Imagine you are born blind.
You would largely rely on your sense of touch to create the imagery needed to ‘see’ and navigate the world. You will use your tactile perception to understand the concept of space and dimension of objects around you and use this spatial information to construct representations of the world.
You would be able to identify a wooden table from the hard, grainy surface and picture its height, width, and depth by running your fingers around the edges. If you are particularly proficient, you might even be able to tell apart mahogany from satinwood.
But what you will not be able to tell is if the table has a neutral grey wash stain or a dramatic cherry red undertone. And you most certainly will be baffled if someone were to describe it in terms of luster, gloss, sheen or glaze. Not that you were instead seeing vast darkness or the color black when you were looking at the table either. No, because then that would be like asking a sighted person if they see black in the place of radio waves or infrared.
You don’t ‘see’ because you are simply unaware of the concept called sight. It is similar to trying to use your toes to read the markings on the inside of your shoe. It is not that your toes are having momentary trouble perceiving light or the space is too tight that it is totally dark; it is not even a question of whether you can or cannot. You simply don’t.
You lack the sense of sight and you don’t have a reference to know what you are missing.
And that is the predicament you will find yourself in when you read Kiran Trace’s Tools for Sanity.
This book, along with Kiran’s BATGAP videos, was one mindblowing read that had me swipe page after page in absolute awe and honest chagrin that made me go, “why is my dumb blind self failing to see this!”.
Like Sruti’s The Hidden Value of Not Knowing and Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight, Kiran Trace’s Tools for Sanity is about her personal experience of sudden awakening that transformed her into her true nature. It also expands on that experience by providing self-reflection tools for anyone eager to see themselves through a different lens and alchemize patterns of self-destruction to give way to effortlessness and ease in living.
My first introduction to Kiran Trace came through her interview with Rick Archer on BATGAP. Upon seeing her overmuch enthusiastic and boisterous persona, a big chunk of me was keen on brushing her off as superfluous, because my judgemental self presumed that awakened people naturally have a quiet, demure air about them. Dear me, have I been rudely proven wrong! Maybe deservingly so, because it only seems fair that when my fundamental understanding of enlightenment gets turned around, my presumptions about the people who experience it follow suit.
Kiran Trace imploded into her awakening in a blink-of-an-eye transformation that blew a fuse in her mind into quietness and made everything around her appear as formless energy instead of definite objects; just as Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor experienced during her left-hemispheric stroke that shut down her brain chatter and released her into an engulfing silence. Lucky would seem those who spontaneously slip into enlightenment without any conscious effort, pain or struggle, but apparently, it is not fun to become disengaged from one’s identity and be forced into an indefinite space of jittery atoms. It is disorienting to be abruptly robbed of any memories or identities and cast away into nothingness. But for Trace, this awakening apparently stripped her of the filter called the mind that is responsible for dramas and stories and enabled her to witness life, self, and others from a bedrock point of pure consciousness.
Here’s my takeaway from this book:
Life, down at the level of its foundation, is like a clear glass suspended in zero gravity – unambiguous, straightforward, and effortless. But we have muddied it with layers and layers of ‘living’ with our should’ves and could’ves that stand in the way of allowing life to unfold in the manner it was meant to be. This vast, infinite intelligence has figured out our life down to every step in order for us to have a blissed-out, effortless living like a river flowing downstream, but we challenge it by beating against the current to swim upstream with our trying-to-live mindset. Life says “Don’t thrash around, don’t gasp, don’t struggle to live… Just trust me to float you to the surface and take you where you want to go.”
Is it really that simple? Does the indifferent universe, which cares not about what we want but executes only what fits its grand inclusive design, actually gives a hoot to our heart’s desires and prayers? Really?
The answer is yes and no.
There is an exceptionally simple line from Kiran Trace’s interview that is the key –
“It is only as big as this moment.”
Kiran Trace
Every moment has a fundamental “truth” or authenticity to it. When we quiet our minds of the noises, stories, and conditioning and narrow down our awareness to this one moment and accept whatever arises there without judgment, even if it is anger, frustration or regret, fully welcoming our true self with what Kiran calls a “delicious yes”, we are then in perfect alignment with what is, what should be, and what could ever be. And once we learn to identify our “yes” in every moment, that deep instinctive feeling in the gut as to what is right, we are then pulled into life’s forward current where everything queues up in the best possible manner.
“When something feels very delicious, like a deep yes, that is life whispering instructions to you of what the next step is. You cannot possibly calculate all the details that would have to line up for any circumstance to unfold…life does that. Your part in this flow is to listen for the most obvious step, what feels like the most delicious thing to do in this moment.”
Kiran Trace
But this is not about giving in to your spoilt self and claiming any whims and fancies to be the true feeling that arises in the moment. It is much finer than that. The “yes” is a visceral sense of simply identifying what is already true for you in that moment. You don’t have to do anything that requires an external effort. You don’t have to be the goody spiritual kind who finds a silver lining in even shitty scenarios. You are not required to repeat empty positive reinforcements to manifest things. You certainly don’t have to pray your heart out because all of that requires effort. You simply be aware of your true self in the moment and accept whatever presents itself.
Then what about dire consequences of doing whatever arises in the true moment? What if your moment says “take the hour off for a zen walk in the park” but your boss is expecting the slide deck by noon.
Turns out your “true moment” will never be in conflict with anyone or anything around you, because when you learn to stand in your true yes you are no longer a separate self but The One. You are Zen and you are home. Your true yes will align everyone and everything around you in a way that you cannot logically comprehend. Maybe something would prompt your boss to postpone the meeting or the zen walk would’ve allowed you a creative breakthrough that positively affects your next presentation in a manner you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. It just works out. Like flipping one piece of an interlocking puzzle and seeing all the other pieces automatically fit in place. It is as if the universe is running an advanced computation to keep everyone in consideration and constantly recalculates its moves to account for whatever resistance we come up with to interrupt its flow, both individually and collectively. A fitting challenge to an astounding entity.
All of this is a cheerful depart from my earlier assessment where I deduced the universe to be uncaring and indifferent to our heart’s desires. The universe does care, provided we honestly know what is good for us. It’s also a reassuring thought that we are not alone in our decisions but steadfastly watched over by an entire universe that looks out for us every step of the way. Tap into the universe’s flow and be assured of home.
Nice.
Amusingly, the most feasible and simplest action that makes all of it achievable is the one thing that makes me balk in this fabulous journey of mine, my most overanalyzed, most miserably failed-at process – meditation.
More on that later but let’s just say that I manage to find the frequency of my true yes and practice standing in it. Let’s say that every one of us manages to calm down from whatever it is that is making us run around like a headless chicken, overcome our collective conditioning, and stand consciously in our true present moment. What happens then? What happens when after all of its complex calculations and simplifications the universe’s grand equation finally comes down to the “equals” sign?
Guess we would never know. The One might. But the separate self would never know.
