What if you slowed down?
What if you stopped rushing?
What if you arrived instead of travelling?
This constant shuttling from one place to another physically and more importantly mentally is exhausting.
When we are deeply one,
Deeply lost with this rush,
It seems that outside things are moving at a tremendous speed and that we are not able to keep up with those things.
That's why there is overwhelm,
Exasperation,
Frustration,
Stress and anxiety.
But what if you recognize that the anticipation,
The build-up that the mind creates internally makes it seem that the outside is moving at a tremendous speed,
Whereas it's just the mind rushing,
Giving an illusion that the outside is moving,
Whereas instead the mind is creating this dissonance that precipitates into overwhelm,
As if everything is the end of the world,
Every little thing is exaggerated by the mind and deemed as the end of the world.
Even if things are moving fast outside,
There are always options and solutions there.
Just like the antidote to an invasive species is right next to it in nature,
In forests.
But our busy,
Rushed mind is too preoccupied to match the speed of the outside,
To see the options,
The solutions.
Instead,
It superimposes its speed on the outside.
So when we come to a session like this,
Where the rhythm,
The cadence is designed to invite you to ride it,
To slow down,
We recognize that the outside has always unfolded at its own speed.
This mind,
With its stories,
End-of-the-world catastrophes,
That even missing a single meeting is deemed as if you're being chased by a tiger out in the jungle.
This feeling of overwhelm is often attributed to what is happening outside,
That that what is happening is causing this overwhelm.
Life is the cause.
But I don't think life intends to overwhelm us.
It's this mismatch of outside and inside.
It's our attitude towards what is unfolding,
Which is often fueled by fear-based mental rush.
And that's why we worship sportsmen who seem to have infinite time at their disposal,
Even while competing in fast-paced sports.
That's because their mind has slowed down,
Slowing down the apparent perception of time.
Not the clock time,
Which is the same for everything,
But your first-person experience of it,
Which is what creates panic to begin with.
And chaos does not require skill.
Entropy does not require skill.
Skill is in slowing down,
In reversing the chaos,
The entropy,
The clutter.
So in a session like this,
You get a dip into a reference point where your mind slows down.
And this state of your mind becomes a reference point so that in future,
When this state is disturbed,
You can trace your way back to it.
Because nothing special is happening here.
I'm just a guy talking.
I'm not giving you any pills or any life secrets are being handed down.
All I'm doing is creating a reference point through my words,
Carving a path which you can follow back on your own.
Although you can use your breath,
You can use something external to trace your way back initially.
But once you understand that you can unhook from any mental build-up,
Any story,
Any and all fear,
In that moment you are levitating metaphorically.
And for that,
You need to understand that becoming one with your mind's shenanigans is not necessary.
Once you understand that it's your choice to hook on to something or not,
To buy into a mental story,
To believe it and to ride its wave of panic,
Overwhelm and anxiety is a choice.
The helplessness,
Anxiety,
Anger,
Frustration,
Unfortunately,
Gets revealed as a choice.
And initially,
It might not feel like a choice.
But it's important for us to reflect on a session like this,
Where nothing fancy is happening,
And yet,
You are left cleansed,
Washed from all the panic,
Rush,
Overwhelm.
As uneventful as this session is,
It's a testimonial that almost everything is as uneventful as this one.
We have just bought into a different description,
Interpretation of it.
What we are trying to learn here is to find the peace amidst the chaos.
Finding peace when everything is peaceful doesn't require skill.
What requires skill and what ends up giving you the depth and the confidence in life is finding the peace in chaos.
And today's session is attacking the creation of chaos,
Attacking the root cause.
What I'm arguing that the chaos is not outside,
As we have believed what our mind has told us.
And don't get me wrong,
This narrative that we have bought into is not just a thought-based narrative.
But also a feeling-based narrative.
What we have thought again and again,
What we have believed and practiced again and again,
For years,
If not decades,
Has kind of crystallized into our body.
So if you are gripped with fear on a daily basis,
I don't want you to be scared.
Neither do I want you to get rid of the fear.
I want you to endure it.
I want you to see the habit of being gripped by fear as harmless.
As I heard someone say that fear is a mile long and an inch deep.
So although as crippled as you might feel,
At the most it might feel uncomfortable.
But that's the extent of the power it has over you.
Discomfort.
And in an attempt to get rid of it,
At the slightest premonition of this kind of feeling,
We start plotting in our mind.
We start escaping into substances,
Things,
Trying to outthink our feelings.
But what if?
What if we recognize that our feelings won't kill us?
And these habits of feeling narratives,
Of fear-based reactions,
Have gone on for decades.
And if we stand any chance of eroding these habits,
We have to go to the depth first.
That's where they have become crystallized.
That ball in your stomach,
That tightness in your chest,
Which surfaces daily at work,
At home,
In traffic,
And which is amplified by a monologue in the mind.
And this monologue in the mind also perpetuates this feeling narrative by reinforcing it.
So I invite you to take a step back.
Without running away,
Without negotiating,
Without talking to it,
Without agreeing with it either.
Just to endure.
To sit in discomfort.
Although in our mind we think that the feelings are so painful,
And will run so long,
Contrary to this belief,
This lasts only a few seconds.
If we truly sat in it without running away.
And what helps tremendously is this imprint of peace,
Of accessed peace as a first-person experience that starts rewiring these habits.
Once you start seeing the uneventfulness in all events,
Once you see the mechanism of build-up,
The mental build-up that facilitates overwhelm.
Once you see that you can unhook from your feeling narrative and not hook on to the mind's amplification of it,
You are on your way to freedom.
Actually,
That is freedom.
Freedom from being controlled by our thoughts and feelings.
And once we dive into this freedom,
Maybe instead of fighting every day,
We can float through life.
Flow through the river of life.
Navigating its course.
And as the internal conflict starts receding,
We realize,
We recognize that the external is not a conflict.
It's merely a problem to be solved.
That's what I meant by navigating the flow of life.
Not to fight it.
Right now,
It seems like a full-blown war with life.
And life seems hostile.
What would happen if you didn't rush?
What would happen if you didn't become one with the mental and felt narratives?
Thank you.
