India experience - 1.5 month - The Path to Illumination

In which I find Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, fight depression after receiving a pep-talk from my teammate and have the epiphany of The Path to (my own) Illumination.


One of these days, I found a golden statue of Ganesh in one of my drawers in my wardrobe. Certainly from the previous renters of the flat, the little elephant-headed statue was not more than 5 centimeters tall. I didn't pay so much attention to it and I just let it rest inside the wardrobe.

I might not look like the type (neither I give many hints about it), but I am deeply spiritual person, even though I don't have any religion. So one of these days I was browsing the web randomly and I started reading about  Indian gods. I was reading about Ganesh, which is one of the most beloved indian gods, and one thing called my attention: among other things, Ganesh is the remover of obstacles.

It is no secret that I am having a major hard time in India, with cultural shock hitting me with both feet on my chest. I thought "remover of obstacles, eh?"

Now here I must expose the crazy things that go inside my head when I say I am a spiritual person and not a religious one:

Crazy idea #1 - The Truth is only one, but wise men have called it by many names.
I believe in one God. The true God. But I believe that everything is an emanation of God. In other words, it is all just different aspects of God - like looking to those mirror labyrinths, the images reflected in different mirrors certainly look different, but they are all the same thing, just reflected in a different way. Which means that everything is God (or different aspects of God), including you, me and that tree over there (yes, the rickshaw driver is also an emanation of God - but I wouldn't say it is a particularly good one).

You can burn me later, I saved the best for the last: if everything is God, then no religion is wrong.

Crazy idea #2 - If you and me are emanations of God, we have god-like powers
And if you, me and them have god-like essence & powers, we can make things happen just by wishing hard enough (The Secret feelings anyone?). So if a bunch of people (1 billion?) believes that an elephant-headed god is the remover of obstacles, it will help people to "access" the "remover of obstacles" energy from God. We invented the gods, we make them powerful and, when we forget them, they lose their powers and fade away. (Connected, but not really, read American Gods, excellent fiction).

And this ends up the crazy explanation of what goes inside my head. Continuing from where we stopped:

"remover of obstacles, eh?"

Than I put the Ganesh statue in my office and gave him a bit of a nudge and a chat here and there during the day, especially the difficult ones. At home I started meditating about my obstacles in India and why I was having such a hard time, while the others seem to be much better.

Yesterday was one of those hard days at the office. I was feeling destroyed, defeated and complaining about everything. So much that one of my colleagues had to get me and talk about it. "Hey, let's focus on solution, we are only complaining, that is not right". I am glad by his leadership, that is what I was needing at that moment. I immediately recognized the down-spiral, the hopeless attitude and all the things that I should not do when I was MCP. And I invoked the MCP god energy and the wish for Ganesh to help me to clear up the obstacles on my way. I decided to end it right there. I needed to snap out of the defeated mode. For those that know me, they know I am capable of very dramatic changes in behavior to accomplish objectives. That is what I decided doing.

After that, I had a blast at work, I impacted the lives of the trainees that just arrived, had some good social time with the guys at the office and, at home, had these revelations:

#1 - I can't change the whole of India, I am only one god, they are more than a billion.
#2 - I am unhappy because I am focusing on complaining. What we focus on is what we will notice. "Think of buying an yellow car and suddenly everyone is driving that yellow car". Perception is reality for the perceiver.
#3 - I am unhappy because I am feeling purposeless in India, which lead me to create the Path of Illumination (just a fancy way to say "happy life plan")

Goal #1: enjoy India - this country has so much to offer, what a waste of time to focus on all that makes me unhappy. I will change those 274 trainees lives. I will travel around the great and magic places and experience the India that one should experience before death. I will make deeper friendship (but I am still not seeking loads of friends, I prefer few deep relationships), I will find ways to enjoy the physical space in Chennai (beach? Sparky's? Temples?) and STOP COMPLAINING.

Goal #2: prepare the ground for doing what I love, with who I love and where I love - That I really cannot say so much about, just that it is on its way and I am really thinking this can go very right!

Now, I am walking the Path.

But do not follow me. Each person has to find his/her own path.