Peeling the layers of the mind

I introspect daily. For me, over the years, I have realized that this is one habit that can make us aware about what we are thinking and whether the contents of thought can be termed as appropriate or not, whether we carry a certain amount of unnecessary baggage and how to become more free, more spontaneous, more compassionate, more connected – so to say. Do we do this for display, to say that we are right, do we do this for some kind of confirmation…or should we do it because it is required and it has an effect of mind cleansing?

With the passage of time, if we do not imbibe this habit in us (maybe because it will not be known or simply because we may choose not to give time for this activity), our verbalized experiences may start to ‘feel’ dated or stale and we may not even add a fresh perspective to situations and worse – we may not even realize that our experiences have nothing to offer! Before the stale experiences become the ‘new normal’ we must indulge in this act of introspection whenever and wherever possible.

Introspection feels like decoding the layers of mental constructs, which we keep forming, and sometimes reinforcing, throughout the day. In this process of introspection that needs to be done ideally throughout our lifetime, there may be questions we may encounter as we discover the inner recesses of our minds (notice the amount of baggage and many sub thoughts that we carry irrespective of any situation)….

Questions about ‘why me only/ why not me’ –any neutral situation becomes tainted by asking these questions. These questions indicate thoughts related to jealousy, comparison, victimization, lower self worth, ego, insecurity in us, fear, time pressures, desires, compulsions and so on. All these are required to be systematically decoded, analyzed so as to understand what can be in our control.

Tendency to procrastinate – why start now? If we encounter fear and inhibition, warped or objectified ideas of progress or prestige, ego, inability to respond to change, insisting and expecting that the situation remains the same, some sense of loss and strong attachment to a given set of actions – all these will create a procrastinating tendency in us. The basic response then, will be to ask ourselves why are we creating this opposing force of retardation within us? What do we have to fear and again, what is fear itself? Most of it, we realize, is just an illusion – that someone will leave us, some job will go away, we will be thrown on the streets, people will laugh at us (so much imagination!!). Why do we seem to be overly concerned with what people have to say about ‘us’ – as a construct? Are we so rigid, should people really bow down to our idea of self? These basic assumptions are extremely unrealistic and not maintainable. If ‘self’ evolves and changes every second, then why do we expect ourselves and people to confirm to some ‘fixed’ idea? Procrastination means that we fear criticism about our inner belief or that people will not validate ‘us’. There is only one way to counter this force – do whatever resists you, because encountering the inner resistance will compel you to seek answers.

Judging and roasting others – This tendency points to ego, aggression, compulsion of adhering to fixed standards, insecurity, devaluing one self and therefore others, being inflexible, and inability to change. Any situation is neutral. By projecting our judgment, we taint it unnecessarily. I think, this tendency also indicates hyper rush, anxiety and unwillingness to just ‘listen’ and being attentive to what greets us. We are in a rush to complete things, (multitask as well), we load our beliefs on others to the point that people feel suffocated by our dumping tendency and we do not reciprocate the sensitivity that people wish we offer to them for understanding their issues. The biggest tragedy is that we don’t listen, so we don’t heal ourselves and neither do we give a chance for people to heal themselves.

By relooking at above tendencies over a period of time, we may be confronted by a series of next questions that concern with the following –

Who am ‘I’? What is this ‘I’? What is ‘thought’? Do thoughts construct ‘I’? What changes? If you find encountering yourself with these questions, then you have peeled some layers of mental constructs and moved closer to the nature of ‘Force’ which is related to the presence of consciousness. You may also consider yourself to be stable to a large extent despite externally fleeting circumstances and any situation may direct your mind to generate these questions and look for a perspective. Again, situations are neutral. What has changed is the questions that you are asking yourself which thereby shapes your approach of action and your life. At this stage, you are still being personal about your issues, although you are becoming aware of your larger connect with the environment and any other phenomena which are related (or seem to be related) to you. You may also deal with complimentary questions dealing with role of ‘memory’, socio-cultural aspects and any of such generic, broad, encompassing ideas. You may start to discover a spiral behavior of Time, some values, some principles that get manifested in any life form, in any situation, at any scale and in any time scale. This means your mind has expanded beyond your limited sense of self and body.

This now means that you have moved several layers closer to consciousness, yet there are still some layers of subtle thoughts that you will encounter. I would say, these now constitute a layer of thoughts that have got nothing to do with any external trigger but these thoughts are realized as a ‘tendency’ or a Force.

These inquiries include –

What is consciousness? Are we spiritual, or the mind or the body or each of such component distinct? Is mind personal or universal? Is mind real or some kind of a Force? How does mind come into existence? If we are the Force, then what is our ‘particular’ role to play? I have no answers here – just as I didn’t have any answers to above questions. The journey just keeps getting more fundamental and the Force (called mind) just keeps getting turned inward, away from the external stimuli. And probably then, at times, for a nano second, we may ‘see’ the waves that get generated from the presence of consciousness – the waves, as they surface above, are seen as mind and a combination of feelings and intellect.

So we may realize that wave generation is a phenomenon that is perpetual and need not be taken personally. It is a phenomenon that we (as constructs) are subjected to. And hence the only thing possible to do, is to ride over this phenomenon!