Being a guy just out of adolescence is not easy. It’s hard to explain to your parents why you’re always so “downcast” when a couple of years ago you were the happiest new kid on the block, and couldn’t shut the hell up to save your life; why your friends refer to you as “the embodiment of tension” and “the crazy nervous dude”; and why you’re always trying to convince yourself that your hair’s not falling out, and that you don’t have droopy old-guy man boobs at the age of 22. (I swear I don’t.)
I know it’s all inconsequential, but it takes a toll on you in every possible way. You always find a way to worry about anything and everything, and you think the world’s trying to shove your so-called pseudo-failures in your face. But that’s not the worst part. The world mostly doesn’t notice. The ones who do notice are mostly half-baked. Those who are not are generally too engrossed in their own folly. That leaves you to deal with your own misery, which you’re not very good at.
That rant did not help me at all like my shrink said it would. (Just kidding. No, seriously.)
It doesn’t really take a shrink to figure out that I have a problem. Hell, my nine-year-old cousin offered to give me a casual shoulder massage after seeing my pitiful state. So, I took him up on his offer. (Let me tell you something about nine-year-old kids. They give awesome massages. All you have to do is keep a twenty rupee note handy.)
There is a general consensus among well-read people that one needs an outlet for all their overwhelming emotions. It’s usually a person whom you talk to, or, like in my case, some creative activity that calms you down. It’s supposed to be cathartic.
Whoever said that should be flayed with a scythe and deep fried in animal fat. (Wait, didn’t I say that in my last article?)
It’s such a load of crap. My inability to find people to talk to is self-evident, so naturally I set my mind on blogging. It didn’t help one bit. All I got was writer’s block, and I realize that I’m too new to this activity to complain of writer’s block. It’s actually quite depressing to know that you’re not good at doing what you love doing.
Take a stab at it. Contact me and try to psychoanalyze me. Get inside my head and dissect my brain. Run some tests. I doubt it’ll make any difference. I’m going to end up old and bald and obese, after taking the VRS way out of an unsatisfactory professional life, and dying alone in a dark dingy apartment to the sound of old-school country music.
You know what, I just realized something. I’ve got what might be termed as “pen cojones”. The only time I’m brave and outspoken and eloquent enough to hand out smoking tirades is when I’m writing. (Hey, Dr. Phil, we’re making progress!)
You have no idea how incredibly frustrating it is. It’s like you’ve decided to cook something sophisticated, and halfway through the process, you realize that you’ve run out of spices. People wouldn’t read blogs if they were versed like high school textbooks. You need to spice things up by either suggesting something out-of-the-way or scandalous, even, or, like I usually do, going for blood and returning with the whole damn body. And when all these worries and anxieties strip off your vast arsenal of rapier wit (Ha!), you’re left on the sidewalk whining like a lost puppy.
What makes it harder is that you can’t really tell yourself not to worry. I’m not some Swami with perfect control over my mind. To tell you the truth, I don’t think there’s any such person in this dimension. People who claim they can expel thoughts from their mind in a state of meditation are, in my book, thugs, tricksters, charlatans, psychopaths or, in most cases, idiots. The brain can’t run a recursive function on itself. I’ve read biology and I know that our brain isn’t quite configured for this Jedi stuff. Logic tells me that in order for the brain to stop thinking about something, it needs to get a command telling it to comply. And where is this command supposed to have come from? You guessed it. The brain itself.
The only real goal of meditation that is fathomable to me (without applying concepts which make you sound like you’re high) is “objectless consciousness”. What’s unfathomable is that it was thought of roughly twelve hundred years ago.
To quote directly from an Adi Shankaracharya text, “Objectless consciousness is not an object. It cannot be compared to an object. Yet, objects are not apart from objectless consciousness.”
I do sound quite high, don’t I? Well, let’s see if this clarifies a few (if not more) things.
This is from a paper description for an article published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies (Yes, it’s a real journal.) in 2009, “… she relates witness-consciousness to advanced states of meditation, where, first, it is possible to become more aware of experiences and thoughts, as they enter and leave the mind, and, finally, it is possible to experience an objectless consciousness, where it is something it is like to be in this objectless state.”
“This idea accords with a large body of literature, in which altered states of consciousness reached by various means, or sometimes entered spontaneously, produce a state in which the self disappears, or merges with the surrounding environment, but there is, nevertheless, still something that observes… Suggests that this observer may be always present, but seldom noticed in the rush of ordinary conscious states. Such an observer is not restricted to any particular modality.”*
Sigh.
Okay, let me put it this way. We’ve all been taught in school that concentrating on our breathing is the simplest, most hassle-free way of meditating. Look at it like it’s a person standing on a balcony overlooking a river, observing the continuous flow of water. Now, imagine that this person is now so lost in the motion of the gushing waters that he has lost all concept of time, object and self. He has lost all notion of good and evil, truth and lies, bliss and suffering. All he knows is everything about the flow of water in the river. He is so entranced by it that his senses do not register anything else, not even his own existence. That is a state of Objectless Consciousness.
You don’t have to sit down cross-legged on the carpet and have your eyes shut tight to achieve this state. No, it doesn’t have to be so ceremonial. The man in the balcony was not looking for a formal setting for his river-gazing pursuits. It’s all, more often than not, a distraction.
I was looking at this all wrong. The activity one should be involved in is not required to be a creative one. It might not even be anything specific at all. All it needs to be is interesting. Interesting enough to hold your attention for any significant amount of time. It should be something you won’t mind immersing yourself completely into, something you can be focused on without losing that interest. In layman’s terms, the ultimate goal is to forget the existence of the observer, that is, yourself.
So, what I did was shut myself in my room, drop everything in this whole world and started writing. It’s been a while, so it’s painfully slow. The word flow is not as effortless as it used to be. But progress is progress. I actually had to refer to paragraph 1 to remember what it was that had me so worried.
I absolutely loathe using clichés. But sometimes they are unavoidable.
It’s making me feel things I haven’t felt in a while. (That’s so cheesy. Pretty sure it sounded better in my head.) My life’s been moving too fast for me to stop, enjoy and appreciate the finer things in life. Art, beauty, friendship – these are just too fine and subtle to not savor them and not be grateful for them. These are the things that give a person real satisfaction in life. Why would one want to expel thoughts when they keep one happy?
That’s why I prefer travelling by train over travelling by plane.
Since I’m so philosophical these days, why don’t I give you some food for thought:
“You is who you is. If you is not who you is, who is you?”
God, I'm such an idiot. I spent an hour-and-a-half trying to figure out what to write, and all I had to do was make something up.
Soumit
4/3/16
Soumit
4/3/16
