An Idea of Normality

For years I dreamed of being normal. Recently this idea of being normal dropped away. It had been something I aspired too for as long as I can remember. To be a respected member of society with the house, the car, the two point four children and the wife. To me whilst I was seeking, I dreamed that I would go back to a normal life after finding my answers. But what was normality for someone who had never experienced it. I remember a line from my book Falling into the Mystery

I can hear my family in the next room laughing and joking and I envy them. I just want to be normal but I have no way of knowing what normal is anymore…

So how can someone who has never known normality know it, and this was something I struggled with for many years until as I said, I found the idea just dropping away. The corresponding sense of freedom I experienced in this letting go was freeing as it pointed to a level of authenticity I had yet to experience. It is ok to be as I am and to accept that I am who I am. I am someone who has spent a large portion of their life looking for the answers to life. Now, however life is lived and not looked for. I am no longer in the ashram but instead I am in the only ashram that matters, Life.

Friedrich Nietzsche

‘And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music…’

Life with all its imperfections and craziness has taught me that in order to truly live I need to embrace every aspect of me and that also includes this spiritual side that I hoped to drop when I had found my answers. If anything this realisation of being as I truly am has given me a better understanding of what it means to be truly normal as opposed to an idea of it, than if I had chosen to reject a huge portion of my life in the hope I would fit in with the Joneses.

That by embracing every aspect of us we are so much more whole, complete and richer for it.

That we can find the miracle that is life while standing in the queue at the supermarket as we can find it in the presence of the greatest of sages.

That by embracing what others may see as our weirdness, our quirks, our little oddities that probably amuse the “normal” folk who haven’t lived as we’ve lived that we are more normal than those we seek to be like.

To quote Oscar Wilde:

Be yourself, everyone else is taken…

Embrace and accept all aspects of you and you may find that your embracing yourself helps you see the extraordinariness of it all in the ordinary and that this acceptance of yourself is true normality.

As the bird takes flight…

It starts off as a thought, the thought persists and doesn’t go away. You try to suppress it and yet it comes back stronger. As the saying goes, what you resist persists, so stupidly you resist.

As the bird takes flight…

You know this thought to be true, but the magnitude of its scope is scaring. You know it leaves you with nothing. The stories will go, the excuses will evaporate. So, you hide, you make excuses and you endure incredible pain as you know as painful as this is, it doesn’t hold a candle to what you feel you will experience.

Stop! Is this true. Will you really experience the terror and pain you are avoiding and if you do, do you think it will last forever. So, you guardedly come out of the shadows and feel this pain, it hurts, so again you run away. You’ve lost again, you are a failure. You lick your wounds and hide again.

Again, the thought intrigues you and you come out of the shadows, again the same thing happens, this time though it hurts a little less. Could it be the monster isn’t real. The possibilities could then be endless. You could finally live.

The light invades the darkness and it is seen the monster never existed. It was a play of shadows. You laugh, you cry, you let go and the bird that was caged realises there was no cage. As the bird takes flight, it is seen it is always perfect as it is.

Accepting Acceptance…

Much is made of acceptance but what of accepting acceptance.

In a previous article I talked about the power of incremental acceptance and how it could be used to help us realise our true nature. I’ve since found it can be applied to virtually any field.

Many people engage in negative self talk and keep themselves bound over and unable to live life fully. From not being able to take a compliment to self sabotaging opportunities to live a stronger and freer life. It is almost as if there is a collective brainwashing at hand where people really can’t accept themselves. This leads to roles being played out and the tragedy here is that we are unable to form real human relationships, communicate authentically or live.

… It means to be open, to be vulnerable, to be courageous, to be as inquisitive as a child and to let go as easily as a child. To be empty.

I have found we are almost hardwired not to break out of the cages of our environment, conditioning and peer groups. Does this come from the idea of safety and is this idea even true. For if this idea is situated in the mind then by its nature it is limited and as such doesn’t offer true safety.

So, what does it mean to be truly safe? to have certainty and in this certainty be accepting of a deep acceptance that allows us to live wide open as we truly are. It means to be open, to be vulnerable, to be courageous, to be as inquisitive as a child and to let go as easily as a child. To be empty. To allow any experience, good or bad to arise and fall as and how it should, without trying to hold it, resist it or even understand and yet being alright even if you find yourself resisting and holding. To realise that acceptance isn’t passive but empowering that by allowing everything we cannot be held by anything.

In this expansive we see constantly our limitations and in gratitude watch as like a wave crashing across the rocks that these limitations die always replaced by something more. That which is merely an idea being exposed to reveal what we truly are.

Conditioning the Universe Entire

For many years I was told I wasn’t enough, by parents, by peers, by teachers. The tragedy wasn’t that they spoke those words, the tragedy was that I started to listen and internalise what was being said. I carried on listening and the number of times I heard I wasn’t enough or that I wasn’t worthy echoed in me over and over like a hypnotic command. You aren’t enough, nothing you do will amount to much, the list goes on.

“Give me the boy for the first seven years, and I’ll give you the man”

We condition through repetition the idea into so many of our children’s minds that they aren’t enough and that they need to defend the limited idea of them that we have given them. As a young fragile mind listens and is moulded into an individual, that grows up with fear, anxiety and lack. The words of the Jesuits ring true, who stated:””

“Give me the boy for the first seven years, and I’ll give you the man”

But what might you ask does this have to do with seeking?. Well at its most basic level isn’t a belief that something is missing, a belief that has been externally introduced to us to create separation and create “the story of me”. This program repeated constantly, causes us to internalise this “story of me” until it stuck into our subsconscious and affected our thoughts and behaviours.

Conditioning

Millions of these programs run silently in the background making our decisions for us, causing us pain if we try to diverge from them meaning that so many will never see what they truly are as the program scares us enough, gives us enough pain to prevent us from seeing. There is a myriad of programs running even now that are affecting even the tone and structure of this article and even how it is read and interpreted.

Can we become free of our conditioning?

Can we become free of our conditioning?, not eradicate it, as it serves a purpose and lets us function in this illusory existence but can we be aware of it, so it doesn’t conflict with us and we can drop its most insidious program that we are separate from ourselves and that we are enough. That conditioning is like an operating system which we have the power to upgrade or delete programs that do not serve us anymore. When we can see this and realise that ultimately, as consciousness we put these programs in place to reinforce or protect a certain reality and now that it is redundant. It can be let go.

True Nature

That our true nature is that which is prior to our mind. As we live from that state, the mind then is an aspect of us, albeit a minor one. As could the entirety of consciousness be encapsulated in mind - and if it cannot, similar to saying we could hold the entire ocean in a glass, that we can see the limitation of our thinking, become aware of it and even know why we do what we do. Then as we see the futility of certain programs we can let them go and keep those that allow us the fullest expression of what we are: The universe entire…

Aashiq ka Janaaza Hai…

Aashiq ka Janaaza Hai…

Words fail me as silence engulfed me

What can I say that encapsulates the ocean

Knowing this futility what I am I to do

All words are redundant

Destined to fail

Yet appearing redundantly

Yet serving a purpose

How do I go past this

How do I sing this song

Why is my throat constricted

Why am I caged

Why has the ocean chosen to be a drop

What wisdom is there in the lunacy of separation

What is that word that will bring solace to my heart

And calm my yearning

As this agitation consumes me

As emotions rises

As ideas fail

Thoughts are calmed

Emotions pass

Feelings dissipate

The wave returns to the ocean

The ‘me’ is no more

Who could have witnessed this

Who could even be aware of the silence

Who could commit this sin of two

And who is there to even know this…