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Padma

Piercing the Blur

There is no way to deny it, we have become addicted to the blurry swirling lights of illusion that feed our ego with a never ending stream of sensory delight. We feel the need to diversify our minds to the point of ineffectiveness, darting from one task to the next instantly and without diversion. We are addicted to technology, we are addicted to multi-tasking, and we are addicted to the taste of success. We'd rather starve our body than starve our ego and although we feel the crater of a hole it creates inside our soul, we simply cannot resist. We live in a blur; a fog that keeps us from knowing and understanding the truth. Because of this, our mind is shattered into pieces and acts like a spoiled child refusing to give in until it has what it wants. This is the current spiritual dilemma of mankind, and it poses a tremendous threat to our spiritual advancement.

Where there was once devotion, there is now diversification. Rather than make the difficult choice of consistant mediation, prayer, or compassion, we take the easy turn towards instant gratification. If you pay attention, you can feel it right now as you are reading this. For some of you, your mind is buzzing about how quickly you can read and move on to the next web page. You might be thinking about checking your email or your text messages while simultaneously worrying about something else entirely. We hardly notice that our minds have moved from a single one-pointed focus to resemble light entering a gem and split into a thousand beams. How powerful can we be with such feeble control of our minds?

The ego grasps at everything it can, from one pleasure to the next. Its desires are never fulfilled, and as a result you might find yourself feeling a thirst that can never be quenched. Most of us know, or at least feel at a subconscious level, that the path we walk will only lead us to destruction, however we are caught in the current. I've read books among books that speak of this, and yet its truth never really hit me until I was ready. I felt it today and upon noticing my mind zipping around I felt an immediate urge to focus. I had to visually imagine that I was reigning in my mind. Can you believe that? Our mind is so powerful that we have to work mentally and physically to reign it in. Depending on how long you have gone without focus, this action alone can be exhausting! So again I say, what are we to do in opposition?

Although I do not hold the answers, I look to others that have said all that is needed to be said. I read again the passages I remember and those I have not. However, the feeling deep inside of me is one that keeps repeating over and over again:

Were I to take the energy from my multitasking necessity and sensory craving and reinvest it into spiritual fulfillment, I could tear an incredible hole through the fabric that binds us to suffering.

Like I said, I don't have all the answers, but now I am certainly aware of the problems.

The power of addiction

As I continue on this path of emergence, I've been heavily re-evaluating my lifestyle choices as well as examining the choices I have made in the past. What I find really interesting about myself, is that I always have this "need for a project" type of mentality. Now I can't figure out if this is a result of an addictive personality (what is this anyway?) or the result of a passion for life itself. Early on in my life, I was unable to control this compulsion and made the easy and ignorant choices of drugs and alcohol, followed by addictions to technology, and even addictions to learning. Lately, I have been addicted to fitness, but I fail to see how that's a bad thing. However, I had a sort of epiphany today when it hit me, "If I took the fascination and addiction I have for life, and applied it to meditation and union with the divine, I could cut a lifetime or more off my path to the summit!" Just think about it, how much time do we put into meaningless activities because they promise to make us feel good? Don't those moments when we connect with God give us the same or a better feeling? I consider it a sort of doubling our efforts because we can put our mental, emotional, and spiritual energy into something that not only will return the favor, but can also provide us with more motivation and inspiration.

Now, what does this mean to you and I? For many of us, we have jobs and families that we owe an obligation to. Sure, these are wordly obligations, but to goal of maintaining karmic peace and/or removing ourselves from karmic consequences requires us to make positive action that would not hurt others. So although we cannot quit life and go into a cave and devote ourselves to meditation, we can take the urges we get to jump into something and instead transfer that power into meditation. I don't see there being any reason we cannot push ourselves to get the most out of our short lives as possible, both for ourselves and our families, but if we can remember to transfer just a little bit of that energy into our own introspection, we can cut years off our path to enlightenment. I've found that every bit of time I invest in my spiritual future, is paid back with more insight and motivation than I can handle, and maybe that's the key.

A lesson on impermanence

For years I have tried to fight off the shroud of impermanence in my own life, which in turn has led me down a path of frustration and built up anger. Although I have always known that impermanence is the only permanent thing in this world, I tried to ignore it hoping that it would not touch me. Of course this thinking is misguided and perilous, but it seems that the human nature, specifically the ego, fights its harder as you near the summit of understanding. Although, I've come a long way on that journey, I've still much further to go. However, lately as I've more closely aligned myself with the universe and in turn have struggled less, I've slowly been able to lose the grasp that impermanence has had over me. This was especially true on a recent weekend in which my usual reaction over difficulty was replaced with a relaxed and distant reaction which surprised even me.



I won't bore you with the details, but I was finishing a project on my car that I had been putting off for weeks. As I started my work, I could tell immediately that it was not going to go well or according to plan (isn't that the truth with everything?). There were scratches involved, drilling, and even an incident with the keys being locked in the trunk. Rather than panic and start worrying about damage or inconvenience, I kept reminding myself that regardless of the outcome my life would be fine and that material things can always be replaced. A year or so ago I would have been stressing out and my tension would have made the situation drastically worse. However in this case, my calmness and big picture view of the situation helped me overcome the obstacles and succeed in my task.



It is so easy to annotate every single bump or scratch our possessions get over the course of us possessing them. That used to be me. When you take that perspective, your possessions end up possessing you and you end up living a life of neurosis and addiction to quick fixes. There is an alternative to this though, which can lead you down a road of peace. We all know that the things we are lucky enough to have, will eventually be lost, stolen, will break, or just won't work anymore. Using this realization, rather than logging the incidents in which this happens, we can do the opposite and be thankful for another lesson in impermanence. Remember, no matter what your spiritual beliefs may be, we all know that we cannot take anything with us to the grave. In my case, when I scratched my car I understood that eventually my car will be scratched with my help or without it. Instead of frustration, I was just thankful in a silly sort of way, for another lesson in impermanence. Try this in your life when things go wrong and I bet you'll start taking ground back from the things that own you. Life is too short to worry about silly things.