The tectonic quivers that Krian Trace’s Tools For Sanity had set forth refuse to die down long after I swiped the last page. Snippets of wisdom from the book have been gnawing at my brain now and then and one such ripple that had been lapping at my wits recently is her question in the first chapter ‘Awareness’.
“What is the worst-case scenario? What is the worst thing that can happen if you don’t get that thing? If you never taste God? Not one drop of bliss? Or say you never find that true love or you never make that money? What’s the worst? Absolute worst?”
Kiran Trace
Tracing the arc of our propensity for self-pity and drama, I guess the answer to that question could range from infantile frustration to existential shoulder shrug depending on how mature one feels. Never before had reality been slapped on my face more plainly than this, but seriously, what would really happen if I don’t get the thing I want? What if I don’t experience transcendental peace or find all the answers? Who is going to feel the disappointment if I don’t reach my higher purpose? Not God. Not enlightenment itself. The answers don’t care if they are revealed to me or not. Then who?
It is ‘I’. My big, bloated ego, the great masquerader and limiting voice within that sings tales of fears and inadequacies. Ironically, the same entity that I am striving to overpower in order to call myself Thy Done! To think that I have been slaving away to check the mind while I have actually been slaving for the mind is the twisted sub-plot I did not see coming.
Maybe if we can dial down the drama to a minimum and be absolutely honest with ourselves, we can rationalize that it is really no big deal if we don’t get that thing we so badly want. The mind may make it seem like it, but it really is not the end of the world. But is a detached, ‘why bother’ attitude toward life the true point of existence? Sure, we can find ways to keep going without expectations but where is the fun in that?
“Desire is an amazing creative force, your heart wishes are beautiful seeds of creative intent, especially if they are deeply aligned, full of life, and pulsating with a delicious yummy yes.”
Kiran Trace
As complex as the ego thing may be, I am still of the mind that the “I” is not entirely bad after all, because as long as we are in this plane, we need the “I” to relate and exist, to seek all things good and motivate ourselves to pursue them in life. And yet there is a catch-22 in engaging the ego and fulfilling our desires. So where lies the problem?
Interestingly, I am told that the reason we are not getting that thing we want is because our wanting and seeking, along with a growing desperation that our heart’s desire has not yet come to pass is creating a death grip that acts like a repelling force on what would have naturally come to us had we not weighed it down with our intense wanting. We are meeting the positive of what is already coming our way with an even more positive of desperate wanting, which is actually a negative masquerading as a positive that cancels out the whole equation. This part of Kiran Traces’ teaching is in deafening resonance with Abraham Hicks’, in that our conscious “I want this” is actually a sub-conscious “I still don’t have it” which is creating a resistance to getting it.
And the best way to release this death grip is – this is a no-brainer – meditation, not in a spiritual sense but as a practical technique to quiet the mind and stop resistive thoughts.
“When concentrating on your breathing, you are not concentrating on other things. And in that absence of resistance, you are also allowing an alignment of energy.”
Abraham Hicks
“That is why many of us teach meditation. Because, when you stop thought, you stop resistant thought. It is easier to teach you to have no thought than to have pure positive thought.”
When David Godman found Ramana Maharshi through books written by Arthur Osborne, Godman was still a student in Ireland supporting himself on meager wages. He was intellectually dissatisfied with the academia and was spending most of his time in solitude meditating on Ramana Maharshi’s teachings. During that period, he had a thought to go to Thiruvannamalai to meet the person responsible for turning around his worldwide view. He had a strong pull to connect with the man who had transformed his sense of who he was or what he was doing in this world. But when he did his accounts, he realized he did not have enough cash and that he was £200 short of making the trip. He looked at the picture of Ramana Maharshi and said, “OK, if you want me to come to Thiruvannamalai, you got to send me £200.” Two days later he received a letter from his grandmother’s lawyer who said that they had found some private shares of his grandmother which they had sold and David Godman’s share from that was £200. He took it as the sign, came to India, and had made Thiruvannamalai his home ever since.
In fact, I have actually noticed this kind of super trick in the stories of a few ace meditators. They worry not about the hows but simply persist with their meditation and life somehow provides them with what they need. No angling at life, no demands put forth, no daily one hundred chants of whatevers. Simple elimination of thoughts on a daily basis to release the sweet momentum of a giving life.
Meditation used to be an untrusting process for me in which I invariably supplemented thoughts with more thoughts instead of the reverse. I considered the practice to be a segue to God or enlightenment, which in itself would’ve been helpful had I had blind faith in the doctrine. But, alas, those two superlatives from my conditioned viewpoint back then were only as clear as dishwater, so the practice leading up to them was also rightly muddled. In essence, I was going around in circles whenever I tried thought isolation and breathing practices.
But my last many posts have greatly altered my outlook and shifted perspectives on important things so much so that meditation has now switched places in intent and purpose as something more practical. I shouldn’t expect it to lead to anything grandiose, but as the famous Nikefucious adage goes, “Just do it!” for the sake of doing and see what comes.
“Kinda like you felt when you were a kid and you just wanted to see if the Legos could be piled red to white to black. And all the joy comes from the activity of it, not the end product.”
Kiran Trace – Uncover Your Life’s Purpose
