I am delighted to invite you to join me on this journey ...........

The journey from the cradle to the grave...the journey from the womb to the tomb. What happens before you arrive in the womb and what happens after you die is not known. So much has been written about this in texts and scriptures but there is no evidence to support the arguments. 

So! We will limit our discussion to what happens in between – the time from your arrival in the world to the moment you die. The experience you have during this period is commonly referred to as life. This is the journey I am talking about...

A part of this journey has definitely been traversed because if you’re reading this you have already spent quite some time on this planet. 

No problem! We will talk about what remains – a few days, months, or years to a few decades.

So, now, are you ready?

Let’s begin with the preparations...

The first step! Deciding what you want to carry with you .. your baggage! 

What type of baggage have you been carrying with you? Pause for a while and write down on a piece of paper. Be honest .. at least with your belongings! I will help you in your efforts to identify your baggage. You are expected to note and keep a record if a particular piece of baggage belongs to you. I suggest you keep the list with you for reference in the future.

Where is all the baggage kept? Well, it is securely tucked in a very tiny, intangible thing called the mind. Have you ever wondered where your mind is located? Is there any such organ in your body? Think about it.

What are the components that make up your baggage?

Here is a sample: tons of grudges, loads of anxiety, tension, stress, frustration, confusions, complexes, feelings of helplessness, feelings of boredom, ego, greed, jealousy, fear of losing something, fear of not being accepted or liked, and the list goes on. Seems like excess baggage! makes our journey quite uncomfortable and boring too. 

Are you carrying any such baggage with you?

Yes! Read on ....

No? You are on the right track. Enjoy the party called life!

Whatever your age is, growing up again may not be possible but living again is very much possible. Living?

Yes! Living! Because many of us are merely surviving.

Look around ..start noticing .. you will start to see anxiety, tension, fear, anger frustration, helplessness and so many other fabricated feelings on peoples’ faces. Fabricated! Yes, you heard it right. All of these are merely creations of the human mind.

What is the mind and how does it work? Let us try and understand.

Mind is a stream of thoughts that you entertain whenever they come to you........

Let us try and understand how a mind is created. Consider each line as a thought:

The dot that grows in size with each additional thought is your mind.

Thousands of thoughts come to you each day .....

Sample thoughts: 

What should I cook for dinner? (routine) What if I don’t get this job? (fear), How can I secure my future? (anxiety), What if I fail the exam? (fear), What should I do to make more money? , My friends/relatives are doing well in life. Feelings of frustration!, How should I deal with my in-laws? (frustration/anger), What can I do to create a good impression on my boss? (greed), What will happen to my family if I am not around? (fear), How dare he/she comment on my abilities? (ego), I will teach him/her a lesson! But how? (grudge), What should I do to make money? (confusion), How can I become famous? (Planning), Where would I get genuine Italian food? (routine decision making), I will start exercising tomorrow. (commitment), I posted a picture on Facebook. How many likes will I get? (curiosity), I have to pay my bills. (routine work), Ford or Toyota! Which is better (analysis), Who should I invite for the party? (choice), I am so thankful to my parents for almost everything. (gratitude), I couldn't have achieved this without the support of my friends. (gratitude), How should I behave so that I am loved and respected? ( actions to please others).

These thoughts trigger your emotions and then, depending on the kind of thoughts you entertain patterns of behavior emerge and your personality is defined. Also, the same thoughts are manifested in the form of experiences called life.

The interesting part is that almost all of these thoughts are actually not your thoughts. 

Thoughts have always been around and you simply use them, catch hold of them, sometimes even steal them, and entertain them. They may assume the form of the value and belief systems that have been thrust into your minds by your parents, your teachers, and society. You, gradually begin to create, build and strengthen your predispositions – preconceived notions about things and people and almost everything around you. What is good?  What is bad? is defined on the basis of your value and belief systems. What is right and what is wrong again is defined by the type of data stored in your mind. Any stimulus that you get from the environment is referred to the data in your mind and based on your data types(predispositions) you assign meaning to the stimulus/situation/event. You tend to categorize almost everything as reasonable or unreasonable, as good or bad, as moral or immoral, legitimate or illegitimate, as of right or wrong. In the process, you often fail to ‘see’ things/events/situations as they are. Your sensory organs are colored with predispositions. You often see and hear what you want or what gels with your database. For example, a simple statement like ‘ Early morning is the best part of the day’ may generate a variety of responses. Why? How? I wake up late. I think the evening is the best part of the day. Just because you are an early riser you want us to believe this!

However, there’s another way to look at this statement. Morning is morning! Why should you attach a label with it? Most of us have a habit of branding almost everything! Why can’t we accept things as they are? Experience morning as a morning without assigning a meaning to it.

Let us understand this phenomenon with the help of an example. If I ask you to express your views/opinion on a topic and your topic is “how effective lockdowns have been in controlling the spread of coronavirus” and I ask you to give your comments now or after two days. If you choose to speak now you will explore your mind to recollect the article you may have read yesterday or the discussion you watched on social media or on television.  You may also remember the chat you had on your WhatsApp group. If you choose to express your views later you may collect information published in newspapers, magazines, journals, websites and ask your friends, teachers, or others about it.

When you are ready you may very casually begin by stating  ‘In my opinion lockdowns have been effective ..’ The issue is .. is it really your opinion? No! It is stolen or borrowed or rented.. from books, magazines, journals, television, friends, etc. These rented thoughts generate emotions and define your personality! That simply means that you are actually not you. You are a product of rented thoughts. You don’t even know who you are. Your real/true self is lost beneath piles of such rented stuff that you have mistakenly believed as yours. So! It is necessary for you to first know who you are. Only then you can start living! You have only been surviving so far .. kicked around like a football by people, their ideologies, philosophies, value, and belief systems... 

There is a huge difference between surviving and living. 

Most of you may find it difficult to resonate with the idea. That’s because it is a feeling that most of us cannot even imagine.  It is beyond our imagination! It is something like .... How do aliens look like? Or what is life like in planets in other galaxies? Take a guess... You might probably imagine something that bears some resemblance to humans because that is all we have seen and known. If we were to describe an alien using our imagination how would we describe it? Probably someone with eyes and a mouth and other such similarities with whatever we have known through our sensory organs. Life, as we know it is composed of five basic elements. Prithvi (earth), Akash (sky), Vayu (air), Jal (water), and Agni (fire). It is extremely difficult, almost impossible for us to imagine life without these elements. But, it may be possible! If you do not have any reason to believe, you do not have any reason to not believe! How much do we know about life?  Very little! The insignificant dot, planet earth, your home, may not even qualify to have an address in the infinite universe. Life may be present elsewhere in the universe but not necessarily in the form and shape that we know. Our predispositions prevent us from going beyond what our sensory organs normally permit. We cannot hear sound below 20 and above 20000 cycles per second. That does not mean that there are no frequencies below 20 and above 20000! 

So! I want you to know that most of you have absolutely no idea of what ‘living’ actually means, what it feels like. What is that state of mind! All that I can share with you at the moment is that the feeling is inexplicable. 

It can only be experienced.......

 YOU ARE AN AMAZING HUMAN.......

I believe we must build the capacity to sit with intensity to be able to fully release ourselves from any experience that is weighing on our hearts.

What does intensity mean in terms of emotions? To me, I believe intensity to be the build-up in your system that feels like pressure building, the nervous system may shift to a more activated and turn on space, anxiety may build, brain fog may occur, disorientation kicks in and it gets hard to focus.

We can't just let things go and release them without feeling them fully. There's processing that must occur in the body to process the difficult feeling instead of numbing out and rejecting it to be felt. When we do this it keeps us in the same cycle and the hard feelings cannot find their way out of our bodies.

Sometimes just sitting down with two hands over your heart and telling yourself "I see you, I feel you, and I'm sorry that you're feeling uncomfortable, I'm here for you, I love you." Is a simple thing you can do to sit with yourself. Sometimes you don't even have to say anything, just sit there and feel the experience. Ride the wave, just observing the sensations, the temperature of your skin, and the felt sense of blood circulating throughout your body as you focus on just breathing.

If you find your nervous system is too activated to sit still, meet the anxiety or emotion where it is. Sometimes this may mean jumping up and down to literally shake out whatever is inside that needs to be processed. When we face these emotions we show ourselves we are brave and capable to handle discomfort. It takes time to develop, but it helps to heal.