Ruminations from 18082024

 It was the second anniversary meeting at BlueTokai . We had a lot to discuss and acknowledge. Kudos to Puneets for setting the book club and everyone shared what it meant  to each one of us.

Some notes on the way forward

1. Two themes topics to be assigned to a couple of members to be spoken for 10 minutes before the open forum

2. Possibility of doing these meetings in homes by round robin and we agree on protocols that will be drafted initially by Naveen

3. Fixed day to be pre-decided rather than a poll

What we were reading and what we discussed made a melange of topics

1. Puneeta -  The Book Thief  - A fictionalized account of a German family with a little girl harboring a Jew at home during the Holocaust

2. Shally - James Hollis and Martha Beck and their articles and podcasts. They are touching on meaning in  life and psychology 

3. Jasbir - The 5 AM club by Robin Sharma. We touched upon universal messages and the repetition in Robin Sharma's books

4. Naveen - Accelrating India's Development by Karthik Muralidharan. Naveen touched upon the chapter headings and how corruption is not only to be blamed - but also the holistic approach taken by the author. Naveen also touched upon Small is Beautiful and Donut Economics . There was an allusion to the author of Donut Economics creating a community that is following those principles.

5. Rakesh - Thinking Fast and Slow . The group spoke about the book being a large and a challenging book. Rakesh also touched upon his recent reads Rework that helps prioritizing at work and Business- The Murdoch Way  

6. Imtiyaz - How to Enjoy Life and Your Job by Dale Carnegie. The need to compliment as opposed to criticism to get work done in all spheres of life was touched upon

7. Namita - Spoke about manifestation and lessons from Ask and It is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks

8. Uday spoke about his digging deep into the Ashtavakra Gita  

9. Ganesh - Touched upon Pompeii by Robert Harris . A historical fiction set at the time of Vesuvius eruption and how his recent travels made him look at that book .

Through the topics we vacillated to all topics  enjoying ourselves discussing some interesting  subjects and watching time, coffee and and thoughts flow. 

 

 

Ruminations From 24022024

 We began by Puneeeta touching upon her present read - Think Again by Adam Grant. Adam grant came up in multiple conversations . Some of the key points were the super conversation with Adam Grant and Simon Sinek . The multiple podcasts by Adam Grant and his own failures that he has spoken about in the book were brought up. There was also a conversation on how Adam grant looked at givers and takers. There is also Adm Grant's contribution to discovering oneself in the principles framework.

Then, we spoke about the works on Steven Pressfield . The book most spoken about was The legend of Baggar Vance . Other books and his works and parallels with Indian legends were discussed.

We spoke about Golf and the new habit Anand is picking up. Uday spoke about about the author Timothy Gallwey and the inner game series . 

We discussed AI also. We spoke about AI and chat GPT and how we are all using and the new generation being good at using this.  How chat GPT and the new tools will touch life, art, search and study were all touched upon. A couple of image generators we can use for free are freepik and dreamlike.art .

We spoke about the other books we wanted to discuss about  were How Life Imitates Chess  and Mindsight

 

 

Ruminations from 20082023

We met after a long time with a larger group. The book choice this time was The psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. The good part was that the pdf of the book was circulated by  Naveen and many of us had read the book earlier or had started reading. The easy read had several lessons for all of us - some of about money and some about the psychology of life.

Some of the key notes that were discussed and debated

•  It is about the feeling of having enough
• Context and mindset matters because each one is having his or her own journey. This is amplified by the thought and chapter on reasonable and rationale when mental thoughts and excel sheets collide.
  
• Is leaving wealth or spending wealth in the present a good thing. At what stage should wealth be given
• Models like 15  x 15 X15 and 1/3rds for building wealth
• There is enough for everyone's need , but not enough for one man's greed
• How do we distinguish between luxury and affluence
• What does money get us - time to do what we want with who we want for how long we want and when we want.
• Making money the means and ends
• Consistency and allowing money to compounding
• Not to moan on losses, but to work on the large wins
  

Then the models went to nature, belief and how the ancient societies particularly in India, but also in most countries believed in wealth as a benefit of nature. 

• Luck and its importance
• The meaning of prayer - if it is a manifestation or surrender 
• The ancient Indian scriptures and what can we learn from it - Vedas to Upanishads and the context which was codified from oral traditions to a structured whole by Veda Vyasa. The how and why being covered by Brahmana and Samhita and the context and the fable part - more of the why being covered by Upanishads was deeply and beautifully explained by Naveen. One recommendation was the youtube channel on Vedanta by Neema Majumdar
  

 

Useful links for Psychology of Money

 

Summary 1

Summary 2

Summary 3

 

 

Next session date and time - To be determined

Book for the next session

 The Biology of Belief  

Useful links for Biology of Belief

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSP4JxgAOTk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZhNwqP2Plg

https://www.sfsu.edu/~holistic/documents/biology(2)-1.pdf

Summary

 

 

 

 

 

Ruminations from 03062023

For the previous 2 sessions when there were no blogs, we have been discussing Dr Joe Dispenza and trying to incorporate his ideas into our daily lives.  We discussed how do we incorporate his ideas into our lives and impact our daily lives. 

Puneeta spoke about a paragraph about our thoughts and the science that goes behind it. Shally spoke about his meditations and incorporating his thoughts. Jasbir spoke about a  living example . Namita spoke about her own examples when mind triumphed. 

 For the next session, we spoke about how we incorporate AI into lives . We spoke about ability and inability to cope with the future with AI and how we have been supplemented.

We spoke about certain aspects of AI

Pair programming and how git hub copilot may revolutionise the world. Example of google in the link.

How AI went wrong and caused damage and working through backtracking.

Man committing suicide after speaking to AI

Ai developing romantic relationship with New York journalist 

How AI is supplementing medicine and allowing differently abled folks to improve

AI demonstrating empathy in medicine 

Next meeting topic:

How we have been impacted by AI or used in the last 2 weeks

Ruminations from 01042023

 As usual, our hour long discussion was very interesting.

This time the topic was Purpose and the conversation flowed seamlessly

🌿
Anand spoke about the book he is currently reading : 4000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman and how putting a finitude to life brings more clarity and urgency to how each one can lead their remaining life with joy & meaning.

🌿
Puneeta elaborated on The Great Work of your life by Stephen Cope( which she is reading ) and how reading the same is making her think of what Dharma is in the truest practical sense and how one doesn’t need to be always doing something big but make one’s daily living meaningful. Uday further brought forth the same point with his personal life example. He also highlighted how just taking the leap of faith helped him create a new path in his life.

🌿Ojas deepened the concept of Dharma & meaningfulness in life with the story of Viktor Frankl and the concentration camp from the book : The man’s search for meaning Viktor had reframed his circumstances to include serving others, which made his life in the concentration camp less horrifying.
Ojas also posed a question of how would it be to include others whilst one explores & defines purpose in one’s life.

🌿Namita shared her non clarity around purpose & meaning and spoke of how sometimes circumstances came in the way of getting clarity around one’s life purpose.

🌿Gurpreet also used her Reiki practice to speak of how serving others brings a lot of joy & meaning to one’s life. One needs to be prepared to work hard to clear the past baggage, though 😀

🌿At this juncture, Uday brought in the question of What is the purpose of this Book Club and why are each of us participating in the conversation every month?

For most, the Book Club space provided an arena to connect with like minded people and
have honest & heartfelt conversations which go beyond the usual mundane gossip
and provide different perspectives.
https://www.oliverburkeman.com

Do check out his newsletter
The imperfectionist

Next Meeting : TBD

Next Topic : Sci - Fi

Ruminations from 19032023

 We had deliberated on the topics and we moved on to the eclectic topic of Paranormal. This subject went on to a fascinating conversation that bordered on real life experiences and books.

It began by thinking about what is paranormal and how do we classify it. It became everything about the "unexplainable", parallel universes and multiple states of being and stories in our lives that piqued attention, fascination  and interest.

 The initial conversations were about Planchette and  the multiple experiences some folks seems to have had - predominantly Namita and Puneeta. Charu, VIjay and Rashmi had also heard of this. Namita also connected with multiple stories from her personal life and life of her relatives starting and connecting a story of Planchette with some science called micari.  She did mention about rebirth of souls and passage of souls. Her personal experiences right from an young age when we fell into a well to experiences of her relatives who had lost a young person in a family due to an accident, invocation of Gods and connecting some coincidences in life to an mystical man and a fascinating tale of a haunted house and coincidences in Shillong held everyone's attention. Vijay touched upon a scary coincidence in California, his connection with Meher Baba and how his grandfather's writeup appeared as a coincidence in his life. Some of the conversations went back to movies like Kantaara

Ganesh touched upon his limited reading and podcasts that fascinated in this area. The first person who has inspired in this area is Tom Chi.  He has connected everything in this world in a fascinating way  . Then, there is a physicist who is making paranormal more normal called Nassim Haramein. His TedX speech and how he tries to uncover the root of creation in a mindvalley talk . This was fascinating. 

One author and book that piqued interest was Dr Brain Weiss whose book Many Lives Many Masters was brought up.  This led to conversations about past life regression . Rashmi mentioned that she had the complete collection of this author with the exception of this book.

This was a discussion of out of the world experiences very much in our small cocoon of Enclave

Next meeting: To be decided

Topic: Purpose or well being

 

 

Ruminations from 04032023

 The topic was meant to be self help; And as always, the group helped itself  to multiple topics that created a tapestry of thoughts woven together by conversations around the books we read and how we related to them.

 The  initial book that was discussed was Thinking in Bets . A discussion took place on everything being in possibilities and how risks are taken. And how they should be taken. This was brought in by Anand. Slowly the conversations drifted to connections and actions taken as bets in different circumstances and contexts

This went on to Uday connecting all the way from Bhagvad Gita to Nelson Mandela through the works of some philosopher, Gandhi and Martin Luther King - each one connected to the other inspiring the other and touching a cause. Uday continued with touching upon The Good Work of Your Life and the meaning of the book and the essence of self. Uday also touched upon the the panchakoshas - Annamaya, Panamaya, Monomaya, Vigyanamaya, and Atma and how each one went deeper. Deeper the impact, deeper the change. He further mentioned the Iceberg model and sent an article he authored on that.

This could be related by the group on why some self help books and actions do not have as deep an impact as the intent. Somewhere along the conversations, Ojus connected this with the Netflix film A Most  Fortunate Man and it did strike a chord about ego and transformation and how in spite of all the intent, if ego belies reason, it can lead to ruin

Ganesh touched upon self help books in the categories of "do it this way" types - moving on to  stories or data that is impersonal to biographies and how all leave an impact on the way he sees self-help. 

Puneeta spoke about some blogs that were helping her forgive her self for enegry drift that helps her to move on from creative blocks.  The conversation was largely equating attention to energy.When attention and energy sync together, masterpieces are born. Ojus also equated energy with love from his background in Reiki. This was also tied to Indian scriptures.

Coming into openness and Indian scriptures, Anand spoke about places of multi religious worship in Assam called Naamghar that left everyone conversing about the melting pot of India  -  the depth and openness possible in human and Indian psyche. 

Next date : To be decided

Topic : Calling or Purpose