I hope that you enjoy reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where six of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Conrad The Old Fossil. The five other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, gaelikaa, < Maxi, Paul, Shackman, and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!
Before I start the post on today’s topic, it is my sad duty to bid farewell to a founder member of the Loose Bloggers Consortium, Grannymar who will no longer be participating in the LBC Friday post adventures. She will be remembered for her consistency and very imaginative posts. I wish her well in her new endeavours.
“Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one’s immediate surroundings, during which a person’s contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.”
~ Wikipedia.
How beautiful that the definition suggests that it is a short term detachment from reality!
There was a time when I used to daydream a lot. I could detach myself from my immediate surroundings. With advancing age, I find that increasingly difficult. I suppose that it is also a reflection of all the experience that this old body/mind/intellect complex has accumulated that it instinctively stops daydreaming for the very enjoyable exercise being futile.
There are however some new movements like The Law Of Attraction which posit that one can attract what one wants by daydreaming! I use that terminology rather than the fancy words used by the practitioners. I mention that here because just a few days back I met someone who was brainwashed into investing in the books, and a few DVDs made by the movement’s gurus. This person said something that struck me as being worth sharing with my readers. The movements advocates, who sell all kinds of things via web sites, books, training programs etc all seem to make money by attracting a whole lot of losers. No one hears about all the people who do not attract anything into their lives by following the system! In other words, one hears about only those odd cases of successes and the vast majority of failures are not reported.
Daydreaming, while fully aware that it will be just that and that it will not attract what one dreams about due to the power of the universe or whatever, is a luxury that every one must be able to afford. That is my wish for all humanity. I wish that I could.
bandhur ātmātmanas tasya
yenātmaivātmanā jitaḥ
anātmanas tu śatrutve
vartetātmaiva śatru-vat
SYNONYMS
bandhuḥ — friend; ātmā — the mind; ātmanaḥ — of the living entity; tasya — of him; yena — by whom; ātmā — the mind; eva — certainly; ātmanā — by the living entity; jitaḥ — conquered; anātmanaḥ — of one who has failed to control the mind; tu — but; śatrutve — because of enmity; varteta — remains; ātmā eva — the very mind; śatru-vat — as an enemy.
TRANSLATION
For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will remain the greatest enemy.
Bhagwat Geeta Ch VI Verse 6.
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