A liberated mind is lighter than the mind seeking control.The other day, I travelled by bus and got down at LIC , Mount Road, walked a few meters ahead to cross the road and reach the Spencers Shopping Centre, and by that time I was profusely sweating. It naturally frustrates. It becomes a cause of irritation. Then I realized, “Hei, what is there to be frustrating and irritating!?” It’s summer. It’s supposed to be hot. In hot season as this, you don’t freeze, you sweat. and that too in Chennai (Madras).
And then on, I realized I felt better as I walked through the pavement, perhaps less irritated from the weather, and began to enjoy the people and sights and sounds around me; for the first time went straight looking for the washroom to wash my hands and face before I get on with the remaining things I wanted to do.
In liberating my mind from the friction of wanting to be cool in a hot summer day, I ‘designed’ as a conscious choice a reasonable comfort through ‘acceptance’, comparing to the amount of frustration and irritation I would have subjected myself to by clinging on to my fight against the law of nature.
How does this apply in other spheres of our life, relationship, management etc?
What is it that I am fighting with, internally? What is it that I am holding on to, that if I liberate it from my clutches of thoughts, it could bring for me better results than what I yield by holding on to it? What am I not doing from fear or anger or sadness or anxiety or frustration, that if I do with the curiosity of a child, could bring for me results that will make feel ‘aha!’ with delight?
When I begin to complain about the loudness around me, can I liberate that anger by reframing my thoughts of that loudness as the ‘sound’ of the dynamic life around me and begin to enjoy the sound– loudness transformed to sound through the process of that liberation? When I begin to get frustrated about the crowded street, can I liberate that frustration by reframing my thought of that crowdedness as ‘tolerance’ of bullock-carts and cars and cattle fitting together to form the eco-system of the community I am living in? When I am concerned about getting drenched in rain, is it not possible to liberate that concern by looking at that as an opportunity to play by making myself accept that it’s OK to play in the rain and it’s OK for the clothes to be wet? Can I develop to hold my ‘emotion’ in seeing a broken vase and my daughter beside, and ‘accept’ that the vase is breakable and it would have broken one or other way now or later, and therefore ‘liberate’ the emotion of ‘anger’ that would otherwise dominate my action?
There are many unnecessary and unproductive ‘locks’ that we lock our minds with, which if we liberate or unlock, I realized, will bring us a better and relaxing feeling of what we otherwise thought as a trouble. The key to unlock is with us: what we tell our selves about what is happening with us, within us and around us. And when what we tell us is affirmative, in acceptance, it becomes easier to partner with it than to fight and conquer.
I just thought I want to write about it, perhaps to bring clarity to my thoughts on ‘liberating the thoughts that has potential to lock our performance’, or to simply write what I feel to write now.
Shahir
