What is it that you seek?
What is it that a human being essentially seeks in life? How do we find out what exactly it is? We do a whole lot of things that are too diverse. We go after pleasures, we seek recognition, we want to relish emotions and relationships, we aspire for power, we consume chemicals to stimulate ourselves, and so on. Sometimes we seek fear too. We even pay money for it! Similarly, we seek anger, sorrow, disgust, and sometimes even physical pain.
Why are we doing all this? What do we really want?
These things may look like very different pursuits to you, but if you look keenly, there is a common factor in all of them.
Can you guess what it is?
All of them heighten your aliveness levels, and intensify your experience of life.
They make you brim with energy for a few moments, and therefore you go after them even if they spell unpleasantness. Intensity, therefore, seems to be the quintessence of all human pursuit.
But wait. This does not seem to account for some of the other things we do. Why are some people going after intoxicants such as alcohol that dulls them? Why do some people enjoy being lethargic, and like to just sleep their time away?
It seems as if we are seeking lack of intensity too!
Well, perhaps we want both. Or perhaps we have not made up our mind as to which one we actually want. Maybe we are just confused… or are we?
Look closely. These two apparently divergent ventures also have something significant in common.
What is it that happens to you when your experience becomes too intense? For instance, the embrace of your loved one. Or beholding the majesty of Nature. You use words such as mind-blowing or breathtaking to describe these moments. Why? Because, in those moments, you go absent. Thought temporarily suspends, and you, the psychological person, are blown away.
Now look at what happens in sleep or dulling of the mind. Here too, you fade out.
But the inner experiences of these two extremes are worlds apart, aren't they? When you dull yourself, not only do you fade out, but everything fades out, and there is just unconsciousness.
Surely, unconsciousness isn’t what we are aspiring for. We seek to be swallowed by Aliveness, not by stupor. But since we are not aware of this, we try to fulfil the objective by deadening ourselves. People drown themselves in alcohol, and consider that state of stupor as High!
So, this is what everything finally boils down to. Isn’t it?
You want your experience of life to be Mind-blowing. Whatever you may be pursuing in your life, all that you essentially seek is to feel High within you. There is nothing to life apart from how deeply we have experienced it.
But presently, this pursuit is happening rather haphazardly. As a result, you are gravitating towards intensities that do not blow you away, but break you up; intensities that do not enthuse you, but abuse your body and mind. You inadvertently start sticking to anger, misery, fear, and eventually even pain so as to sustain a certain level of intensity in life. You get invested in turmoil and conflict. When this tendency crosses a certain limit, it gets labelled as a psychological disorder (self-pity, victim syndrome etc.), but others are doing it in mutually accepted levels, aren't they?
And even when you manage to get overwhelmed by certain levels of sweetness, the results are accidental and short-lived. You abruptly catapult yourself to a high, but crash as soon as you take off.
You are left smacking your lips much more than you have actually tasted anything.
You remain gravitated to your present plane of mediocre intensity.
In fact, even the mediocrity is worsening by the day, isn't it?
Wanting to be blown away by life, you engaged in so many things. You achieved, acquired, and amassed. These achievements gave you flickers of excitement, but in the long run, they did not make you lighter and livelier. Instead, life is slowly turning into a drag. The psychological 'person' is getting bulkier, and more burdensome. Nowadays, so many people need motivation even to get up from bed in the morning!
Why is this happening? What is it that is holding us back? Where are we going wrong? And what are we to do? Hasn’t anyone looked into this already? Hasn’t there been any orchestrated efforts towards understanding this issue and addressing it?
Indeed there have been. If you want to be blown away by the immanent immensity of Life, there is a Math to it; and more importantly, there is a Melody to it. And that is what Spirituality is about.
Spirituality is not some extracurricular activity that only certain interested people are supposed to opt for. Nor is it about someone else dictating some morals to us regarding what is ‘good’ for us and what we should pursue in life. Spirituality is just about making our own innate pursuit, which is presently being conducted erratically, happen consciously and thereby intensively. It just facilitates us towards what we are already longing for. It enables us to relish the main course which is presently eluding us. And to that end, it lays down various methods, and tells us how we can effectively employ our faculties—thought, emotion, energy, and body—to fully awaken ourselves to life. So, it is time we stopped addressing life whimsically, and approached it methodically.
And that is what we will do in this forum. We will diligently inquire into the various facets, nuances, misconceptions, and complexities of this whole matter. We will undo the many thought-knots that are clogging your aliveness. We will explore the Math and the Melody of human quest, or as it is more popularly known, Yoga.