Do you often wonder if you only had a certain thing or if you could only get rid of this particular trouble then you could be… be happy, perhaps? Complaints about being depressed, being in an unhappy marriage, being in the wrong job, and so on, are the only socially acceptable forms of rebellion that our culture permits us to express for the alienation we feel from ourselves and the world around us. Coupled with that all-pervasive fear that life is running out of your hands like a stream of sand, it is but natural that you fear you will die without having lived. But what does it mean “to live”? Well, you’re shown every day what the good life is. Being unrealistically unencumbered by responsibilities is the hot commodity pedalled by so-called influencers. The good life is really just a good lie. A certain science measure livingness as the efficacy with which the process of life invokes an eagerness in the person who lives it such that life becomes “genuinely significant” to that person. To live then is to treat each moment with significance and be fully engrossed in it. And what of time? Must it only be like ungainly sand that infernally slips from your grasp? Time really is very experiential and personal. Think of that time when you were fully engrossed in a moment and then the series of follow-on moments that absorbed you completely with ever-increasing intensity so that time itself seemed to stretch out infinitely. In contrast, the ordinary moments when you are detached from the present, perfunctorily, in a trance, lost in misgivings of things past, time slips away, literally without the feeling of having lived it. You really have not lost anything and you haven’t lost out on anything, the lessons that the experience of life give you are universal—that you don’t lament the past and in turn, waste the present.

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All the time there is an inner emptiness that the veneer of your public persona conceals. The more you desperately try to live up to the things that you say you are or the things that your loved ones say that you are, however well-intentioned, the more you must seek validation of those attributes from the people who fill up your life or cross your path. How you look, what you know, how you conduct yourself becomes serious work. When the deep-seated doubts about who you are are not assuaged, you feel “hurt” and either slump into sadness or retaliate against those who disagree with your particular characterisation. In either case, you’re not likely to sit peacefully with yourself for very long as you keep conjuring up images of past insults, hurtful situations, and the perpetrators of your hurt. When you’re desperately trying to maintain your fragile ego, even happy moments of serenity are instantly embittered by memories of past slights. When you have contracted all these ways of losing face, there’s not much energy left for your brain to capture and comprehend what’s really going on around you.

Try to accept yourself for who you are, and tear down the facade of who you think you ought to be. Remember that you are always evolving and, as such, you don’t have to hold on tightly to previous notions of yourself. The spectrum of what you are and what you feel springs from the basic life stream coursing through you. You can allow yourself to just be who you need to be in this moment without needing to indelibly identify yourself with simple, transient states of being.

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Your thalamus (the part of your brain that regulates your consciousness and alertness) makes no distinction between inner and outer realities, and thus any idea, if contemplated long enough, will take on the semblance of reality. Your belief becomes neurologically real and your brain will respond accordingly. But for someone else, who has meditated on a different set of beliefs or goals, a different reality emerge.

Your thoughts clearly affect the neurological functioning of your body and optimism is essential for maintaining a healthy brain. Positive thoughts neurologically suppress negative thoughts. When you change the way you think, you begin to change your outward circumstances. Consciousness, reality, your mind, and your beliefs are profoundly interconnected and inseparable from the functioning of your brain.

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When you say or think one thing and do another, you separate the you that thinks thoughts from the you that does the deed. And since there is discord between the two selves, by and by you lose faith and confidence in thought and action. When thought is separated from action, reaction reigns supreme. When you try to be as simple as possible instead of the sophisticated mess that most people aspire to be you automatically act and speak in a straightforward way. You’ll find that even when you make mistakes, get angry, or feel fearful, in your own simple way you are able to learn from your reactions instead of cloaking them in layers of denial and rationalisation.

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The mind’s innate tendency is to take apart experiences from memory and look for threats, points of failure, and opportunities for improvement. This is a part of its priming towards survival and expansion. Given how unreliable memory is, it doesn’t take much for the mind to pick holes in everything you have done, depending on your current level of neurosis. It's easy to focus on your failures, so learn to give yourself pep talks. Celebrate the small wins with a smile, a pat on the back, and an encouraging word—“you handled that really well… you’re doing so good right now… tomorrow you’ll do even better.” Eventually you will find yourself gravitating towards the things that make you feel good instead of those that make you feel bad.

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With patience and love, you can learn to feel comfortable in your place so you return to it, tend it, nurture it, and make it your utopia. But to be still, to do nothing, to deal with the turbulence of the mind is challenging and perhaps not too pleasant at times. Cultivating the discipline to be still is not easy, it is difficult for everybody. Successful people manoeuvre around the mind’s apathy and laziness by creating a safe and stimulating space that they enjoy coming back to. But a happy place alone isn’t enough to placate the mind if it is primed to easy distraction and instant gratification. Break the habit of checking your messages and media streams each time you feel the urge to do so and take a step back to look at the neediness that triggers it. Successful people practice doing nothing. In their quiet moments, when they feel no desire to do anything, they don’t try to fill up that space with “good” or “bad” things, such as reading a book or doing something “constructive”. They stay with the emptiness; listening to the rustle of the wind outside, or the myriad other sounds of silence. Finally, aim for a goal; aim for progress towards insight or endurance or even happiness. With a purpose and focal point in sight, the mind naturally gravitates towards the source of its fruition.

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A judgement by definition involves a comparison of one thing with another. As you gauge the actions of yourself or others against some arbitrary bar of excellence, you will come up short when pitted against the innumerable, radically different beings in this rapidly moving world. And when you judge things that others say or do as bad, you are most likely reacting to slivers of that thought or deed within yourself. If you dig a little deeper, you will also notice that those things are linked to so-called negative emotions—be they anger, sadness, modes of depression, and so on. By judging them and dismissing them you suppress the vital insights they provide as to what is really going on and going wrong.

Ārjavam (आर्जवम) is the quality of integrity in thoughts, words and deeds. When your thoughts are at odds with what you do or say, you separate yourself as thinker and doer. And with this separation it is easy to eschew the need for any accountability of action. On the other hand, wisdom is a measure of how judiciously you choose between the things you like to do that give you bad results and the things you don’t like to do that give you good results. So, instead of being judgemental, instead of categorising things as good or bad, slow down, examine the outcome and try to use that insight to give you better results in your life.

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The things that you think you lack draw you into their pursuit and string you along in vain hope. In this age of rampant materialism, we are lured into a world of desires and made painfully aware of the limited time we have to acquire them. Even in pursuing your noblest intentions, such as seeking love and companionship, you take as much as you can for however long you can; for when you have made a thing of even the most sublime, you may pursue and collect it with reckless abandon. Learn to discern between what you need and what you want. It’s worth giving up the lesser for that which is more meaningful.

So, as much as it may pain you to close the door on those dreams, aspirations, and goals, the things you have pined for lord knows how many long, long years, you know that you must give up this struggle to have, give up this wanting. Objects of desire lose their hold on you and life finally slows up for you, giving you the chance to appreciate the little that you have that is truly meaningful.

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As you try you prevent. You want so badly to get to something, somewhere, and even in your most noble endeavours, like this humble practice, you seek to get to something; whether to love, or enlightenment, or peace. This getting is the paradoxical block in your work. You cannot cling to the things of life. When you try so desperately to hold on to something, you choke the life out of it. It is not yours to keep, but you may welcome it into your presence and receive its nourishment until it goes away. Even refreshing, life-giving breath is given to you. You cannot hold on to it, you must let it go to take in the next one, and one day, you will let go of it for the last time.

So, for now, give up this struggle to have and notice what already is.

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You do not have to hold on to your old karma—everything that people have done to you, everything that you have done to yourself, all the pains, illnesses, all the evil, all the good—because none of it exists in this moment. We imbue past experiences with too much meaning, when in reality they are, in fact, largely intellectual fabrications where the insignificant fragments are magnified out of proportion. But it is not always easy to let go, especially of the perceptually bad fragments, for the mind seems to cling tightly to experiences that have seemed threatening to it. Remind yourself that your actions are not as gravely consequential as you imagine them to be and that the only serious work is right here, in this moment, as you sit on the mat. You are here now and you have a chance to do good; to build something that lasts; to extend yourself. What matters now is the work you do on yourself and the insights you gain in the process.

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