Acting skills and spirituality

The basic assumption behind writing this article is the the entire universe is a "Cosmic-drama" which sometimes bypasses the human intelligence to realize. Shakespeare once said that "All the world ‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." That indeed is a very enlightened quote from an enlightened mind. In Sikhism, tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh ji has also made a similar statement: "Main hoo'n param purakh ko daasa, dekhan aayo jagat tamasa" which means that "I am the servant of the lord and I have come to watch the world drama".

Even if we sometimes interact with those people who are considered to be really wise and enlightened about how to live a better life, we realize that somewhere they may get reluctant to share their secrets and would rather highlight more on their achievements rather than their failures as they very well know how to save their image. In fact, those who sometimes believe that they have a perfect understanding of life and are equipped with the intelligence to live it and handle any situation, sometimes they have to go though an ego-crushing experience and sometimes they end up messing up things.

What I exactly want to point out here is that intelligence, knowledge and resources are important for life but there are some important skills that we need to be equipped with for making better choices for ourselves in our own lives. Once I just came across a quote that is worth sharing here:

You sow a THOUGHT, You reap an ACTION.

You sow an ACTION, You reap a HABIT.

You sow a HABIT, You reap a CHARACTER.

You sow a CHARACTER, You reap your DESTINY.

So, your DESTINY depends on your THOUGHTS.

Now if you are born and brought up in India, Cricket and Bollywood are bound to be your fantasies. There's a "wanna-be-actor" or a "wanna-be-cricketer" hidden in majority of the Indians. It's not that if you read my article you'll become a superstar overnight or you'll become a successful actor if you are pursuing that profession. "Acting skills" as mentioned in the title specifically points out the "Superficiality" in our lives. We all have a tendency to get superficial sometimes by choice and sometimes we're forced to get superficial by our circumstances and for a moment we say things or behave in a way that is not expected by us and deep inside ourselves we know that what we are saying or doing is not our real being. e.g. 

Situation 1: If we go to wedding of a distant relative, in order to show our involvement, we say hi and get into candid talks with people we don't like much or we haven't talked to for a long time or we try and be more polite and pretend to be closer to people than we actually are.

Situation 2: if we go to the funeral of a distant relative or an associate, we make sure that we don't smile or laugh or get into a candid talk with people around so that we can have a better projection of our concern for the deceased and we look wiser in our community.

"Superficiality" doesn't end here, we inevitably get superficial in a group of people and sometimes in handling our immediate family members as well. I believe that our thoughts, words and actions are in harmony only when we are alone but as social animals our existence is impossible in isolation and we're bound to confront the group situations in our day to day lives. But whatever we say or do in those situations, get buried deep down into our sub-conscious minds and has a lasting effect on our being. Hence, we must choose our words and actions wisely. In order to be wiser, we must choose our thoughts wisely, as positive and refined thoughts will enlighten you to be or not to be a part of a group situation.

So from this article one must be able to figure out that CHOICE has a role to play in one's being, I will definitely touch this topic regarding the role and percentage of choice and role of destiny in some other article.

Does Heaven exist ??

Actually it does. Undoubtedly, it does. And I'm not speaking out of superstition or some other worldly or near-death experience. I'm actually saying it out of logic and understanding. To elaborate more on this, first we need to understand the difference between "this-world" and the "other-world".
"This world" can simply be defined as the world which can be perceived and experienced through the five senses via touch, smell, taste, hear and see. But the "Other world" can simply be defined as world beyond these five senses. Though there aren't much material evidences to prove the existence of the other-world as it transcends the realm of materialism and connects an individual to another realm called the "Realm of spirit" and the process of awakening and enlightenment towards this realm is called spirituality.

Now for a normal person to perceive, material comforts definitely account to heaven. Quite rightly. Suppose you are travelling in your car in the peak hours of an afternoon of the north Indian summer, you can experience heaven right away sitting in your air-conditioned car on a comfortable seat and you can see people travelling on two-wheeler burning in the heat of the summer. And somewhere inside your head you be thankful to god for the air-conditioned car (material comfort) that he has given you and somewhere you feel for a moment that you are happier than the person travelling on the two-wheeler.

Now, as soon as that moment passes away, you realize that you have a destination to reach in time and your presence over there is very critical and any flaw could be fatal for your life e.g. you have a pending court case and you have to turn up in front of the judge for hearing, and suddenly you get stuck in a traffic jam. You panic and many thoughts run across your mind like- What if I get late?? What if I lose the court-case?? What if the judge gets angry and tells me to get out of the court room ?? What if this traffic jam never clears?? And, you look at the other guy on the two-wheeler standing next to you in the traffic jam looking pretty relaxed, seemingly going back home from work and starts relishing an ice-candy from a nearby ice-candy hawker, patiently waiting for the traffic to clear and smiling on the hopeless Indian traffic conditions. After 4-5 minutes, the traffic gets cleared and you are on your way to the court and the other guys fades away from your sight.

Actually, what happened is that you experienced HELL for those 4-5 minutes and the guy on two-wheeler, somehow experienced HEAVEN for those 4-5 minutes despite having lesser material comforts than you. Heaven and Hell can be both this-worldy and the other-worldly. For those who advocate excessively on material comforts and consider them as the ultimate goal for the betterment of life, I would like to share a theory once I came across, about the existence of material part and the spatial part in the universe. The theory goes as: Let's assume the size of the entire universe to be that of a hollow 20-storeyed building with 20 rooms on each floor, and there's only one grain of sand in it, then the empty part of the building would be the space and that one grain of sand would be the material present in the universe i.e. all the heavenly bodies, galaxies, stars, constellations etc.

Hence, if we believe that universe sustains and nurtures life, then we must value spirituality as that is the only thing which can open our gateway to heaven.