Straight From My Conscience

Introduction to this blog.

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Hi,

Welcome to my blog!

What is so special about something coming Straight From My Conscience? In my entire life time, from the day I can remember, my conscience never even failed me once in providing much needed guidance. It warned me every time I was about to do something wrong (wrong as in foolish, wrong as in on the boundary of ethical and non ethical etc.). It encouraged me every time when I was willing to walk on the correct path (correct as in smart-right, righteous etc.). It is never clouded with confusion at the end of the analysis. In fact as far as I can remember it has an innate ability to come to the right conclusion instinctively, rapidly and on the very first try.  Why than you may ask I have floundered? Why have I taken wrong turns? Why have I done foolish, wrong and bad things? The answer is simple, I chose to ignore voice of my conscience. Someone once told me that even a ruthless serial criminal's conscience warns him and tries to stop him for the first event and few more times but eventually they develop a thick skin to ignore their conscience's voice. Fortunately I always paid attention to what my conscience was saying every time instead of developing a thick skin, and accepted its recommendation most of times.  I have derived great benefits by listening to my conscience in the past and I have decided to let rest of my life be guided by my conscience. When it says something is right or wrong to do, I know it is!

In this space, as far as my personal life is concerned, I will post my thoughts and musings as is, straight from my conscience. What you will read is what I have thought, no subtractions, no additions, no games, only the truth! (added on December 30, 2012 - In order to protect identities and privacy of any third party I will be masking their names and might remove certain details while still making sure that the crux of the matter still remains the same). I have my family's permission to publish my life here as we as a family live a very moral and ethical life, nothing to hide! My professional life is a shared property with my colleagues and even though I would like to portray it here, that portion of my life is out of bound for ever as I am bound by professional ethics and privacy laws. Eventually in few years from now I will be moving into a life dedicated to social service where you could broadcast my life live online except when I am in the showers or stalls where you don't want to watch me :).

Why, you may ask you should trust me that I will be truthful? Even if you didn't ask here is the answer :). You will see many posts where I might post something about myself that will heart me and might hinder my future success. I am still sane enough not to do so out of insanity!

Who am I? The Basics:

I am Paresh Yadav, born and raised in western India, Mumbai and Pune. Born and brought in a family with very good daily cash income but in dire poverty and misery due to my father's many vices. Thanks to many sacrifices my mother made and worked 16 hours a day 7 days a week, my own hard-smart work and help from neighbors, teachers and other kind people, I am an engineer by education. I graduated at top of my class (4th in Univ) from a top rated program at that time (E & T/C) from prestigious COEP engineering college in Pune where I competed with many brilliant friends who chose Electronics Engg. at COEP rather than Mechanical Engg. etc. at IITs (IITs' engineering programs are ranked at par with Stanfords and MITs of the world) . This is not an attempt to compare IQs because honestly scoring in exams at COEP had nothing to do with IQ!! Some of my class mates are some of the most brilliant brains that India has produced and have created/invented world changing technologies. I feel fortunate to know them. The reason I am mentioning it here is because what I am going to describe here might not make sense at first glance and you might question my sanity. I work in IT industry and still well respected by my pears and managers in what I do. I am a rational, pragmatic person even though you might question that based on some of my postings :).

I am not the first one to do so, there are hundreds if not thousands of people from many cultures, geographic regions, religions and atheist background who have experienced what I am going through. You may ask than why am I creating a new Blog, rather than referring you to books and material describing their experiences while discovering the ultimate cause for unhappiness and solution to the same? Let me tell you upfront that as of now I am not in word-for-word agreement with what my predecessors have discovered and that may change as  I discover more about them. I am an ordinary human being (yet :)) and I hope my experiences documented as it goes over next few decades will serve me and others as a guiding path. I hope most of us can relate to my situation in someway and can adapt wisdom from my past, present and future experiences to their own path to ultimate happiness. I am also reading and intend to read books from many different cultures, religions (I consider atheism as a religion because what is a religion? A system of beliefs,  values and behavior!). Also one of my hypothesis is extremely opposite to my own beliefs and to that of what spiritual people say is cause of unhappiness and how to find complete happiness. It is based on living a selfish life. Even if there was no almighty or law of Karma, I have decided to live a benevolent life for the sake of it, how can I be not compassionate and kind even if there was nothing to be gained? Due to this, I won't try to test this hypothesis myself. I am going to test hypothesis that living a selfish life leads to complete happiness through thought experiments, empirical studies and observations and talking to others who live selfish life. I will interview them with well designed questionnaires hoping to eliminate any known or unknown biases.

Some of my predecessors who have discovered the way to ultimate happiness are world famous personalities like Gautama Buddha. Again I know my place when I compare myself to Buddha and likes of him, so no there is no misunderstanding in my mind about how far behind I am on the path or abilities. My comparison is not with their achievements and abilities but rather with their discovery of the ultimate truths. I am not even sure if I will ever reach the success that they were able to achieve but I have courage to try and willingness to work towards my goals. Since my life is a work in progress we will discover things together as I proceed.  At age 47, I have experienced quite a bit of life from so many angles. Hell it has been a roller coaster of a ride filled with fun, thrills and scary moments. This blog is not just for you but for me to capture my thoughts for future reference and benefit  If any of these is helpful to you, the reader, it will be my pleasure. Please note that I don't expect you or most people who will read the blog to understand my feelings and thoughts as is common with such matters as proven by history (even though I am sure you will understand and enjoy my writings!). I will try to explain why through some examples. I don't care if you don't understand or don't care to understand my feelings and thoughts as that is not my worry! I have also looked into maniac state and depression that comes afterwards to see if any of the things I am experiencing is even remotely related to it. It is tough to observe oneself but I have tried. Hopefully if you find anything weird here you will be kind enough to find my family and/or doctor and let them know so that I can get the treatment I need :).

I was most happiest in my adult life from about 1988 till about 1993. I could go to sleep in 0 seconds (that is not a typo), anywhere, any place, any time, any circumstances, one of the sign of person who is at peace. I was as good as a rain maker! Yes big financial success was probably part of the reason but when I look back and analyze my success (financial and otherwise) I couldn't connect and attribute any of that to my intelligence, hard-work etc. alone even though those things might have played some role. I am as hardworking today as back then and even more wiser and sharp! So what was the secret? The magic?

The only things I could think of that drove my success during those years were:

• Honesty (e.g. once remained hungry for 48 hours, ate only 4 biscuits with water over 48 hours instead of applying my acumen to get food which would be almost like stealing) 
• Man of my words, commitments, never broke a promise however lightly it was made
• Never deceived anyone, even the ones that I knew were deceivers
• Absolutely zero ego! Ego is the strangest of all, if you even have to think that you have no ego, you have some! I realized now that I had no ego then, never thought about ego then, not even after doing big big favors, help, philanthropy etc.
• I was a person whom anyone can trust, even strangers, and many did!
• Absolutely no greed (e.g. once, drove back an hour to a restaurant because I forgot to pay the bill! This used to happen quite often in the crowded restaurants in India as I would always be in deep thoughts, walk out after finishing eating and forgot to pay the bills, every time going back to pay usually within few minutes)
• Child like innocence. This was not ignorance. I could be as shrewd as I needed to but I preferred to avoid being shrewd even with shrewd people.
• Non-violence and compassion even towards helpless animals (once at the age of about 10 year, after a 5 am to 11 pm tiring school + work day, I walked about 8 km rather than riding a horse buggy because the poor horse was so malnourished that he/she had outline of his/her rib cage visible through the skin and there were already 7 or 8 people riding the buggy). It might sound funny but until I was  an adult (not sure till what age) I used to take care while walking to make sure to avoid stepping and killing even small insects and ants, a hard task in India where such insects are common and the traffic chaos were unimaginable. 
• No envy
• Tendency to speak truth at all times (e.g. once got bashed badly for doing so! More about what I consider as truth and lies will come latter and you might not agree with me e.g. telling a would be killer who is chasing an innocent victim that the victim went north while the victim went south is not a lie in my opinion)
• Be always on the side of righteous
• Selfless, desire and will to help anyone at my own expense and risk to my life, even people who had heart my feelings and cheated me
• Good control over lust (this is hard to believe for those of you who knew me then, yes I liked making friendship with girls so that I can speak to them and impress my friends and boost my status but from few incidences that I will describe latter on this blog, you will see what I mean by this. Once a girl desperately wanted to go way beyond the usual chat. Even at that very young age with my own raging hormones, I had my conscience controlling my final actions telling me that it was wrong to take advantage of a girl's innocence and raging hormones). If thoughts of lust is considered as lust, yes I had it. 
• There are some spiritual not easily explainable/scientifically provable things but I am not sure if many so called intellectuals can digest it. I am going to post them anyways, after all it is my blog :)

Fast forward to today. I am no longer a happy person! I mean I am an unhappy person since last few years. Not that I am lacking any of the usual things in life. I am reasonably healthy. I have a loving wife who will probably sacrifice her life to save mine. I have 2 loving and caring daughters. I make a good living and never have to worry about putting food on the table or many basic necessities of life. I know I am unhappy and the simplest proof is that it takes me anywhere from 15 minutes to some times as long as 3 hours to fall asleep (I don't take sleep inducers), I don't have any sleep related illness as vouched by my doctor. I have observed dramatic improvement in my ability to go to sleep since I decided to "go back to the basics" and started this blog. I am still far from going to sleep in zero seconds but it takes me about 5 to 10 minutes at the most.

You, the reader makes me sad! Okay, may be not specifically you but you get the point. Look at the world around us. Do you think you have one true friend? Common, the people you meet at the party and drink the hack out are not your friends. You know it. A friend in need is a friend indeed! Oh and what about that poor neighbor of yours who have fallen out of grace due to housing bubble? Oh ya he was foolish and greedy and deserved it and he would have done the same to you. So you want to be a jerk like him? And your brothers and sisters? Really, they will do anything for you? Ask them that you need a Kidney transplant and will they donate one of their Kidneys. Oh bribe a doctor in India to say it is a match and then see what happens. Still not convinced? Look at yourself! What have you done? Where are your parents? Did they think of abandoning you when you used to get damn sick as a child and they didn't get much sleep for 5 days in a row? Oh it was their duty and parental instincts at play and it was in their animal instincts. They also had animal instinct to abort the fetus but they didn't. By the time you were about 5 years old they knew what a devil they are raising but they still loved you and took care of you. Convinced? I will talk more about what causes my unhappiness in my future posts. Don't tell me that based on my account 99.99 % of the people in the world are unhappy in someway or other because that doesn't make me happy! Just because I am in the same boat as others doesn't mean I should not be concerned even if the boat is sinking!! That is what a good friend tried to convince me over family dinner yesterday without success.

This transition from happy to unhappy didn't happen overnight and I am not sure when or how the change came. If it was an abrupt change I would have probably caught it and fixed the cause but alas small cracks are the hardest to even notice, find and fix. I will post some of the things I have done, some or all of which might have in some extent resulted in my current state. I absolutely believe in law/s of Karma as much as I believe in laws of gravity. I believe that my Karma's are 100% responsible for my previous happy state as well as current unhappy state. I do believe in almighty and he/she being above laws of Karma but I don't believe him/her to be a random person who breaks laws of Karma just like that. I have my questions and doubts about almighty and his powers and limitations and few of the posts will try to cover all that (laws of karma, my thoughts on almighty etc.).  

I have decided to go back to the basics. I would rather be occasionally or even always hungry, bashed-up Paresh who is at peace with himself rather than someone who can't get a good nights sleep on many days even after being in bed for 10+ hours. In my quest to get back to that peaceful state, I have already conquered lust, greed, envy etc. completely since last few years (or so I think). I have got this big ego in my head where I am conscious about every little good deed I do. Honestly I will give my life if I can get this ego out of my head (it might not make sense that what is the point of a dead man without ego? I do believe in rebirths..... topic for one or more blog post/s) . I have already adapted truth, honesty, non-violence, compassion and other things mentioned in above list as part of my daily life (trying to slowly become Vegan). I am trying to make sure that I stay true to those values while living everyday life.

Would you trust me now? If not, thank you for being honest about that, I don't have anything else to be able to convince you.

Last but not least, I have a busy life like most of us so I am not promising that I will post something regularly. I have been able to start my blog today (December 28, 2012) after a long long delay because we have Christmas holidays and no friends to socialize with today.

Hope you will come back often to read, see you next time!

Next - Introduction to the Introduction!