“PRESENCE” — THE POWER OF BEING PRESENT.
Tags: Self Improvement, Journal Entry, Illumination Curated, Journal, Life Lessons

Just like the past couple of years, today seems identical. It feels like I am trapped in an endless loop for eternity with a bout of thrills here and there. It’s time to collect myself up and put my act together. The gap between my thoughts and action seems to get wider every second. I just seem to be an indolent spectator. My phone started buzzing out of nothingness I was hibernating in. I throw my hands around desperate to strangle the mobile that screamed on the top of its lungs. After eventually turning off the alarm. I caved in. I squinted my eyes to make sense of the time, with my anxiety already pipelined to intimidate my heart wondering if I was late again today to wake up, I got off the bed which never fails to seduce me into hibernation. They say gravity is maximum at the poles but I say it’s at my bed.

I step outside on the balcony to soak the fresh morning air into my system. I was greeted by the diversity of the dawn chorus. It was a serene spectacle, a diverse species of birds I must say…I hadn’t seen in a while. I paused and looked around to wonder when was the last time I was this intimate to nature. It must have been a very long time. It felt like melodious music in stark contrast to the torturous alarm of my mobile. I suddenly had the epiphany of how fortunate I am, to be able to absorb the diversity of nature with my able senses. I move my head around to see if I could label the plants and birds around, which I failed miserably. Despite the crows, pigeons, and sparrows. I couldn’t name any other species. Let alone that, I couldn’t even name all of the house plants we have on our balcony. I wonder have I really been that insulated from nature all my life? The very nature I feed on and nature where my grave shall lie and where my ashes shall scatter with gusty wind and merge back where it arose from. I felt like all my life I have been functioning on my auto-pilot mode not realizing that the plane might run out of fuel someday and I need to land some time to refuel and revitalize myself. I realize we all get so caught up with the obligations in our life. We forget to be in the moment only to realize one day in our deathbed all we had to do was be in the moment. Easy, right? By being in the moment I don’t mean to meander around purposelessly or be a deadbeat person but to unlearn what’s redundant and connect to our true selves locked in the deepest dungeons of our heart. Only then, when the mind stops interfering with our heart, we shall find the answers to the questions fueled by the insatiable curiosity of our mind. We should stop mounting pressure on ourselves and rather cut ourselves some slack.

“Detaching ourselves from individual constructs we gather over life is paramount. We forget to be flexible with ourselves as we end up confirming ourselves to that very identity, we think we are just because we failed once or twice or thrice or that flawless identity we easily get seduced by. It doesn’t become a reality, does it? “

It’s easier said than done. And I know the majority of us either have debts to settle, pay the loan back or prepare for the anticipated exam what we think we aren’t prepared for or the heartbreaks we are going through, or the melancholy of the heart for the demise of our loved one. It’s what makes us human, to be able to witness the kaleidoscope of experiences until we white-knuckle ourselves. And all of the experiences in life compound to expand and transcend our consciousness into the higher self. The only reason why we feel we are stuck at a constant plateau in life and why we linger onto it is because we never confront it, instead we look for an escape. If not now, someday, you gotta face your demons. Why not today? They're things we can’t control in our lives, but there’re a lot of things we can. Let’s shift our focus in that and always embrace the unknown. It’s what makes life unpredictable and beautiful. Let’s not commit to the monotony. Let’s always pause and take a step back to see if we are not climbing the ladder only to realize it’s leaned against the wrong wall. A fish can’t survive outside of the water with its gills, can it? Instead of diving into the depth of the ocean, why should it torture itself outside of it? Maybe that’s the friction and the resistance we are facing in our lives? There’s something in all of us that can help us defy the dimension of time. We must shoulder to our purposes in life with utmost grit and tenacity and patience. If we had “Kamadhenu” or “Kalpavrikshya”, released from the churning of the milk ocean, in our own lives… would it be fun to do everything and anything at a snap of our finger? For a day or two maybe …what after that? Wouldn’t we get bored of everything so quickly? Hence, there’s a purpose that resistance serves in life. We must be grateful to it and embrace the resistance in life instead of wanting instant results.

The days slowly grew still as the mother nature, Gaia (Prakriti) was painting the vast infinite firmament from bright golden yellow of the sunrise to light blue to orange to reddish-orange of the dusk and finally transitioning in the dark. And it was all so transient that you couldn’t even capture the beauty of it by taking infinite snapshots. All you could do was just be there in the moment and soak it all in as if it was the last time, we could see it not because nature ain’t eternal but, because our senses and abilities weaken as we age.

And as darker as it got, the louder got the tick-tocks, tick-tocks of the wall-clock of my room as if to remind me I am approaching close to my death only anticipating the delusional possibilities that could go wrong instead of embracing the uncertainty of life and what it could miraculously offer.

I suddenly saw a truckload of garbage moving away. Consequently, I also felt lighter inside as if I have unloaded my garbage polluting my heart into it.

Note: According to Hindu Mythology, Kalpavrikshya ( a wish-fulfilling tree) and Kamadhenu ( a wish-granting cow), was churned out of the Milk ocean when Devas (Gods) and Asuras (Demons) pulled the venomous serpent Vasuki back &forth like a tug of war between virtue and vice, good and evil.