Existential Pain (Wasting Away, 6 Dec 2009)

 Existential Pain (Wasting Away), 6 Dec 2009

The main purpose of this writeup is to help me collect my scattered mind, if it can be done that is (!).

I have to give this one a try. My final resort after trying many other obvious mind-balms like walking, yoga, reading, talking to friends, eating, poetry, music, watching sky, attending Vedanta lecture - you name it! A truly caring reader must have noticed that the King of all remedies is missing from this list. Yes, (s)he is right. However, it stopped working for me long time ago so I've decided to lay it off. (All right, no need to sweat if you didn't notice. I did not intend to give you a guilt-trip....or did I? HAHA) I cherish those days when most of my 'gum' was easily dissolvable in a glass of rum and the big ones were broken by the rocks in the scotch. Not anymore for me but count your blessings if the King is still benevolent to you!

There is something about these scribblings that is strangely soothing to my mind. It is almost like a ritual. I take out a pen and a diary (or laptop these days) and start typing. I have no idea what I am going to say and how. My first line is almost always like the Subject line of any report I write at work - "This report summarizes the results of the experiment done to characterize blah blah blah...". After a split-second pause, the ink starts filling up pages and pages. The next line, the one after that are all ready and queued up, waiting to come out.
Kind of like a fashion show. A beautiful model walking down the ramp, the next one, and the next one. Each is slick and glossy. Confident and purposeful. Playing her part in a beautifully choreographed show with ease. What we don't see from that first row (this is my article so I get to have the best seat!) is the enormous amount of work that has gone into it - starting with the designers who made designs, had the outfits made etc ..then the actual show - stylists, hairdressers, models, what not. I am not claiming that these miserable scribbles are anything remotely like an elegant fashion show. They would be if I were a writer or a poet - I would imagine. The point here is: the process is the same.

Our minds work in a similar fashion. What we see is the surface level activity. We live a 'touched up' glossy existence. We don't see, neither bother nor care, the huge machinery underneath that propels this existence, our life. What we 'know' is limited to our vocabulary. Anything that is not in the vocabulary, does not exist at in our life. But is it really true?

What then happens to the tremendous amount of energy that is active underneath? How is it stored? Does it ever come out? How? As emotions?

"Emotion" is a word that exists in our vocabulary so I used it. But can we ever really 'know' what it really means? Also, we color "emotion" by giving it different names - love, hate, anger, attraction, lust, fun, not fun etc etc. Is that really necessary? Isn't underneath it all, it is all just one "emotion" or energy surge? Then why scatter it in different directions and waste away? Why not channelize it in one direction and stay with it.

I have a feeling that the calm and peace that will follow if we can do it will be Himalayan.

 

 

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