the noise by talking and judging, gossiping without even thinking about what we are saying. At night, everything comes back to us in our solitude and we might find it difficult to truly rest. This is the nature of the adult human mind.

Very young children don’t have the words and ideas to make constant judgements in their minds; they tend to live from moment to moment. They are more at peace with themselves, but they are prey to the outside noise too, and they become restless living in a restless world.

For our own mental health and for that of our communities, it’s important to learn both silence within and silence without. This does not mean stopping communication; it means deepening our ability to community so that fewer words and gestures can achieve more expression. There is time to speak and reveal, and also time to be silent and observe without judgement.

Silence is beautiful because it allows us to see things we might have missed. There are patterns in nature which we can observe in silence. Love communicated without words is one of the most powerful expressions of silence.

It’s hard to change habits. The habits of judging, gossiping, getting irritable and complaining have become second nature to a lot of us. But people can change the way their minds work, with repeated practice. Even ten minutes a day observing thoughts as they come, and then letting them go is enough to give you an idea of how your mind works. And then gradually, thoughts will pass more slowly and sitting in silent observation will become more pleasurable.

My three favourite Indian-English words

1. Timepass
‘I am doing timepass’, meaning passing the time.

2. Tension
‘No tension,’ meaning no need to worry.

3. Preponed
‘We preponed the meeting’, as in ‘we brought the meeting forward’.

Being vegetarian

As a young child, I used to eat all kinds of meat and fish. In fact, I don’t even like to mention some kinds of meat that I happily ate. But as the years wore on, I began questioning meat on every level. Now I’ve been 100% vegetarian for about eleven years.

I honestly don’t know why meat began bothering me in the first place. I used to love the taste, but at around age seven, I began disliking the flavour. After that, I began associating meat with the act of killing and bloodshed. A lot of people argue that it’s natural for humans to be omnivores, but I feel we’ve reached a state of consciousness in which what we eat is a choice, not just an instinct. It may feel ‘natural’ to start a fight with someone or to be promiscuous, but we make conscious decisions which instincts we should follow through with – that’s what makes us responsible individuals and allows societies to progress. Even primitive societies display such traits of consciousness – it’s the hallmark of human evolution. I think being vegetarian is an important choice, both for the individual and for the ecological systems we contribute to. Animals live on instinct, but in a way which is in sync with nature. The way in which we consume meat these days is definitely not in sync with nature.

The meat industry keeps and produces livestock in a very ecologically-unfriendly way just in order to make money. The natural balances of the food chain are disrupted and the proliferation of diseases becomes much higher. I realise that vegetables are grown in artificial ways too, and that there are now options to buy organic meat, but despite all this, the risks of producing meat are always less natural and more detrimental in terms of self-sufficiency, the environment and individual health. A lot of people think that vegetarians miss out on vital food elements, specially protein. But this is simply not true if someone follows a balanced diet. For all these reasons, I think it’s worth being vegetarian.

Where to live – east or west?

My husband and I have been living in India for over two years now. After being settled in the UK, we relocated to the east for work reasons. Now we’re about to have a baby, I’ve been thinking a lot about which society is best to settle in – the east or the west?

Our background is that we’re both British Indian (Indian origin but were brought up in the UK when our parents emigrated there for their careers). Now our parents are retired and resettled in India, which is an unusual trend even today (migrating back to the homeland after 30 years working and living abroad). My husband was born in the UK and I was born in India; his family is originally South Indian and mine North Indian – but apart from those differences, we have a very similar cultural identity. We were raised in a British society, with British friends and pastimes, but our family life was Indian. As a result, we’ve become very mixed in our cultural outlook, and open to living in different societies.

There are so many considerations when it comes to deciding where to live. One is work and finances, then there’s the environment, social values, education, family life and, the all-important, everyday lifestyle. In almost every category, the west has a more established infrastructure which we find easier to live with, but then again in every category, the east offers more variety and unpredictability which makes life more exciting. In terms of health and safety, environmental awareness, education, I prefer the west’s sense of order. But our family is now mainly in the east, so social values and everyday lifestyle are better for us in India right now. I also like the fact that the sun comes out everyday, as it does have an uplifting effect. It’s a very difficult decision between logic and emotion (west=logic, east=emotion).

To some extent, as the recession looms, the decision is not entirely up to us. We’ll have to consider the work situation at the end of the year and that will be one of the priorities for where to settle. I think raising a child in a safe and secure environment is important, but a bit of unpredictability and a richer family life are important too.

Michael Jackson and vitiligo

There have been so many controversies surrounding Michael Jackson, and one of the biggest ones is that he turned himself from black to white on purpose. Only in his interview with Oprah Winfrey did he finally reveal that he had vitiligo, a skin condition in which the pigment, melanin, gradually breaks down, leaving white patches. It’s likely that he went through some treatment which sped up the depigmentation process, so that he became uniformly white much faster than is normal. Repigmentation is also an option, but this is only possible if the vitiligo is contained to a small area and is not progressing unpredictably. Both depigmentation and repigmentation are difficult procedures which I don’t think MJ would have opted for unless he really had a condition he felt uncomfortable with.

Around 3% of the world’s population has vitiligo, and there is no cure for it. It does not usually harm a person’s general health, but it can have psychological effects because of the uneducated, colour-conscious society we live in. We already know that Michael Jackson was very self-conscious from the amount of plastic surgery he had done, so something like vitiligo would have bothered him. Obviously, any sane person would say that there was no need for MJ to have had any plastic surgery or to try to disguise his vitiligo – people would have loved him anyway and he would probably have looked better and healthier. But it’s one thing to be an objective observer and another thing entirely to live in someone else’s skin. With so much media frenzy and exaggeration around him, MJ is likely to have had a distorted picture of himself.

Everything I’ve learned about Michael Jackson over the years has made me come to the conclusion that he was an emotionally vulnerable musical genius. His unusual openness to children and generosity made him prey to all sorts of allegations that were likely not true. I will always remember MJ as a great artist whose beauty and gift were thwarted in a harsh world.

What India means to me

I have developed a very strange relationship with my motherland.

I was born in India, but my parents took me to the UK when I was five years old. They tried to come back and settle in their homeland twice during my childhood, but it never worked. They were absorbed in their medical careers, which required them to be in the UK.

My sister and I spent a couple of brief school years in India, looked after by grandmothers and other relatives while my parents went back and forth between continents, trying to manage work and family life. For both my sister and me, India was our first home, our native country, undisputedly. As a young child who had known no other territory, ‘Mr India’ was my favourite film. But gradually, everything I took for granted as my natural identity became questionable.

As I struggled and succeeded to learn British English in London, my grip on Hindi began to falter. As I became accustomed to my friends’ ways of being and doing things, the memories of my childhood home began to fade. Those brief spells in which we tried to come back to India were like a temporary reawakening – a door to the past that would open and pour its wisdom into me for a short time before shutting again. My relatives thought I had become ‘angrez’, even thought I hardly thought of myself that way. In India. I became ‘different’, and in the UK, I was ‘different’ too.

So now, years later as I write this, I am very aware of what India represents to me. It’s more than just an idea; it’s a reality that I feel everyday. It’s huge and complex, something that I won’t ever be able to explain fully. Every time I feel a sense of ‘Indianness’, I am aware there is a ‘Britishness’ which rests uncomfortably alongside this. After all, the countries struggled against each other historically, precisely because their identities could not integrate fully with each other.

Whenever I am in India, it’s tempting to see stereotypes all around me: spiritualists, poverty, chaos, consumerism. Only when I actually talk to people personally – the rickshaw wallahs, relatives and their neighbours, dry-cleaners and taxi drivers – I see the reality behind the overpowering image of India. The authenticity of other people’s cultural behaviour allows me to see what it means to be Indian.

Despite this feeling of idenitfication, I disagree with the concept of national identity (the idea that an individual can be defined by which country they come from). I see my identity as drawing from, yet separate from, nationality and culture. What I understand about India is cultural rather than political, although I’m aware that there is a connection between culture and politics which cannot be ignored. Even the naming of a country is political and represents a territorial division.