DITCH ORGANISATIONS
A spiritual view of spending a year in the slums of India
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Organisation is boring. Organisations are boring.
I was trapped in an organisation a couple of years ago. It was an NGO.
I agreed to work there only because it allowed me to work in human-connect.
I love people, people are wonderful.
Although I fulfilled my commitment for a year, met beautiful souls and collected life-changing stories about rags to riches.
I saw many lives transforming in front of me.
Ex-convicts started new businesses, and youth from marginalised communities gave themself a chance to connect with the mainstream.
My job was to live in the slums of India and be in the community to instil a message that dignity is as important as earning money.
I met Thousands of youth in the community out of which Hundreds enrolled on the foundation program offered by the NGO and explored the possibilities outside their current situation.
They changed, I changed.
It was chaotic, yet a beautiful mess.
In the midst of this, there was only one hindrance—the NGO.
It was trying to find a system—one solution for all.
Organisation.
The NGO was trying to replace the organised crime with the organised corporate.
An iron cage with a gold-plated cage.
On the contrary, the community that was brought together might have shared a common goal of well-being, but the nature and the way of reaching the goal were different.
Unique.
You can not measure the intangible wonders of life.
How deep are you on the spiritual path? — is a wrong question.
Many of the youths I worked with succeeded because they understood that they needed to do something out of the system.
They were already doing it in their life, things that are rejected by the mainstream.
They were already working in organised crime which deprived them of their dignity.
They needed to channel their energies somewhere else.
They valued opportunities more than a well-to-do person because they were never offered a chance.
It worked wonders. The criminals succeeded more than a graduate.
I learned a lot from this experience of working with unconventional personalities.
Personally and Spiritually.
Here’s why —
Daring
A person who has tried and failed to do things others would not even think of trying is daring.
You are rewarded by the risks you take in life.
We have evolved that way. We are the offspring of the hunters who took risks to earn meals for the day.
Youth from the marginalised community know this fact, and they were not afraid to plunge into an unknown world.
They explored unconventional routes of operating business, and surprisingly they also embraced the spirituality with the same courage.
The uncertainty in life had taught them to be ready for the surprises.
To walk into the darkness of the life and the universe within.
Acceptance
Seen all done all.
Deprivation and desperation add depth to the life.
It pushes the person into the dark corners.
An individual trapped in such a situation will grab every opportunity to get out of it.
He has acceptance of the ray of light that would lead him to a better life, and also the witty hand that would pull him out to drag him into criminality.
The key is to offer the opportunity. To shed light on possibilities.
The acceptance will take care of everything else.
Without resistance.
An opportunity can make a difference between passion to kill and compassion to serve.
They have acceptance of the fact that anything can happen at any moment.
Loopholes
Nobody is born a criminal.
Criminals are born in the society we live in, conditioned on the streets we walk on.
We might quarantine and disregard them. But it is a brutal fact that they are part of our society.
They know the loophole in the system and take advantage of that.
They know the flaws of the system and see possibilities beyond that.
This understanding can be employed to find the flaw in a system.
The world doesn’t only need the people who create but also people who can guard the creation against the loopholes in it.
A criminal mind can be efficient in finding the loopholes.
Bare bones of life
I have seen poverty very closely.
Others and mine.
There were times when I would go hungry for a week.
I have seen people spending sweat and blood to win the bread of the day.
I have seen people who have seen the bare bones of life.
But there was also a time when there was so much food on my table that the entire community would feast on it.
I have lived in palaces and moved in fancy cars.
Life is in flux.
And there is nothing more spiritual than understanding both of the polarities of life.
Youth from the marginalised community know the true value of these polarities.
They are ready for both, but will always choose the riches if given a choice.
I hate when people say spirituality is about torn robes and living in a hunt.
If that were true, 1,00,000 people in the 11 communities I worked in would have been enlightened.
Once you see the bare bone of life, the allegory teaches you that spirituality is a celebration of life.
Celebrate at every possible opportunity.
Asceticism is a rotten concept no longer valid in today\’s world.
Mess is spiritual
Life in the communities is messed up. Chaotic.
It resembles the state of the human mind. It is spontaneous.
The constantly moving world and dynamics of the community push an individual to the unmoving circle.
No one understands this better than the criminals.
They have heard so many gunshots that they value the richness of silence.
When they are offered a chance to be silent in meditation, I have seen people sit like a Buddha.
Organisation — Corporate, criminal and non-profit always try to break the magnificent horses, tame them and tie them to the harness of sedimentary mundane life.
We think it is normal because it happens on a mass scale.
Life is not a pedicured garden of systems. It is a wild orchid with raw beauty.
Grow like a wild orchid.