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Awareness is the Key

Today while listening to a video from J Krishnamurty, I realised that body has its own movement. Since I had breakfast sometime back, I started feeling sleepy. Although I had a keen interest in listening to the video, it was very difficult for me to concentrate. The body had its own movement. Similarly, the mind has its own movement too. Not necessarily, it will listen to the command of the intellect. It may be busy with its own movements, the memories of the past, or anxieties of the future. Most of the time, the intellect seems to have no control over the movements of the mind or the body. The body and the mind behave like a stubborn child, unwilling to listen to their commands.

Probably, intellect is the favorite child of the divine. It connects to the divine at the earliest when we listen to a Bhajan, read a spiritual book, or talk to a spiritual person, the intellect readily connects to that and Develops an inclination to pursue the path of spirituality. However, the decisions are not under the control of the intellect. Mostly intellect works as a poor slave of the emotional mind and the emotional mind dances to the tunes of the body. Finally, it is the body and its old habit patterns which rule either directly or through the emotional mind. It appears that the body acts as a storehouse for the emotional mind.

Does it mean that the intellectual pursuit of divinity has no value in reality I feel that the beginning point is always intellectual curiosity. Once intellect feels curious to know the reality, it makes efforts to come into touch with those who have traveled on the path either physically or by reading their books. This opens up the closed intellect to new possibilities. These new possibilities appear quite contradictory in the beginning because there are so many missing pieces and whatever way the intellect tries to arrange the experiences and understanding, it does not make sense. However, as one pursues the path with determination, there comes a time when experiences and understandings start making at least some sense, and that is the beginning of a new life. There is no looking back for the intellect after this point in time

However, the journey is far longer than it appears. This understanding takes a lot of time to travel to the emotional mind and body. That takes time because there are so many conscious and unconscious layers of the emotional mind. Even the conscious layers of the emotional mind are so intricately arranged that it is almost impossible for the intellect to understand the emotions. The root cause of this complexity is the way we live since childhood. While perceiving and responding to the situations, we hardly remain aware and keep reacting to the situations based on complex emotions coming from the conscious and unconscious layers. This makes the entire thing very complex, and when the intellect tries to make sense of our emotions, it feels quite puzzled and helpless.

Latest research in the field of neurology has proved that the unconscious mind has deep connections with our body as if our body keeps interacting with the emotional mind in the form of body sensations. Specialists of trauma psychology say that the memories are stored in the body and the body reminds the emotional mind about these traumas in the form of body sensations. These body sensations trigger, the emotional mind and that is the reason why it is very difficult to get rid of the emotional memories.

It’s almost like getting rid of the genetic makeup. As we have seen it’s almost impossible to get rid of the genes. Human beings can’t give birth to a monkey and a monkey can’t give birth to a human being. Similarly, the emotional memories are stored in the form of the body. Sensations cannot be handled so easily by the intellect.

The only way out appears to be living in each moment with awareness. When we live every moment with awareness, rather than reacting to the situations, we observe. when we observe, the complexities of the conscious and the unconscious, emotional mind unravel before us. It gives intellect a chance to understand and work on these complexities. In fact, the very act of observation works like magic, we see our fears, insecurities, hurts, jealousy, ambitions, greed, and every other emotion with equal clarity. We see their futility, and that helps us to drop the unnecessary garbage we have been carrying for so long.

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