Dear Diary,
First of all I want to rejoice that today over morning coffee I gathered the scattered leaves of you across my entire fb wall and neatly put them in one place, an album. Basically, the book that one or another person keeps mentioning to me is as good as ready :-)
And now – a regular burst of insights and thoughts for my seven most faithful readers, born during a long evening walk.
I noticed that while we stride in thoughtless emptiness and enjoy the evening Kaunas, savoring boundless inner peace, moments periodically occur when the mind reawakens, having hooked onto some sign or passerby, then jumps to another sign, then plunges into some trivial memory, and then suddenly returns to the old, good and deep habit of being a little dissatisfied with something. “Maybe I should hop on the trolleybus and go home? After all, 8 kilometers already walked, so that’s enough, and if I get off at Kalniečiai, have some coffee, that makes all planned 10.” The body floods with its usual tension and attention immerses in deliberations – trolleybus, or continue the journey further? Wait a moment, I say to myself, what’s at home? “Well, at home you’ll sit down, relax and plunge into peace,” answers the logic. But just 17 seconds ago I was plunged into complete relaxation and peace, I object. I was plunged until you pulled me out of it by proposing I undertake a heap of actions whose result would be exactly the same as the one you pulled me from. Where’s the sense? Here the logic breaks and shamefully shuts up.
Roughly speaking, a person comes into life immersed in their own emptiness, in their own peace, or, literally, “like a newborn”. Later, step by step, we are taught that at this moment we shouldn’t feel peace – first we must accomplish some action, wait for some day or event and only then will we have full right to enjoy it. Over time, both the habit and the queue of waiting actions take such deep roots that our entire life we run on a hamster wheel, seeing before our nose like a dangling carrot that prize shimmering in the future – the opportunity to relax and tell ourselves “now I’m peaceful, now I’ve done everything.” The mosaic of waiting tasks is colorful and varied – from “I’ll make dinner, eat, and then I’ll relax” to “I’ll finish a two-year project and relax” or “I’ll finish my studies, earn a million, build a villa, start a family, have four children, launch them into life and then I’ll relax”. However it may be, whatever we pursue – a cutlet, a project finish or a million – we always pursue one and the same thing – our innate peace, the chance to feel “as if just born”.
Looking from one side it’s rather funny, from another – somewhat absurd. The majority of our actions are aimed at achieving what we already have since birth. Actions, sometimes taking decades and causing us endless stress. And life changes dramatically when we stop using actions as a goal to reach peace, and conversely, plunge into peace and undertake the actions necessary for one goal or another. Relaxation can be felt not only after wolfing down dinner; relaxation can be felt throughout the entire process – buying ingredients at the supermarket, preparing them in the kitchen, chewing a juicy bite of steak, thus extending the peaceful period of the day from five minutes to two hours. The same with a project – it’s not worth sitting down to it tensed up, gritting teeth, waiting for its end (and on such a path more likely to get a visit to a psychologist than the desired result), you can sit down to it already having awarded yourself that state which, as we thought, would belong to us only after its completion.
Examine this for yourselves. What hooks of the outer world are currently tearing you in all directions, promising peace and relaxation as a prize? See the funny side of it – perhaps externally they’ll bring you certain changes in financial or other tangible form, but in the inner space they won’t give you anything additional beyond what you already have, simply having forgotten about it. And here, for some reason, old Osho’s words ring in my head – “when everything you do becomes meditation, your entire life becomes an unending meditation…”
Have a happy Saturday! :-)
