A very intimate sense of who I am echoed through me as I closed off for the day, tired. I had had a restful nap before dinner which kept me awake working on my assignments till 2 AM, under the yellow glow of the lamp.
“What do I want, really ? And why do I continue to do the things that I do? “
It was complete darkness – the way I like my room to be, conditioned for sleep. A faint brightness from the street outside leaked from the blinds. Behind it, a glass window was protecting me from the subzero cold world on the other side. After the few long hours of sitting on my chair, this was a needed respite. The mattress held me snugly as I laid flat on it, like it knew the fatigued state my body was in.
Just like my attention, always towards the light – my eyes followed suit tonight, staring at the gaps in those blinds…
I was slowly moving into something that had been ignored within myself.
The mind has had a reputation of being lost to life’s discontent, like a pig feeding on filth. It took me years to realize- I was trying to teach a pig to feed on green grass. The mind can take any form I realised – a pig, a fox, an ass or a cow. It depends on the food you provide. If nurturing green grass is what you have, a pig will never come to its place. Whereas if you have garbage, you are inviting those that feed on it.
A comfortable awareness began, of all my hopes and deep set longings. An awareness of myself doing what I’ve always wished to be doing. Of a kind of living that completely exemplifies the person I am and the ideas I personify.
A picture of an authentic life envisioned by my own thoughts, for myself, began to form. A vision not influenced by friends, elders or family. Not led by social stigma. Not deviated by fear. Not needing to make a difference. Not needing to be heard.
I saw myself in a period of seclusion, drawing inwards and away from any concern of the future. Where I’ve had the courage and understanding to do what I know for me to be right. A state of mind and a kind of living where ‘what I make of my life’ does not matter and where there is the sole awareness that I’m a conscious being longing to feel complete by itself.
I saw myself not sheltered in a home of my own, but sheltered in my heart and throwing myself into a different world. A place that has not been inundated by modernity or slavery to technology. In a small house, with bare necessities, with a few pieces of cloth. Wilfully jobless, to follow a path of pure intuition.
To recognise the raw moments when opportunities come to you like living things. To develop a sensitivity to see the unseen. To feel your own presence as the most intimate thing that can be experienced. To learn to smile in emptiness, to live alongside emptiness. To be able to see human result-oriented action rise and fall like the short life of a wave in the vast ocean. To see the futility of effort.
To reach a silence that cannot be touched by anything or anyone. A silence that will warm you like nothing else ever could. A finality of experience after which you truly become otherworldly.
So my journey is towards an experience worth seeking. In a path that no one can guide, but me.
abhishek 