Having the Time of Your Life!
~ Abha Gupta, YSN Editor-in-Chief
(YSN Vol. 10, No. 1 – Feb. 2022)
Browsing through my photo album while listening to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” I revisited my childhood, high-school, and college days, bringing back beautiful memories. Photos reflect distinct changes at different stages of one’s life, reminding us that change itself is natural, and constant, whether minute-to-minute or over a lifetime. (We need look no further than the corona virus, as a constant reminder of this, through its various mutations of alpha, delta, and omicron variants.)
In the same way, our emotions, opinions, and feelings are constantly changing, from happy, to angry, sad, annoyed, depressed, glad, and more. These emotions are triggered by specific thoughts. Through the practice of raja yoga (mindfulness/meditation) or Jnan-yoga (self-inquiry/path of knowledge), one begins to notice a pattern of thoughts from the perspective of “I” – the perceiver of these changes. To perceive change, the perceiver must be stationary. The “television screen” must be static, unchanging, on which the pictures are moving. Likewise, on the invisible screen of life that we call “I”, the various scenarios of our lives get played out.
As one lingers on this perspective, looking at the nature of “I” instead of focusing on the content of thoughts, one finds a quiet space…, “nothing-ness,” soundless and still. So when I am irritated at the sound of lawn mowing in the early morning hours outside, or feeling anxious about a delayed flight for fear of missing a connecting flight, I have noticed that if I try to look at the “I”- the one becoming irritated, anxious, or fearful, instead of getting pulled into the narrative in the head (the feeling of irritation or anxiety created by the thoughts), I find the commotion in the mind begins to subside.
With continued attentiveness, there is less noise in the mind, creating more space and stillness within. This requires vigilance and alertness, otherwise, it is easy to get pulled into the commotion (content of thoughts). With continued practice, more and more peace begins to appear within.
One is not resisting thoughts, or suppressing, ignoring, pursuing or changing them. One is simply recognizing thoughts and then looking at the “I” that appears to be affected by its manifestation of emotion. In his 1999 book The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation (Beacon Press), Thich Nhat Hanh suggests a beautiful way of addressing this through mindfulness: “Whenever a wholesome thought arises, acknowledge it: a wholesome thought has just arisen. And if an unwholesome thought arises, acknowledge it as well: ‘An unwholesome thought has just arisen.’ Don’t dwell on it or try to get rid of it, however much you don’t like it. To acknowledge it is enough. If you have departed, then you must know that you have departed, and if you are still there, know that you are still there. Once you have reached such an awareness, there will be nothing you need fear anymore.”
Feelings and thoughts are visitors that come and go; you precede those feelings and emotions, because you are there to watch them come and go. Dangling these thoughts as bait, whether it is disturbing or delightful, the mind keeps itself engaged by triggering feelings of craving or aversion in us. The anxiety-prone mind tends to disproportionately focus on the negative thoughts, misinterpreting them as real danger rather than what they are: mere thoughts. Delving into the content of the thoughts is like getting pulled into a whirlpool, as one thought leads to another forming a formidable spiral.
It is the content of the thoughts, the narrative (“why did this happen to me? why me, poor me? how I am a victim of circumstances, or how I got taken for a ride; I should have done this, or I could have done that”), that allows the habituation of the story in one’s head for potential recurrence of similar eruptions in the future. Note that by acknowledging the feelings, one is recognizing them — not avoiding, pursuing, or suppressing them. Thus, one slowly begins to feel lighter and better. Even feeling good is a “feeling” that is not original to you because it doesn’t always stay. Jnan-yoga pushes one to probe further to find out who is feeling good or bad. With continuous investigation and inner probing, one’s nature (“I”) is revealed as stillness, peace, or silence, which is the static, unchanging, unmoving presence always here and now. And then, as ABBA’s Dancing Queen lyrics say, “you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life!”