Shamanism -- New to Me

It’s been a season of marriages, my close friend got married yesterday and one of his aunt mentioned to me couple of days back that I need to be part of the rituals. She introduced me to a new form of traditional beliefs called as Shamanism --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamanism. She told me that I need to be prepared to speak about Mother Earth and call upon her as The Goddess of the West and bring all the qualities of stability and growth to the ritual. I was thoroughly tensed and looked up to the net for more information; I could not find any this more than the definitions and spiritual effects of the same. She told me she creates rituals and she is creating this ritual for her nephew and she want to make it as meaningful. I was excited to see something new and also be a part of it.

The ritual began with the parents letting go of the children to lead their own life, they told nice things about them and their childhood and wished them luck for the new start. Then the brother and sister of the bride and bridegroom spoke about the qualities and gave their wishes. Then it was the part of the friends -->so we were the five elements as explained by the aunt, there was nothing in the beginning and then due to some friction Air was formed and then there was friction in the air and Fire was formed. Because of Fire and Air there was vapor and therefore there was Water, Water got cooled and there was mass formation and Earth was formed. So these are elements from North-East-West-South. All of us gave the couple a prayer related to the qualities of the 5 elements Ether-Air-Fire-Water-Earth to be the core of their relationship. After that the bride and the bridegroom expresed thier feelings about each other and proposed to each other and exchanged rings.

Phew, actually it was all informal – seriously I was expecting to have some spirits and some chanting etc J

Then the priest took over and did the rituals of a traditional Hindu wedding with the parents of the bride and the bridegroom, and he did explain every thing he did. First time I understood the Hindu wedding and enjoyed it too, maybe because I was part of it. And also maybe this is a modernized version of the Shamanism culture.

Now I am more curious about the different rituals and cults around the world – interesting research it would be huh?

Religion, is it faith?

I don’t have any political inclination nor follow politics in detail but what upsets me is that the whole world runs on the name of religion. Wars have been fought between countries for centuries based or caused on religion. Though percentages of us are educated we still have this part of religion as a reason for destruction and not a base for faith. I know people would have not said a prayer or visited a church, gurudwara , mosque or temple for ages but gone front to fight in the name of religion. This triggered my frustration --> Link

Art of managing the Traffic Jam

I learnt the art finally. I face two major blocks when I drive my car to office early morning, irrespective of how early I leave the house. ( unless I leave at 7 which is really early for me:-). I now carry light reading stuff with me like Reader's Digest and my most favorite "Archie’s". I know the traffic light is for 4 minutes each, I quickly grab the comic and read the strips. Thus I don’t get irritated waiting. And I started liking my travel. Unfortunately there is not enough light in the evening when I travel back home, I am sure I will come up with some idea.

My School days

I got into the Orkut community; my sister introduced it to me and said that there are lots of my school mates on it. I put in my details and forgot about it, off late there was a huge buzz in the office around me, so I managed to reopen my account.

I got to see so many of my school, college and office friends on it. And I got people sending me requests, some of whom I just could not recollect. They introduced themselves as being in school with me, in another section and reminding about people whom I had forgotten completely about and moved on in life.

Someone had written about and incident which immediately bought back fond memories of simple things that happened in school à just after the lunch break there was a bell which rang and you were supposed to just freeze and stand wherever and whatever you are doing for two minutes during which we had monitors walking around checking. And if you are found doing funny things or you see someone in a funny place or you break into hysterical laughs, you are caught by the monitor and punished by the principal. I don’t know if the school still has this funny system, but this was something I want to change if I had to go back to school.

I know the school and college days are the most fun. I would definitely wanna go back and do things my way and rewrite my life and enjoy every bit again.