Evolve and Elevate: Self-Sabotaging behaviors, Who is real Bhokta (The Receiver) and Frida Kahlo’s gift of pain

Idea of the Week

Sometimes we tend to pick up the patterns which are unhealthy and hamper our progressive attitude. 

Like:

• You want to be that student who can answer confidently but you sweep into your shyness and nervousness. 
• You want to sleep early so that ageing does not trap you early on, but missing having your screentime steals away your ageing fear.
• You want to fold that pile of clothes so that your space looks tidy, but you procrastinate because you want to leisure around instead. 

Why?

It’s because the pattern that is unhealthy and self-sabotaging has some sort of comfort behind it.

Or rather a need that you do not even realize you have.

The fact that you do not acknowledge this need, it keeps you trapped in it, and you fail to work on it constructively. 

The idea is to understand the need (that is a negative need) before you see it as a negative pattern.

Once you find how you can feed your need without letting it affect your positive patterns, you will begin to see the detachment with such behaviors.

Lesson of the Week

Bhagavad Gita says:

 As I mentioned in the previous Newsletter, you are neither Creator (Srishta) nor a Receiver (Bhokta), you are just a participant/associator of God.

Today I want to elaborate this by giving you an example.

Just like hands, feet and eyes are parts of the body but the real Bhokta (Receiver) is the stomach. 

• Your feet help in moving.
• Hands give food to the stomach.
• Teeth chew the food.
• And all other parts of the body are working for the Stomach. 

Just like by irrigating the roots of a Tree, the tree gets nutrients, similarly by giving the right food to the stomach, the body is kept healthy. 

Now just like stomach is the Bhokta (Receiver) of your body, Parmeshwar (God) is the Bhokta (the receiver) of your entire physical existence.

So, by serving Parmeshwar (God), you are benefited just like by serving the stomach, the body is benefited. 

Now, for a moment suppose if your fingers (one body part) start thinking that they will not pass the food to your stomach.

And start considering themselves an independent Bhokta (the receiver).

What do you think the result will be?

Will your body even exist if your body parts start considering them individual independent Bhoktas (receivers)?

If your hands stop sending food to mouth and mouth stop sending it to stomach, will any of your body part remain functional?

Yes, this is how your relationship with Parmeshwar (God) is.

You cannot exist if you do not accept God as your Bhokta.

You are here in this physical world with a duty to serve your Bhokta (Receiver), The Param Parmeshwar (God), if you wish to live a healthy, happy and fulfilling life.

This means all the rewards you get in this World are not solely yours. 

The credit is first of all for Real Bhokta.

Now let’s imagine a different scenario.

If your fingers start sending junk food, alcohol and everything toxic and unhealthy to the stomach (The Bhokta/the receiver), what will be the consequence?

The stomach will be adversely affected and that will have the worst effect on you.

So, when you commit negative, evil and hideous acts, you are destroying your Bhokta (God).

When Bhokta receives trash, it does not keep you sound and happy.

It withdraws and leaves you powerless.

This sums up to mean that God is your power.

Only if you give Him the right things and accept Him as your Owner, will you succeed in living a great life.

But if you forget Him or give Him negative things, your existence will be doomed.

Inspiration of the Week: 

Frida Kahlo’s Gift of Pain

Frida Kahlo, Mexican Painter is a gifted artist. 

But from where did she get this gift?

Kahlo as a young girl (6 years) was struck with Poliomyelitis. 

Was disabled in her very tender young days of life.

Her right leg remained slightly deformed and shorter than her left leg.

But being that honest and dedicated student, she headed for medical school. 

A premedical student in a Mexican city.

But that was not the limit of her tragedy. 

One day while coming home from school, her bus collided with a streetcar.

A major accident. 

Kahlo was 18 and her world collapsed in just a blink of an eye.

The accident gave fractures all over her body which caused lifelong pain and medical problems. 

She was pierced by the streetcar’s iron piece which entered her left hip and exited through her pelvic floor.

She had to go through 30 operations during her lifetime.

Bedridden for months and lifelong health issues.

Before the accident, Kahlo aspired to become a doctor. 

And then she had to change her trajectory. 

Not knowing what she could do with her crippled life, but all that time her constant thinking pushed her to uncover a new passion.

“I never thought of painting until 1926, when I was in bed on account of an automobile accident,” she said.

I was bored as hell in bed with a plaster cast… so I decided to do something.

I stole from my father some oil paints, and my mother ordered for me a special easel because I couldn’t sit up, and I started to paint.”

Kahlo transformed her confinement. 

Using a small lap easel and a mirror hung overhead in the canopy of her bed so that she could see her reflection, she began painting self-portraits.

Yes, painted canvas with her our pictures. 

The paintings she had no idea would make her one of the most famous artists of all time.

Sometimes she painted her scars, even her tears.

“I paint myself because I am so often alone,” she said.

“I am my muse; I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.”

Was it ever possible for a girl dreaming to be a doctor, one day to become a world-renowned artist?

But her gift came at a huge price.

A Suffering of lifetime. 

But she did not squander it.

Now what will shock you is how much her paintings were sold for.

Today, more than half a century after her death, her paintings fetch more money than any other female artist.

 One of the last portraits by Frida Kahlo broke records.

The painting had her face with her husband’s picture painted on her forehead.

 Her 1949 self-portrait with her husband Diego Rivera, titled “Diego y yo (Diego and I),” sold for $34.9 million at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Sale.

It’s the highest price ever paid for Latin American art.

The whopping amount if calculated in Indian rupees is beyond our senses.

Rs. 2860000000

 This is 2 Arabs 86 crores.

In Mexico, much of Kahlo’s art is recognized as an artistic monument, a legal status.

“For Mexico, the meaning of Frida can’t be given a price”.

One of her paintings depicting the extent of pain she went through in her life is heart wrenching.

In this painting, Frida painted herself into the body of a young deer with the head of herself and was fatally wounded by arrows all over the body. 

The background is the forest with dead trees and broken branches, which implied the feeling of fear and desperation. 

Far away is the stormy, lightning-lit sky which brings some hope but the dear will never be able to reach it.

I was shaken when I was first introduced to her story, and I had numerous pauses now when Iam writing it for you.

Pain could have gone waste too.

Kahlo would have succumbed to her pain and been a forgotten soul.

She would have let misfortune decide her fate.

But a Dreamer inside her did not see pain as a hindrance. 

Instead, she made every ounce of her pain a Masterpiece. 

The question is, what are you doing with your pain?

Letting it become your Fate or choosing to recreate your destiny?

Leaving with this story and question for you to think about.

♦Soul to Soul♦

Happy Reading