Wednesday, July 23, 2003

I want it all...

Another insight that was had the other day was this:
You cannot experience the self (individuality) and the Self (universality) at the same time.

When one forgets the Self, one gains the capacity to experience sensory objects/emotions/thoughts/desires and hence become the self.
When one gains the Self, one loses the capacity to experience sensory objects/emotions/thoughts/desires and hence forgets the self.

So, which would one choose as a human being conditioned by samsara?

In an experience of pure Oneness (granted under the influence) while there was bliss and awareness and consciousness of there being No I, there was a subtle witnessing self that recognized that while I could not find anything be strongly critical of, nor could I appreciate anything with wild delight. While I couldn’t feel pain or frustration or heat, I could also not taste the saag-panner and naan and the glass of pinor noir that ‘I’ had looked forward to all day long. I could neither feel amazement at the dance of the candle light on my kitchen floor in perfect step with moonlight on the bay, but nor could I feel a yearning to share this with someone special in my life. It all just ‘was’.

I didn’t, I couldn’t, feel a thing. But there was this deep understanding that this was really the reality of it all…

But as soon as I emerge out of this universality, or Oneness or Self, I start feeling solid and ‘rooted’ in my aura and persona and body and ego and mind and preconceptions and projections and decision making skills. And I feel the frustration of not having said ‘I love you’ and the sadness of losing someone and the anger over the perceived slight at the office party from the draconian boss and all those other things that make me my self. But then, I also can taste the spices in the saag panneer (cumin, coriander, ginger and red chillies) and chicken tikka masala (garlic, turmeric, mustard) and delight in the dance of the candle with the moon on the picture window of my home that separates the within from without.

It seems I want it all. I want the equanimity and detachment of the Self with the excitement and attachments of the self. And when I truly understand this flip-flop mechanism called Existence then that’s when I’ve got it all.

I feel a pressure to express this state of being, this frame of mind and then in the next breath I feel that there has to be a better way to go about this self-analysis process. Where will this search end and why is there so much fear and sense of despair that seems to impede my every progressive step in this direction? What is happening that makes me want to feel whole and happy and almost simultaneously wants to sabotage it all by making it all so hard to grasp? Where am I in all this quandary of emotions and situations?