No spiritual teaching, philosophy, reasoning, or psychology can make life easy. Life is never easy. The more we try to crack the code and get into the minds of others, searching for predictability, the more restless we become on the inside in the process.
I used to watch a show by Anthony Michael Bourdain, where he would visit different countries and try different food. He was a celebrity chef and a traveler. I would watch the show and think, “What a life?” However, one day Anthony committed suicide. Love life complications and other factors led him to taking his life. I will make an honest admission here that many times “I” thought of ending the show as well. Having spiritual insights doesn’t mean we escape life’s conditioning. It can be brutal. The only thing that kept me going was Ramesh’s words quoted from the Bible, “This too shall pass!”
The mind makes the suffering real in the moment. It convinces you that there’s no escape and that life is misery. However, what is today, may not be tomorrow. Watching the impermanence of mind and how it shapes a story and a narrative around a particular situation, gives an insight into its nature. Yes, it can very challenging in the moment to face one’s emotions. Emotions are powerful and they grip the rational mind. However, they are fleeting and eventually vanish into the source from which they came.
Why do we become so restless? Because we are moving away from the Self or “I” as “I am this or that.” Because we are not attending to ourselves as we are. We look for external support. We seek comfort in theories and teachings. And we ignore the greatest source of relief, which is the Self, and is present here now. No matter how big the wave, eventually it merges into the ocean. Then we look back and smile at “What was,” which is so different from, “What Is.”
With love,
Jagjot
