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Aha, finally I put my trace here after being sooooo long not writing here.

Well, today is very special day, since it is Kartini's Day, but I am not talking it deeply on the air. I talked about maturity, and its stuffs. As I promised in my broadcasting, I am gonna share some suggestions for practicing mature, as mentioned below:

Some suggestions to practice adult thinking:

1. *Be Realistic*: Keep in touch with the reality around you as much as
possible. You may day dream, have plans and goals that may seem to be
difficult to attain. You may have the tendency to be driven by the passion
of idealism rather than the demands of the day. All this is acceptable so
long as you know what you are doing, what you are capable of doing and know
the difference between what you perceive as reality and what you think as
your dreams and ideals.

You can become a realist by practicing mindfulness, not by becoming a monk
but by remaining amidst the world. Mindfulness is an excellent way of
keeping your mind occupied with each passing moment. It is a combination of
many things at a time: dynamic awareness, attention to detail,
concentration, detached wakefulness, staying with the moment and
dispassionate analysis and assimilation of the incoming information.

This you can learn from trained practitioners or by reading some books on
the subject. If that is not possible at this juncture, just learn to
practice detached observation using all your senses and your full attention.
By remaining in touch with your surroundings and by controlling your
thoughts and emotions, you can keep the adult in you wakeful and responsive
most of the time and save yourself from a great deal of trouble that stems
out of immature responses and reactions.

2. *Challenge your assumptions*: If we carefully start observing and
analyzing, we will be surprised to know how much of our thinking and
behavior is induced by our beliefs, assumptions, preferences and
prejudices. We inherit them mostly from our childhood days and keep them
intact like antiques in the cupboards of our minds, cherishing them for
their sentimental value and rarely evaluating them or subjecting them to
serious scrutiny.

As children these beliefs and thought patterns might have enabled us to deal
with our limited exposure to the world around us, or we might have inherited
them from our elders and peers, out of respect, out of fear, out of
ignorance or out of the innocent conviction that since they were cherishing
them they must be true.

But unless we verify them and found them to be acceptable, in the light of
the new experience and information we gather over a period of time as
adults, and unless they stand the test of objective analysis and
practicability of the present day reality, they can become impediments to
our adult behavior and thinking. One very practical way to keep ourselves in
adult mode is to examine regularly how much of our thinking is based on our
past beliefs and assumptions and how it is interfering with our rationale
and sensible behavior and thought processes. Unless you remove those cobwebs
from your mind, you will continue to experience difficulties in adult life.

3.* Be Inquisitive*: Those who are rigid in their outlook and behavior are
driven mostly by their prejudices, and beliefs. They tend to remain rigid
and judgmental in their attitude and when confronted with rationale
thinking, they behave overbearingly or aggressively. They behave
aggressively because they are not sure of what they do and say and they
would not like to subject themselves or thoughts to other's scrutiny. They
believe that challenging their assumptions means challenging their very
selves or their very existence, or negating something around which they
might have built much of their lives and actions. To shatter that center
means to shatter them, their very meaning and purpose. Hence they would
build a fort like defense around themselves and protect themselves from
attacks from outside. If you question them they take it as a sign of
disrespect and would categorize you as a heretic, deviant or even pervert.
They would rationalize their behavior resting their arguments on something
that is as vague or vast as society or religion. They also suppress a part
of themselves that questions their beliefs and assumptions because they are
uncomfortable with it. Hence they also remain unstable and incomplete.

The best way to collect objective data from the world around you is through
questioning. By asking questions you are not confirming anything. You are
only challenging the assumptions and beliefs either of your own or of
others. You draw valuable information through that process and are in a
position to assess its true worth. You know from your experience what to
accept or not to accept, and you would be confident in many ways of what you
do or intend to do. Since your information is verified and objectively
tested, you are in a position to choose better alternatives in more creative
ways.

To be inquisitive and curious is the key to adult behavior. It was something
we all have done as children, but something which most of us tend to ignore
at a later stage in our lives. Learning can be mere passive acceptance of
facts or a dynamic questioning and seeking that lead to an expanding
consciousness. The former tend to make us mental slaves while the later
enables us to be masters of our lives and owners of valid knowledge.

In ancient India that was the way spiritual masters used to impart mystic
knowledge to young students. Knowledge would not be given unless someone
came with intense curiosity and asked questions persistently. That was the
main qualification and the main consideration to accept someone as a
disciple. And even while the instruction was going on, further knowledge
would not be imparted unless the knowledge that was already revealed was
tested personally and found valid. All knowledge was kept secret because
that was the best way to arouse human curiosity.

Do not accept any suggestion or information, however trivial it may seem,
unless you are convinced that they stand the test of reason and reality. You
can do this by learning to question every thing, every data, every
assumption and drawing rationale conclusions based on your experience. The
same attitude would also enable you to deal effectively with your irrational
thoughts and behavior.

4. *Understand your emotions*. It is irrational and unrealistic to believe
that any one can control his or her emotions completely to the point of
becoming apathetic. Emotions are essential part of human life and without
emotions life will be too plain to be appealing. Just as it would be unwise
to destroy all the rivers in the world so as to deal with the problem of
flooding, it would be foolish or even harmful to try to eliminate emotions
completely out of our systems so as to remain immune to the suffering
caused by them.

Emotions are the most mysterious aspects of your self. They erupt
spontaneously and once erupted they take their own time to subside. They are
a part of the intricate play of the energies inside the human body, about
which presently we have very limited knowledge and physically very little
control.

Our emotions are like the animals in a zoo that wake up now and then and
make their cries, either because they are hungry or some one has disturbed
them. So long as we do not understand their mechanism, so long as we are not
sure what causes them to erupt and persist, it is not good to put them down
with force or interfere too much with their spontaneity.

The best way to deal with emotions is to examine them in a conscious,
systematic and detached way as they arise and enact their drama. Once you
know by your own experience what triggers your emotions, how they proceed,
which parts of your being they effect, how they cool down and so on, you
will develop the skill and awareness to deal with them effectively. Such a
mastery comes to you only when you have studied your emotions in a
comprehensive manner, learned to distinguish them and understood their
play. This is the way suggested by the spiritual masters of the east,
especially those who believed in the integration of human personality for
its further spiritual evolution, not in its disintegration.

In other words what we are suggesting here is that let the animals live but
you as the ring master in control. This is the way of maturity. Accept your
emotions as they are, as a part of your heritage, acknowledge realistically
their power, beauty and influence and learn to cope with them in a
non-judgmental way.

Once you develop the understanding through your own study and observation,
you will know which of them to use, which of them to control and which of
them to improve. You will learn how to live with them not by controlling
them by force or by being controlled by them but by learning to deal with
them in more creative ways.

This mastery cannot be yours so easily, unless you are willing to invest
enough time and energy in the pure study of your emotions and understanding
their movements. It may take years. But once you study them you will have
the power to handle your emotions in a in a positive and constructive way
to enrich your life and experience.

5. *Decide the right way*. We may not be conscious of this, but it is true
that each and every moment of our existence is created by its preceding
moment and if we observe life carefully, we realize that what appears to be
one continuous stream is in reality a series of moments merging or flowing
into the next. The apparent continuity is an illusion. Actually each moment
is separate and independent by itself. It seems to be in league with the
next because of our interpretation and our imaginary association or
attachment with all the moments that we live. It is true but for our
thinking and imagination each moment is separate and independent by itself.

This knowledge is important, because each moment that we live influences the
next. Whether we admit the fact or not, the decisions that we make at
various levels, physically, mentally, emotionally or rationally, almost
every moment of our lives, carry in their wombs the images of things to
come, the dreams to be realized, the lives to be lived and the actions to
be performed in the moments yet to come.

The present moment is therefore of utmost importance to us. Equally
important to us is the kind of decisions that we are taking right now at
this very moment, either consciously or unconsciously. Taking right
decisions and arriving at right conclusion in the present is the key to the
quality of our experience in the future. But are we in a position to choose
correctly or to decide correctly?

No amount of knowledge, no degree of maturity, no amount of intelligence can
really make us error proof in taking decisions. Whatever be the method,
whatever be state of mind, because of our inherent incapacity to possess or
conceive the whole truth, we are bound to make mistakes and lead ourselves
into unexpected situations.

But decisions can still be made on an intelligent and rationale basis to
cope with uncertainty and minimize risks by drawing richly from our
experience and available channels of information. The best known method is
the scientific method and when you are not sure, seek others' or experts'
opinion. If you are still not satisfied test your intuition and see whether
it can be of some help.

6. *Practice detachment*. Learn the power of mindful detachment. Seek the
seeker and know the knower. It is the basis of all true intelligence,
judgment, awareness and discretion. With mindful detachment you can overcome
the problem of selective perception and emotional judgments. You can
develop true maturity of mind and behavior. You will learn to deal
effectively and objectively with your day to day problems and your emotional
baggage as you carry it. You create a center of peace and calm where reason
can operate and coexist with the flow of emotions or the vibrations of your
prejudices and irrational thoughts. You will also learn to deal with
ambiguity and decision that involve ambiguity and uncertainty.

Maturity is accepting what is, willing to change what can be and knowing
what cannot be. Maturity is to enter into a covenant with yourself, agreeing
to be guided by reason, to be aware of your emotions, to strive for that
freedom that is not of the prisoners of their own worlds.