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Lesson on Liberation

“Mamma, what will happen to a person inside a mirror, if the mirror breaks? Will the person come out?” Kiara, my five year old enquired intelligently.

I picked up the mirror, held it before her and asked, “Who do you see?”

” I see me!” she replied smiling.

” Now if this mirror were to break, where would you go?” I asked

” Nowhere… I’ll be here…” she replied with a sparkle in her eye.

She smiled realising the unreality of images in the mirror.

And I, on realising the unreality of thoughts in my mind.

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How Fascinating!

How engaging it is-

To occupy the mind

With a full spectrum of affections

From the basest desires

To the highest virtues.

 

How intelligent it is-

To draw up the warp and weft

Of random events

And to weave a rich tapestry

With my very own patterns of thought and imagination.

 

How gratifying it is-

To believe in ‘my person’

As being native to an undiscovered Being

And to proceed therefrom

On a lifelong journey towards self-discovery.

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I Am…

What does it take to remove mental afflictions of anger, fear, smallness, desire, hatred and polarity? These afflictions keep us confined within ourselves and don’t allow us to experience the divinity, love and auspiciousness that is the true nature of existence. We live life selectively; on the basis of ideology or kinship with those who are like us. If it’s easy to love those who are like you, it’s just as easy to mistrust or hate ‘the other’ or those who are unlike you. We learn all the skills of living in a ‘world’, paying no attention to the question of what it means to simply exist.

To live in a world means to construct an identity, to secure a place and a role in society and to participate in the economic and political system. It  also means to consistently drive your efforts to change, vanquish, drive away or simply obliterate all that is a threat to your self-created identity. We are forever on guard. The world I see is not a constitution of facts, it’s a constitution of my perceptions. In other words, the joys or sorrows I experience are not caused by the world, but by my perceptions of it. Our existence is wombed in ignorance. We continue to live in ignorance even as we mature as adults. The knowledge we acquire is relative to only those aspects of our existence we commonly agree exist or that which we believe we should know  about in order to sustain ourselves. Such knowledge doesn’t remove us from the womb of our ignorance. We remain undisclosed and unborn to ourselves. It is in this darkness within that the mind imagines, the mind speculates, the mind fears and the mind pines for.

The compulsions that confine, enslave and demean us only thicken with our continued identification with all that we- in a state of ignorance- have constructed. In the final analysis, neither our knowledge of the ‘world’ and its ways, nor our wealth, name, position and kinship will bail us out; but only that knowledge that converses with our self will. When we mask our ignorance, our knowledge is only cosmetic. It simply makes us look good. But when we look at our ignorance, stand facing it, seek to understand it and fearlessly dwell in it- wonderful things happen… For one, you know that you don’t know, you also get certain about what you know and you allow the powers of simple existence to  unfold. Your  speech loses its arrogance and becomes sincere, you empathize, you trust, love becomes free of attachment, and respecting another is no longer a test of your patience or ‘tolerance’. You revel in being ‘supported’ by a force  you can’t see, but which you- despite your ignorance- are absolutely certain, exists.

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Lesson from an afternoon nap

3:15pm:

I lie down for a nap.

Thoughts are racing in my head.

They fight each other

One must emerge as the winner-

The most powerful thought-

The one endowed with most reason…

The fight in mind should settle it

Once and for all.

 

I shut my eyes

I consciously step away from the arena.

Their argument becomes dimmer as I walk away…

When the noises become faint

I slip into bliss…

 

4:20pm:

I’m up…

The thoughts are now a memory.

Time transported me into the future.

Having left thought behind

I feel older, wiser

more mature.

 

This is the way to grow:

This is the way to win:

Yes, thoughts will enter

And claim your space

Allow them to fight out their dialectical destiny.

Stand up

Walk away

Realize that

The attainment you seek

Doesn’t  depend on a thought’s victory.

 

 

 

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“Does Love exist,” she asked…

“Does love exist,” she asked

 

“Expectations unmet

And feelings are held on to closely

On a short leash…

And what about love?

Love stays in my head

Not my heart

It lives on as a concept

It seldom, if ever

Enters my aching heart

 

Does it exist? Anywhere?

And should it exist?

My relationships are but a transaction

Held together precariously

By a concept called ‘duty’.

 

What makes ‘duty’ more dear than love?

Perhaps because I sees that everybody else thinks so…

Love is this fluid, uncontrollable ache

Love knows no partiality

It reveals all

And that’s the scary part

That in love

I will be seen in my nakedness

My skin will lie before you

In all its blemishes

My aching heart will

with innate gravity and force

Drop me to unimaginable lows

I will long for you and your deliverance

With no certainty ever

That I shall be received by the open arms of your own longing

 

Love can just about assure me of two mercies:

Hope and Faith.

But it is duty that’s more prudent,

more pragmatic

It helps me float over the ache

 

And it is Duty that pays the bills

For all those distractions

That fill up my space and time

And love continues to live on

In my head

As a concept.

And because it does

there are expectations unmet

And feelings restrained.”

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Manifesto

Our economic system is flawed.

Our political system is flawed.

Our education system is flawed.

Our society is flawed.

 

Because they thrive on falsehood

They need lies for profit, for leverage

And in and through their design

All work is sacrilegious and a curse.

Poverty is immanent in wealth

We only graduate in degrees of ignorance

And man is bound to man in a wretched dependency.

 

The root of all this is the individual

Fallen from Grace

He seeks his Self

He tries to know who he is

By being who he’s not (a sum of different parts).

 

Filled with deluded notions of grandeur

He procures. He makes. He sells.

And he is celebrated for the profit he makes.

In this blinding business of generating profit

He is left with sight, but loses his power to perceive.

 

With such an impairment

He can find worldly sustenance only through profit

He woos gain

And fears loss

He is wide in mirth

But shrivelled in sorrow

He wants only part of what life has to offer

He has no faith in the whole.

 

And the Truth cannot be anything but whole

The Truth Is.

It need not be created

The Truth cannot be measured by numbers or degrees

It is all-pervading and all-embracing.

 

Truth does not grow

It does not favour

the rich over the poor

the strong over the weak

the haves over the have-nots.

 

Infallible in its system

It awaits our homecoming

If only man could find solace

in the knowledge that it’s okay to not know…

And simply accept his being

Forego the contrivances of “who” or “what”.

And celebrate am-ness…

 

Then Truth would speak

And Truth would need

That which only Truth can give

Truth would ask

And Truth would answer

And Truth would accept

What Truth had made.

 

 

 

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Right now

Time, our common inheritance, is given to us bit by bit, in instalments. It is apprehended as the gap between two experiences or two memories. We experience time in our experience of having moved forward, or in having left behind an experience or in having grown. It is in the growth of our consciousness that we experience time. And although it is our common gift, we differ in the way we experience time…in what we choose to do with it. For some, time is the dull, aching persistence of memory. For others, it’s marked by the chase of a desire for an imagined future. Our being is often torn between our past and our worries or hopes for the future.

Our experience of time is dependent upon the quality, quantity and pre-occupations of our thoughts. The more the thoughts and the more they revolve around your self and your plans, the more you will stand defeated. The rich rewards time yields can never be claimed by one who is under the captivity of his/her own mind. They can only be reaped by those who are free of their past and have faith in a yet unseen future. This faith allows them to live without fear-in the here and the now.

We swim through life in a sea of eternity. The past, present and future are our mental constructs; they have no basis in reality. We simply move from the present to the present, bit-by-bit. We grow, or  at least we ought to, in our ability to grasp the wealth of a single moment. Right now is all I am bequeathed. Right now is all that I have.

My grand ideas keep me from appreciating the little. I equate ‘more’ with ‘more’. I’m unable to see that in the dimension of time, a breadth of accomplishment lies in the depth of a moment. Is it possible that in this moment of a single breath, I accomplish all that I must accomplish. In wanting something more than what this moment is offering me, am I not missing something? What is a year after all, if not an exponential day? And what is a day, if not an exponential hour? And what is an hour, if not an exponential minute?

The question then should be : How do I raise the power of my present? The only way to raise the power of the present is to LIVE IN IT. Living in the present requires that we be free of worry and entrenched in faith. The faithless move from one enchantment to the next, foolishly bypassing the miracles of their own lives. Unable to see the value in their existence as it is, they long for another. In their longing, plans and journeys are made, things are acquired and positions sought. They wait for that moment when they will taste the times they long for, looking down in irritation at the present that seems so indifferent and ordinary. They often talk about ‘killing’ time, rather than ‘living’ it. To have faith, is to awaken to the power of both- REASON and INTUITION. A person of faith knows that he has all that he needs to ride heroically on this moment. It’s not wiled away in longing, but befriended through an exchange of capabilities. The moments are lived as a celebration; they’re not wasted in planning a celebration. The wise know that there is nothing to be gained in life, that life-in this moment- is the gain itself.

 

Right now-

I realized

Cannot be met

With charming words

 

It will meet you only in silence.

 

Right now-

Wants and desires

An immediate and intense union

A disappearance of two

 

And the appearance of the one.

 

Right now-

Refuses to conform

To the conventional, the old

Where the world ‘exists’ in a long-dead relationship

Between subject and predicate.

 

Right now-

I am worthless in what I know and possess

But valuable (I sense)

In my sheer presence

 

Beggared of all accumulated wealth.

 

Right now-

I am humbled

By this lack of basic ability

To share with you

 

The gift of the new.

 

Right now-

I realize

I shall have to make do

With greeting cards and amusing knick-knacks

 

To convey fossilized feelings to you.

 

Right now-

I appreciate the distance between us

Hoping that wherever you are

You are alone, immersed in your own presence

 

Receiving this gift that I lack the ability to give.

 

 

 

 

 

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Rising In Love

That we feel love- is a unanimous fact.

But how it prompts us to act and react seems to be individually determined. My state of mind determines whether I perceive love as a need, as an attachment or as pleasurable affection.

Does everything good, pleasing and gratifying indicate the presence of love and all that is painful, difficult and demanding- its absence? Why do we forge relationships out of love’s will and end them on ours? And then, why is every love story- with fiery, passionate beginnings- fated for an eventual separation, either physically or emotionally? Does a long-standing relationship indicate love’s blessing and a short-lived one its curse? And when our ‘affairs’ end, what changes mark our new beginnings? These questions that we frequently ask, indicate a need to assess our understanding of what love is and to stand enlightened about its place in our relationships.

How disintegrated and complex is the adult human heart! And in true inverse proportion how simple and effortless are the ways of children! Why is it so easy to love a child and so difficult to love an adult?

Children make no ‘conditions’ by which they shall ‘trade’ love. They don’t set out to make its laws; neither do they contemplate them; they simply follow them. And one of the most fundamental laws of love is ALIGNMENT. Children simply align themselves with their parents or environment in an unconscious bid to grow and be nourished. Adults, on the other hand, have developed a mind and the mind as such, is characterized by memories, ideas, needs, desires and attachments. Adults NEED love for other reasons-primarily for SELF-FULFILMENT. As we grow, so does our sense of lack. As adults we have unwittingly programmed ourselves to act to fulfil our ‘needs’. We’ve never really taken the time to discover our fullness. We enter into relationships to fulfil our needs, not realizing that the person we seek fulfilment from, is himself/ herself seeking fulfilment. How can someone who himself feels denied or deprived fulfil the needs of another?

To love another adult requires a constant examination and purification of one’s emotions. As adults, we feel loved when we are understood, respected, trusted, attended to, wanted and desired. Yet, if each is focussed on his/ her own demands to be met, the relationship can only end in tragedy. However, love- if we allow it to have its way- will eventually re-acquaint and align us with our own hearts.

Love’s fulfillment lies in two becoming one whole and then eventually, one whole realizing that it always was, is and will always be- All. For the individual, that love is true that fulfils the needs- not of the ego, but of the soul. Love, in the adult human mind, begins as a furtherance, an extending out of your self; and is experienced as a fuller presence. In wanting to repeat and recall the experience of that fuller presence, we embark on a journey that is more often than not, marked with rejections, trials and antagonisms. In and through those experiences, through every changing emotion, through every triumph of the spirit, we stand re-acquainted and fully aware of our essence. Love extracts out of you your full worth.

Which is why, sometimes even after a relationship has ended, your new beginning is marked- not with a sense of loss, but with a sense of gain. You sense a growth, re-discover your self-esteem, develop greater self-reliance, become more responsible, realize your faith and cultivate the ability to endure, tolerate and be patient. You plumb your depths and find within you unbelievable strength and courage. Love’s path is an upward path. Falling in love is a weakness of the human heart and rising in it- its strength. Love begins as affection and is fulfilled with realization of the Self. When you discover and realize within you- self-confidence, courage, faith, independence, tolerance and patience- then only do you gain a full awareness of love within you. Love then, ceases to be a thirst and becomes the fountainhead of every action that flows out of you.  The difference between falling-in-love and rising-in-it is that in the first condition, it begins as a ‘need to receive’  and in the second- as a ‘need to give’. Simply put, love must GROW. It must  transform from being needy to now being abundant.