The Gem-Germ Assessment

At the core, we’re individuals, and we interpret events with our own intellect and emotional pursuits. So, the emotions, thoughts, and hence our course of life are determined by our choices of thinking and feeling. This equates to us being the cause of all kinds of emotions and what we choose to think. Unfortunately for many of us, these become an autopilot open tab which we are unable to close or cherish, no matter what. It’s the background noise that, after a point, we get used to, hence fail to recognize its existence altogether. The noise became a part of our lives, and we’ve never gotten to pay attention to that which constantly runs at the back of our existence, conscious or unconscious of it, we live with it. The unsettling feelings of disliking a few aspects of your job, but never really sitting with that feeling to get to why, the aspects of your relationship that you do or are okay with, which don’t align with your virtues, your physical or mental structures that you’re severely trying to get out of, etc., become our background noise. Sometimes, just living with it without tending to see if this is an exaggeration or just preferences, or even the importance of that dissatisfaction, and after a point, this gets pushed to the bottom of the pile of other things you feel and think, but is never gone. So now, it’s that stinky, dirty laundry that we thought we should do something about a long time ago, but never got around to it, that sits at the bottom of the pile. Even though it may be one or two pieces of dirty cloth, it could become the odor of your room that you get used to. Now, the ones that meet you could smell the stench while you’re completely unaware of its existence. It then flavors who you are. These unresolved thoughts and emotions, and energies (the last one requires an expert’s interference) would then decide the kind of life and experience we live. It’s outright sad that we are not taking charge, or at leastbeinge conscious of our dirty laundry from years and years. We get too busy with our day-to-day runs of work, eat, watch, sleep routine, that we forget to LIVE.

Living with the understanding that the depth of our experience of anything we do enriches the life that we are. It doesn’t mean that you should skydive or snorkel to enhance life, but anything we do can be experienced intensely, not as the white noise of life. Our meals can be a phenomenon of immense experience. Our regular commute to work, or a cup of coffee, that meeting where people, both those of your liking and otherwise, share comments and inputs, all of these can become tremendously deep and hence make our lives beautiful. Such deeper levels of experiencing everything in life are the key to getting the most out of this Life. No amount of account balances, designer bags, or Teslas would equate to this level of experiencing life. For the events to reach such depths in you, it is essential that the baseline emotions are set straight.

Let’s call this the Foundational Emotion. Imagine your life as constructing a building structure. The importance of a foundation is well known, and the stronger it is, the higher the construct can move without threats. Let’s sit with this for a moment- The stronger our foundation is, the higher the construct can be. We can’t have an unorganized dump of stones and expect an Eiffel Tower out of it. It could lead to some structure, and it’s just a matter of time before it all comes crashing down- and it’s always less disheartening to start again when we’re not that far. Exiting the wrong train at the next nearest stop is way better than going all the way. Initially, the foundation is built for you by your caretakers and early childhood, but as you become conscious and grow, you can see for yourself how your base is shaping up. And once you learn the art of looking for the geometry, that’s the first step to fixing ANY or all aspects of life. The first step is recognition.

As you find that others are leaving stones upon your foundation, and you’re letting them determine and shape the foundation, it becomes essential that we view from an Eagle Eye view or the Big Picture view. As we learn to distance ourselves from all that we have in life, we see an unbiased and relatively large picture of many things in life. Once you find the skews and crooked stones, it is essential that you examine whether that’s a worthy stone to retain. How do you do that? If it adds enhancement to any of the areas of your life in the flowchart. Does it increase your depth of experience in any area of life? Then maybe that’s something you can consider to realign or retain that stone they left. Sometimes, we may stumble upon Quartz or Emerald that people leave in our lives, which might look crooked or different, but because it is not aligning or is similar to other stones in your foundation, we can’t afford to discard them, we might find ourselves rather be discarding the foundation altogether to rebuild by multiplying this precious gem than leaving this one out because it doesn’t fit in your structure. That little stone might be worth more than whatever we’ve built so far. “Not being afraid to start from scratch when you know you’re doing it right this time around, and not feeling missed out to see your neighbors move forward with their structure” require big picture and distant view- Like an Eagle eye. So, to really see the foundation upon which you stand, and to recognize that it’s uneven require a perception a little beyond what we use for our survival and egotistic day-to-day events. It requires an alignment with something that’s beyond ourselves, beyond our inventions, beyond the inclusive areas of life in the chart- Earning, learning, or deriving meaning through people and relationships.

Ideal combination is Solitude and Sojourn- The SO SO Method. Staying alone for a few days in a space as close to the Nature without the influence of other people, or social influences through media, really shakes us off the lucid dreaming that we walk day to day. Taking an inventory of life from scratch to find what’s gems and what's germs- THE GEM GERM ASSESSMENT. This seclusion- The Solitude Sojourn on Nature’s lap would provide the necessary distance from all that has shaped us thus far, at least on a spatial level.

Book a cottage or camp on our own, without friends, family, or partner. Do it for just a week. Do not use mind-altering substances during these 4 days as this would skew the results; these are mind-altering substances after all, and we need this faculty very much to for what we’re intending to do here. Do not carry a fictional or an ‘inclusive realm’ book- We do not want any mind-altering inputs from novels, or skill learning during this stay. Carrying a spiritual book could help clear your understanding of various aspects of life, if you choose to. I would not recommend reading any book during this sojourn. After all we’re trying to read and observe what we’ve accumulated so far. The space is equally important. Choose a place where nature is bountiful- Where what human has created is to the minimum. Once we’re at the lap of tangible and immense expansion of the Creator’s creation, we naturally tend to become extremely small and a ‘Nobody’. Standing in front of the large mountains, or valleys, expanse of lake or ocean, forest with trees way taller than us, clearly removes something from us, ever so subtle and sometimes unnoticeable, but we’re too busy with human creation of emotions with people, social media, and such at places like these to recognize the change.

The So So method of getting the Eagle Eye view of the foundation of your life is essential to get started with forming a more robust and reliable structure. Sometimes, all it needs is a good declutter, and we’re good as new, but for a few, the foundation needs restructuring as they would have gone through intense suffering that shaped their lives in an utterly skewed way. All this would require is the inherent intelligence to observe things as they are, without flavoring agents of favoritism, the coloring from friends, family, societal acceptance, etc. The things that nourish the life that we are vs the ones that detain us- sooner or later.