When we look back, some of our childhood reactions seem so stupid. That crush on a friend at school and thinking about that crush for hours, that competition with friends to come first in the class, grief when another student comes first and we feel that he has been favoured by the teachers, the anxiety about scoring well in the examination, worry about the career, what will happen in future, will we be able to get a job, the apprehensions about a life partner, how will we live without friends, and so on. We had thousands of apprehensions and worries, and when we recall them, we just laugh at ourselves and our immaturity.
What if our present worries and anxieties are also equally laughable? During childhood, all the worries appeared very real. But as we gained exposure, most of those became meaningless. Maybe, as we get more exposure, our present worries will also become meaningless. But how do we know? Health crises, office politics, job uncertainty, uncertainty about the future of the children, parents' health, and relationship crises: all look very real. We didn't cook them up in our minds. These are real threats to survival.
But how do we know whether these are problems or opportunities? Often, people become more cautious about their diet and health after facing the first health crisis. Often, people upgrade their skills when they face challenges in their present job. People often feel happier after changing jobs. Often, people feel better after saying goodbye to an unfulfilling relationship. Often, people in their 40s know their 20-year-old selves never could have dreamed of who they are today. I mean to say that what looks like a problem today may actually be an opportunity. Maybe it looks like a problem from our limited frame of life, but as we grow and as our frame of life widens, the same problem looks like an opportunity.
But the question really is: how do we make ourselves understand that what worries us is actually not a problem but an opportunity? Our existence is dominated by thoughts. When we sit in Vipassana, we get to know how difficult it is to perform apparently the simplest task: " to just be aware of the breath and nothing else". It takes three to four days of constant effort just to get a few moments of uninterrupted awareness of the breath; the thoughts interrupt in between. Even after gaining that awareness of the breath, when we observe sensations in different parts of the body as a habitual pattern, we tend to react. When the legs hurt, we tend to spread the legs to get relief from the pain. When we feel itching, our hand naturally reaches that place. When we feel subtle vibrations deep inside our body, we want more and more of the same. It is difficult to stay in a witness mode.
Not so that we can't stay still. So many of us practice to remain still for hours. But it happens when the conscious brain controls. Our conscious brain commands the body not to sleep because we have to study for an examination. Or when we focus on a target and the conscious mind controls the body to break its habit patterns to achieve that task. In Vipassana, the conscious mind has no target to achieve. That's why it has nothing to control. The old unconscious habit pattern manifests in the body as sensations. There is no target for the conscious mind to control. That's why we tend to react to these sensations naturally. However, the conscious mind has a subtle awareness of its connection beyond the mind, and when it connects to that, it gains the capacity to stay as a witness.
Generally, we live moment after moment in the domain of thoughts. The conscious mind has awareness of a fixed framework of life, and it controls the unconscious mind to achieve the targets it has set in the domain of the known. Sometimes the unconscious mind's habit patterns take over, and we get distracted. This game keeps going on almost every moment. Achievers have more control of their conscious mind, while losers are more driven by their instincts. However, in this game of success and failure, we hardly ever get to challenge the fixed framework. We rarely turn on witness mode. Mostly, even the 10-day Vipassana camp is nothing more than a short adventure. For the conscious mind to become aware of that connection and switch on witness mode in daily life is not easy, because years of conditioning in the conscious and unconscious mind become a major obstruction. Turning on that witness mode requires constant awareness of that connection. Only when that awareness is constant can we break free of the fixed framework. We get to see that problems are actually opportunities. Otherwise, while trapped in the fixed framework of life, the mind often makes us experience pain when we face problems.
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