What’s bothering you
I’m at work, my mind is at home thinking about my daughter. I looked at the time. I wish my shift would end soon. Sounds familiar? If you are here and your mind is not you are either thinking about the past or the future. Sometimes happy, sometimes worried.
Do little things piss you off. Do you get irritated easily and find it hard to maintain a good mood throughout the day? You might be mildly fixated with the regular mind chatter and internal dialog. I know I was.
There is a space when I meditate – an emptiness that rejuvenates in between thoughst. The space in between thinking and mental activity is the door to higher relaxation and self-realization. Take the breath, the pause that slows us down deliberately. It is effective and puts things into perspective many times before we rush into a decision or allow anger to conquer.
An artist draws and brings out his object of focus via the background. If the background is light, he uses dark colours. But if the background is dark he uses light ones. The backdrop or background sets the focus. I used to think concentration is about narrowing one’s focus only. Yes that is true. Equally effective is changing the background. When the samurai draws his sword for the one quick slash he looks at the entire picture – movements from the background or scenery as a peripheral. The big picture. The bigger the better.
So what’s bothering you? What are your problems and issues? Don’t attempt to solve them. You can’t. No one can for you. Be with the problem or the issue. Witness it, watch it. Also notice the background around the problem/issue. Be mindful of the scenery or the atmosphere around it. Start being aware of the bigger picture or perspective of the problem/issue. Where does it start and where does it end? Notice the space of rest (calmness in mind) before the problem/issue arise and after it is gone.
Then start seeing the gaps with in problems/issues. When you start seeing the gaps/holes in your thoughts you realize that these gaps are also spaces (pause in mind – emptiness) and they give you a feeling of neutrality of equal- mindedness. Keep on being with the problem/issue/thought only watching it alertly but detached without emotions or judgement and soon you will notice it starts to dissolve into the gaps.
With practice, the gaps or space in between thoughts will be more enjoyable and larger and larger spaces will form. Clarity of mind is like an undisturbed clear pond. The mind is the clear pond that reflects the moon. Any waves or disturbances are only on the surface. Go deeper and deeper and on every layer or level within the self a calmer and stiller equanimity is found.
The more relaxed, centred and calm I get in meditation or in my waking consciousness, I act, think, speak and live more in the moment of the present. This is presencing. Bring one wholly and totally body, mind and soul to the here and now in the present moment. Fully alert, completely given to the task at hand.
When you are in the now, you move in a flux of nows. Time is a mental concept. In “I am that” by Sri Nisargadatta (one classic everyone should read slowly and assimilate), the awareness creates the consciousness which creates the mind and its mindfulness. It is abstract yet quite lucid if one reads intermittently with meditation, contemplation and reflection.
The experience of being in the now flows in harmony with what’s happening in us, around us and to us. It allows freely what is happening as in such is. Such is life. As it is right now. No room for the past. No room for the future. Moving every moment in complete alertness and awareness, the witness watches silently the entire universe. The witness itself is the universe and all of existence. And you are still bothered? Hah! Laugh it off, my friend. Enjoy the spaces all around us. This space or emptiness is in everything, thing and non-thing, form and non-form, infinite dimensional.
Welcome these irritations and bothers. They remind us of the bliss we can enjoy by noticing the emptiness of form. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Now rest and find the eye in every storm of your life.
