Today in the KFI discussions, there was a discussion around the escapes and reality. When we come to this world, we have a fundamental fear of being alone. By the time we develop the capacity to examine that loneliness, we get used to the escapes. Society tells the child to seek security in family, money, power, knowledge, and social approval. We get used to these escapes. As and when we face a problem with any of these escapes, we become worried and soon jump to get hold of another escape.
I don't know whether we can ever deal with the fundamental fear of being alone unless we examine what "being alone" is. How many of us even try that for even a few moments? The moment we are sitting idle, we pick up our mobile and search for a social media site or a YouTube video, call a friend, or plan a trip. When I first attended the Vipassana camp in 2012, I was away from all forms of communication, electronic and physical, for the first time in my life. That's a very different experience. You are completely with yourself. You are sitting all day long, observing yourself. It's not easy to handle even that much loneliness. Generally, we don't take even a minute to find a way out.
There is a greater problem than being alone. Even if somebody decides to examine loneliness, one's mind will generally be full of thoughts. A chain of thoughts: fear after fear, one memory after another. It is not going to take us anywhere. We will imagine and create thousands more thoughts. But the real examination begins when we step outside the domain of thought. We generally remain in the domain of thought, and throughout our lives, we hardly ever get a minute away from thoughts. But the real culprit lies in the domain of the unconscious: the habits we have formed over time, or maybe throughout our lives. Whenever we encounter something unpleasant, such as a person we don't like, the unconscious mind brings all accumulated memories into consciousness, and we start to feel uncomfortable. The old memories, coupled with the present experience, strengthen our unconscious Samskars, and the next time we see such a sight, our reaction will be stronger.
Unless we observe the samskars and address them, we will not be able to face deep insecurities. The problem is that we can't enter the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is not capable of examining the storehouse of the unconscious mind. These memories are hard-wired in our bodies. That's why, even when we sit alone, we are generally engaged in a chain of thoughts, leaving hardly any chance to witness the Samskars in the unconscious mind. Theoretically, even if we consider the entire chain of thought in the conscious mind and conclude that all our conscious fears and insecurities are our mental stories, the Samskars in the unconscious mind will bring us back to the starting point. There is no other way than observing sensations in different parts of the body to see what goes on in our unconscious mind. The unconscious mind interacts with the conscious mind through these sensations.
Only when they examine the whole of the domain of the conscious as well the unconscious alike and at the same time, and see clearly that thoughts come and go, one after the other, and the sensations in diofferent parts of our body, plesanat as well as the unpleasant keep changing, and nothing is permanent, we will get to realise that all our fears and insecurities are the result of our ignorance. Due to ignorance, we have developed a craving for certain thoughts and sensations and an aversion to others. As we see this clearly, we become aware of the eternal truth that nothing is permanent. We develop the courage to be alone. We get to sit with the self and see the thoughts and sensations, coming and going. When we sit silently, examining the thoughts and sensations coming and going, like space watching the clouds, we come to realise the reality of space. We realise that all our fears and insecurities are the result of craving for a particular cloud or aversion to another. But why would the space crave a particular cloud or fear losing it? It knows that clouds keep coming and going. Why would a wave be afraid to die, when it knows that it is and has been a part of the ocean, and will dance on the floor of the ocean again in the form of another wave, and even if not, it has always been and will always be a part of the same ocean? From a slightly different perspective, there is no wave. It is just the same ocean dancing in different forms.
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