Monday, May 16, 2005

Dichotomy
Strange feeling of frustration and peace while I write this. There is confusion and clarity, anxiety and ease, boredom and excitement, stillness and chaos. Why is this happening and in such quick succession lately? What is being positioned to unfold for me in the next few moments or days or weeks and months and years? Where am I being led to or steered away from? Why do I feel that there is a need to be somewhere, somewhere else that is not here and will always be out of my reach but which still needs to be attained to gain freedom and escape from furtive frivolity?

Several things have transpired in the last 24 hours that make me feel even further confused. With moments of total clarity during a mindfulness meditation to utter unconsciousness in the senseless argument with a neighbor upstairs – from complete clarity while reading No Boundary to complete confusion while trying to figure out how the printer works. From a feeling of excitement and peace while understanding my self and my surroundings and their effect on me to anxiety about how to make some of these things happen, today, and boredom around the events as they unfold today. From total control and calmness while drinking tea this morning, to feelings of helplessness and frustration upon not getting my computer application to work.

So, how does one explain this extreme dichotomy in spirit and psyche these quick waves of positive and negative energy as they flush over me and leave me feeling like a slave to their power and possession of me? I don’t feel that this is really the best possible scenario but also acknowledge that I bring a lot of this upon myself – when I struggle, time and again, to keep a balance and then feel anxious and upset when I simply cannot. This deeper understanding of how prana is the life force behind every thing that is happening in an around me – how it propels me to places of deeper clarity about everything that touches my life. That suffuses every situation and colors every thought and heightens every feeling and propels every action – this prana is what unites the within and without, merging the two cosmic entities in a seamless, No Boundary whole. And the moment this prana, this life force enters my consciousness and allows me to merge my self into the highest possible Self, is when I get complete clarity in any given situation.
So, that then is the essence of life – this feeling of grace and godliness and holiness that is simply an expansion of the ego driven self into the universal Self.

This shift in consciousness is simply attainable the moment that I acknowledge the life force, the prana, that is the energy behind every moment in the Now.

Swinging through extremes
Still feel like I am in a state of constant flux with heaviness and lightness battling for supremacy on my body and mind and spirit at all times. When I listen and stay in the moment I feel a lightness and euphoric bliss that is indescribable. It is the kind of high that now I know I can never really experience with anything else – not sex, power, pleasure or achievements. It is this feeling of complete submission, immersion and unification with everything.

It doesn’t last, though. It is often, and in quick succession, replaced by self doubt, anxiety, sadness and despair. A fear of the next moment constantly annihilates the pleasure of the present one. The feeling that all is not good and never will be is the heavy sadness that seems to then envelope every waking moment and every action that I perform. It leads me into this spiral that I find so hard to escape from. It is the end of the living in the Now.

How then do I proceed from here? What is that mental, emotional and spiritual stability that will, indeed, bring me the clarity and peace that I yearn for? What is the feeling and sensation and attitude and energy that comes with this way of being – this completeness and wholeness of the cosmic splendor –when ego and universe become one? When every action and emotion and intellection is suffused with prana?

Symphony of Life
Feeling quite a bit more clarity today – of purpose, approach, desires and goals. That I am finally seeing the pure potential that lies within me – from an objective point of view. As away from the I that constantly colors it in egoistic shades of black and white and gray and every other imaginable color in between.

No, this is objective observation of the simple life-force that seems to get more and more powerful and defined as I begin to focus on it, appreciate it and allow it to permeate all aspects of my life. This suffusion through the consistent process of self awareness, and bringing of clarity to every thought, feeling and action that is experienced is what will bring me closer and closer to Unity Consciousness.

Even as I write this – I start sensing that this is less discontinuous and more fluid than just a 'writer', 'writing' and 'the written' set of discrete events. It is one single event of writing that unfolds in a time-space-consciousness driven moment, that which is without boundaries and without subject or object. And this one fluid movement in these dimensions is called life. And viewed as a simple fluid whole, there can be no subject and object, me and that, me and you, mine and yours, myself and everything that is not myself. Since in Hindu terms Everything is me. Or, in Buddhist terms, Nothing is me. All is one and the same experience happening in this eternal moment.

This thought that I think which brings this feeling of sadness that causes me to drink to lose myself so I can forget that thought or replace it with another thought that will bring a feeling of euphoria that will cause me to dance to music – are all simply fluid experiences in the Now. There is nothing that can be done to change this but yes, a lot can be done to enhance the experience and witness its pure perfection.

And that is where prana, the life force comes into being. All I need to do is suffuse this experience with prana and I will realize that this Unity Consciousness – this Oneness and No Boundary experience – that is happening anyway, and always will happen anyway – now exists in awareness. I can now see the magic of this experience just as I see the magic of fingers flying on this keyboard while another thought races through the mind and my ears ring with the buzzing from the plane wings and my nose inhales deeper breaths of this aircraft and my thoughts soar to another memory in the past and all of this is one fluid symphony that keeps on happening and happening without cessation, without conflict, and without chaos. It just, however, has now reached a state of perfection.
Because I now see it as all of me.

***


May 13: Dark foreboding

Feeling like I’m back to where I started this evening – kind of regression that suddenly seems to have descended on me for no apparent reason. I am feeling down because I’m not feeling well, I’m doing mindless cruising, I’m preparing for a long party night, my head hurts, my heart is confused and my body feels tired and disoriented. On top of that I feel mildly stressed about work, the coming few weeks, trips to London, friends and lack there of, missed connections with family and a general state of ennui. I don’t understand how this can happen overnight. Not even that, within just a couple of hours. The downward spiral from the botched hookup to incessant wondering, worrying, scrounging and stressing. What is the point of this when you are so well aware that this will lead to no good avail. At all.
Even for tonight? What is in store? How am I supposed to act, react, behave and generally be when we all are there together? Is this really what I want? No, really? What is the point of planning and scheming – it should not have to be this hard. In fact, if it had to, it would’ve been already. No, that’s not really fair. There are several circumstances that frequently make one feel limited, constrained and confined and the stint abroad, the weekly jaunts out of town, the unsettled way of life and the work overload - and from their part the indecision of the future in terms of work and living situation – have all amounted to this not even getting any space to breathe, let alone be or become something. Certainly there are some strong and curious ties here – otherwise we would not be in touch and have this sort of strange relationship after over a year.
A year! Good god!!

***

May 14th: The Day After
I will survive this. This too I will survive. That is the nature of the game. To play and play and not look back with regret. One day I will find my own place in life and then I will look back at all of this and feel like there was a deep reason behind all this. A life lesson that can really not be expressed until it is lived out completely and without expectations of an end result.
***

May 15th: The Aftermath
A new day begins – foggy and dull on the outside, yearning and confused within. I sit on my bed sipping tea and typing this and hundreds of thoughts and emotions race through my head and heart and make me feel like a rag doll as I spin from one to another reacting, feeling, hoping, despairing, rejoicing, thanking, fearing and fumbling. And behind this is also the knowledge of the big picture of it all – and what it would take to realize it fully and in its full potential into the daily reality of my life. A supreme effort if you look at it one way and a simple direct action looked at from another viewpoint. It is not easy when the mind constantly tries to trip me into familiar territories using memory and fantasy as its two primary tools to wrench away the perfection of this moment from me.

How do I deal with it then? Does it come from the subconscious? Does it lie buried so deep within me – this awareness of the Truth that the only way to unfold it is to tap into the subtle layers of the mind and have it emerge from there into my present? Or is the subconscious to be used to bury, forget, repress with the hope that these may never unfold again? How do I win this battle of mind over heart, of heart over awareness and of awareness into pure consciousness? When will I realize that the picture when looked at from simply one angle or a singular dimension will always look warped, weird, disproportionate and distorted with some aspects accentuated and profound and others blurred and buried in the periphery, neglected and unacknowledged of their beauty and truth? This then is exactly what seems to be happening in this moment for me.

This then is the face of this reality – whereby this one emotion, feeling, thought and person have seemed to warp and morph into my consciousness so completely that I cannot see the greener, richer, deeper shades of the garden of my life. My family, my friends, my work, my intellect, my heart, my joy, my gratitude, my love and my bliss are being distorted and neglected from my consciousness.

And the only way to change this is to move away, get some distance but immerse myself so completely that I am one with it all. I acknowledge the sadness and pain without resistance or ploy and I acknowledge the joy and beauty with gratitude and acceptance.

***
May 16th: Gaining Clarity

No, I have to wait to get clarity on this situation. Don’t make any hasty decisions, that is just not what you need. To communicate such strong emotions in a letter or mail to somebody who is already so uncommunicative and distant is to break all ties with them without getting any closure to the situation. I will have put something out in the Universe with no hope of getting a response to it. It will be like waiting in a void and hoping that something will eventually turn up and make it all okay.
This situation is out of control – you know it – you’ve known it for quite a while now – so nothing that you do do at this point will make it any better. All I can tell you is to wait, be patient, have faith in the process of healing and visioning and realizing your potential.

Hell, you’re a rocking dude, why then are you settling for this? Why then are you subjecting yourself to such hurt and humiliation? For what? For whom? For someone who is so out of touch with their own feelings that the last thing that they would be aware of was if someone really and truly cared for them? Why is this process so hard? Why do I have to feel guilty about my affections for someone?

And so, I need to wait for this to unfold in it’s most logical and precise way – I need to see and listen to my heart and my spirit and wait for the answer to come from within. I need to stop – get off this rollercoaster ride. Now. And I need to find the stillness within.
***