I was playing with Urvansh.
We have always told him to express himself, to not throw tantrums, to speak out in words what he is feeling so that we know what is going on. And so sometimes when something he does not agree with happens, when he is unhappy about it, he tells me — Nanu is sad.
Nanu, not me.
And the moment he says it, I see the change in him. The cloud thins. He has named it from the outside, and in naming it from the outside he has stopped being it.
That is when I realised — the child is teaching me to be a witness to my own self.
-----
This thought has stayed with me on the walk. I want to write it down before I lose it.
Our feelings are clouds in the sky of our being. Sometimes they are of a different shape. Sometimes big, sometimes small, sometimes dark, sometimes white, sometimes so light you can hardly see them, sometimes so dense they cloud the sun and turn day to night. Sometimes floating away very slowly, sometimes floating away so fast. But never all the time. They are always in transition.
The mistake is to think we are the cloud.
The mistake is to internalise the weather. Because when we internalise it, we attach to it, and we suffer it as though it were the whole sky. Our default bliss state — the sun that is always shining — can never be seen unless we endeavour to move past the altitude of our cloudy sky. Only when we fly above the clouds do we see that the weather may change, but the sun always shines bright.
-----
How does one begin to even begin to do that?
It is relatively easier to imagine yourself as the parent to your own self. Just as you would talk to a child who is going through a mood — by distracting him, by drawing his attention towards the nicer things in life — you can do that to yourself. And when you start doing that slowly, you realise that you do hold power on your own mind, and not otherwise.
So when I am sad, I try not to say I am sad. I try to say — daddy is sad. And then I try to move daddy’s attention away. The same way the parent moves the child.
This principle can be used at work, at home, when alone, in every other situation.
-----
I have complained for almost all of my life till now.
That I am a victim of my circumstances, my situations, my moods, the weather, the people around me, the temperature, what I eat, who cooked it, my boss, my wife, my son, my maid, my staff, my parents, my siblings, my friends, my possessions — none of them seem to work in my favour sometimes, and that causes a lot of unhappiness within my state of being.
I learned to complain the way children learn most things — by watching. I cannot remember the first time. But I can imagine it. Someone in my family, or someone near and dear, said something they were unhappy about, and I felt them internalising the feeling. I felt them become the cloud. And I decided that was how one lived a life. Because everyone around me seemed to be doing the same thing.
It took me a very long time to suspect otherwise.
-----
The only way one can come about talking about something like this is if one has experienced coming out of that state — dissociating oneself from oneself. It does not matter how many times you have been able to do that. Even if you have done it once, you know how it tastes. And if you have done it once, you can do it again, and again, and again.
Some of the people reading this might never understand what I am talking about. That is alright. This is for those who at some point have watched themselves getting angry, watched themselves getting mad, watched themselves getting aggressive, and realised in that moment — they are not the ones who are doing it. It is happening to them. And in that very moment they can change it. And sometimes they do. Sometimes the witness simply arrives, and you stop, and you say to yourself — what the hell am I doing — and you change. That is the witness you need to develop to reach that stage.
-----
And here is the part I want to add, because most people stop at sadness and anger.
This can also happen in a happy moment. It can happen in an exciting moment. In any feeling, any mood you have ever experienced.
Swami Yogananda said it. Paramahansa Yogananda said it. Situations are always neutral. It is our reaction to them that is volatile. And Swami Kriyananda said the same thing. Life is lived in polarities — positive and negative, happiness and sadness, aggression and depression — and these polarities are the ones which cause us to always be a part of them. It is like swinging from front to back, back to front. The stronger we swing in one direction, the stronger we swing in the other.
So it is important to watch ourselves. To try and be neutral towards things. Yes, live our lives — that is important. But always realise.
My mother used to say it to me. She would say — *itna mat hass, thodi der mein roye phir.* Don’t laugh so much, my son, you will cry shortly.
For me, that sums it up.
-----
The cloud is not you. The cloud is not the sky.
Daddy is sad. Daddy is happy. Daddy is angry. Daddy is excited.
Daddy is moving. The sky is still.
Om Guru.
