Making sense of what I have learned at 39!
Recently someone asked me whether I am an auditory, sensory or kinesthetic kind of person. I have never thought about it earlier and start thinking loud with him saying when I used to study in school, college and post grad, I used to never practice practical subject like math's, accountancy etc and just used to read them like any other theoretical subject, trying my best to make sense of them. Then when I used to attempt these questions in the exam for the very first time, I used to experience as if I am in a flow state and answering it in logical way. Luckily things worked fine and I passed all those exams.
Why I am sharing this example? The same feeling I am having while writing this article of my understanding of life of the world around me. The experience of flow state is partially missing as it seems I am still not so clear of how to summarize this understanding in few hundred words. To give structure to my own thoughts, lets divide this topic into what, how and why.
What of life is what you value
Spiritual teacher Rajee shared this example, that an alcoholic guy says many stupid things when drunk but never sells his children in that moment of stupidity. This denotes clearly that he value his children. Similarly, if you value our suitcase when travelling, you will forgo the beauty of the surroundings to take care of your bags.
How do we actually know what we value is one question which I found spending some time on. It is not a borrowed value from someone or some book, but something which comes natural to you. I personally value the simplicity of life and try to refocus my efforts to move in this direction, with all the given constraints of the modern world.
One way is to simplify is to slow down, be aware and see intentionally how your thoughts and actions are impacting others and world around you. This can be done by knowing very well that our default nature is to be compassionate but it gets distracted due to external factors. One analogy which describe it well is, the ocean wants to be always still but waves comes anyways! How can we watch the distractions in in our life like waves which appears and disappears.
How of life is how you cope
You are told from the childhood to focus on what is right vs wrong. When you grow up the focus changes on what is in your control vs what is not. This ability of discrimination is what differentiate you from other beings. However more than right vs wrong or control vs not control. the key discrimination required is between what is true vs false.
This is a big question with multiple layers to it depending how deep you want to go. In my little understanding, your own unique experience is the truth and everything else is illusion. Your experiences are derived by witnessing what is happening in and around you. As a paradox, it is both easy and difficult to identify our self with this witness consistently. It works on the formula of negation i.e. my self is what is left after realizing what I am not. An easier alternate is to closely notice in yourself what is not changing and be with that.
One great stoic saying is “Throne is nothing but a bench covered with velvet”, think for a minute what differentiate a king from a soldier? When you see someone as a whole, you can see the person in real terms. Everyone has a moving ratio of good and bad in different proportions and this moving ratio is a phenomena which makes us all similar. All suffering is because of your self obsession resulting in disconnects from others. The only thing you actually control is how do you “play” in this world in way of interacting with others. One of the easiest way to not be self obsessed is to frequently laugh on yourself and give complete freedom to others to laugh on you. Your mind may not like this but when you operate from your heart, you will love it!
Why of life is why you live
If you have already decided what you want in life, you are making the life of life little more difficult. Freedom means having a right definition of goals in our heads. Goals are not to achieve them but to know who have to become to get to that goal. If you see it more closely, all pressure to get somewhere, achieve something or any other “should be”, is always self created and so can be easily let go. There are 2 ways of looking at the life events in ones life as per spiritual teacher Gautam Sachdeva. One common one is that first a happens, then b happens and then c happens. The second way is because c has to happen, b happened and because b has to happen, a happened.
As I am writing all this, it seems as if I am using a new language, clearly knowing I am making lot of grammatical mistakes and realizing it may not come out to be perfect. However I am enjoying this imperfection, being comfortable with not knowing and living my unanswered questions patiently. As said, there is an option given to all to choose “voluntary poverty” with a mindset “mann changa to katauti mein ganga” (all is well when you are satisfied). This makes you detached from both, what you want to do as well as what you have to do, surrendering to the higher will of nature.
There are lot of things we can have gratitude for in life but the question comes who is having gratitude for whom. Take for example, your parents did best for you and their own parents. You will do best for your kids and your parents. Now you can either calculate this or else you can ask who is doing and who is not doing. Thinking I am doing or you are doing is to be identified with something temporary and takes you away from who you are. Having this understanding, you can freely take help of others, as if I am being helped by I.
Thanks to this digital age, if I would have written this article on a piece of paper I would have torn the page after writing and thrown it in a dustbin but now I will just click on publish button, believeing it is not much different anyways.
