The single most loudest and chaotic place in this world hands down has got to be one’s mind.
I never really noticed while milling about the business of living just how loud it can really get up there, but only when I sat still to watch my thoughts, I realized that my mind has the prowess to put any stock exchange trading floor to shame.
For the longest time I had been dodging the whole shebang of thought isolation, conscious breathing, and awareness of stillness, aka meditation, for reasons only I could shamelessly justify. Guess I was probably afraid of my contrived abilities to over-expect and overanalyze an unassuming practice. But as hard lessons have it, I was recently forced to reckon the necessity of meditation, if not for spiritual reasons then for practical purposes. So, I picked the most practical technique of all – watch my thoughts as they come without any attachment and let them pass without any judgment.
I have been at this watching thing for a while now and I have to confess that so far there has not been a single instance where I could confidently say that my meditation attempt was a success. I honestly don’t know what is deemed a success or if there can even be a success as far as meditation is concerned, but this much is clear – it is not easy to quiet the mind and gaze into the heart of stillness where all things are supposed to rest effortlessly, what with all the raw thoughts, spontaneous visualizations succeeding the said thoughts, and a running verbal monologue that maintains minutes of this loop-based debacle. And the process is no better for me where instead of fading into the twilight when stared down, my mind mistakes my audience as an encouragement to bring on even more thoughts and theatrics setting me down the wrong way by a mile every single time.
But regardless of all these imperfections, I persist, if mopishly at times, because despite my mind’s herculean attempts to derail the process, I have started to see a faint light amidst the dazzling darkness, a promise of sanity, not with the actual meditation itself but rather outside of it, at the periphery of my mind’s chaos.
Every now and then, I knowingly put myself through moments of madness when a random event from reality touches a chord with my fears and anxieties concerning my children. Looking back, overcoming these mini undoings had been the very reason for this blog – to help me peer into ‘thyself’, find simple answers to big questions, and strengthen my spirit in order to face life. At least, that was the plan but where I stand on that grand goal is anybody’s guess. Taking stock of my life over the past few years I realize that if I had been feeling miserable before, now I feel clever about being miserable. Over the journey of this blog, some flickering lights have extinguished and some light bulbs have started to burn brightly, but my clarity where it should matter is still lacking.
So whenever I succumb to such bouts of irrational worries regarding my children, which is almost always unduly ridiculous in hindsight and exponentially dramatized at 2:00 a.m., my mind would frantically sift through past events, isolate similar patterns to cross-check previous outcomes, seek reassurance and fail or imagine the worst and freak out. There would be a visceral sense of weakness when gripped by fear, a bowel-churning discomfort that would leave me fatigued and hopeless, so much so that even after the sensation passes, there will be a lingering dread and watchfulness about the next.
But ever since I started floundering in the shadows of meditation, I see a shift in my tailspins. I still have my moments of madness that come with ceremony and fireworks, but there is also a blanket of calmness that follows on the heels of my panic, like a wordless voice in the background of the chaos, a comforting hug of reassurance that eases me off the ledge. It is not an answer but rather a sort of ‘knowing’ that precedes an uttered answer. I don’t know it in its entirety and the delicateness of this sensation escapes words, yet it feels very real like a 3D picture buried within a 2D image just waiting for me to look at it the right way.
Apparently, this is the method to my madness now.
And I hope it is here to stay.
