Normally, I would chose to talk about where we as a society have gone wrong, but not so much today. I have been reading the book Siddhartha and in it, there have been many questions that it has brought up for me personally.
In the chapter, Awakening, it starts to go into the awakening that happened to Siddhartha. I have pondered these few sentences for a while,
"Slowly the thinker went on his way and asked himself: What is it that you wanted to learn from teachings and teachers, and although they taught you much, what was it they could not teach you? And he thought: It was the Self, the character and nature of which I wished to learn. I wanted to rid myself of the Self, to conquer it, but I could not conquer it, I could only deceive it, could only fly from it, could only hide from it. Truly, nothing in the world has occupied my thoughts as much as the Self, this riddle, that i live, that I am one and am separated and different from everybody else, that I am Siddhartha; and about nothing in the world do I know less than about myself, about Siddhartha.
The thinker, slowly going on his way, suddenly stood still, gripped by this thought, and another thought immediately arose from this one. It was: The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing--I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Brahman, Atman, I wished to destroy myself, to get away from myself, in order to find in the unknown innermost, the nucleus of all things, Atman, Life, the Divine, the Absolute. But by doing so, I lost myself on the way."
I pondered these two paragraphs for more than a week. And I read it and reread it again and again. What does that mean to me, how can I put these thoughts to work for me? So, after much thinking and meditating on it, I came up with this: We spend our lives trying to learn the teachings of others who are great. Our teacher, our parents, they can all teach us something, but, what can we learn from them about ourselves. They can teach us right from wrong, how to balance our checkbooks (which is our duty as a parents to teach our kids that for sure), but they can't teach us who we are. We then spend much of our lives trying to figure it out, we hide from ourselves, mostly because we are afraid of who we might be, but, we don't ever really take the time to find out.
I can say that not everyone will really find themselves. It takes a lot of time spending time alone with our thoughts, not with our music, in our heads, finding out what really makes us who we are. It goes back to the question Are you lonely when you're alone? If so, what don't you like about yourself?
So then, what after I find what I don't like about myself? What do I do with this information? I think we have a choice between either accepting it, or making the decision to change it. At least, that's what Thomas and I think about it. Interesting indeed.
Another thing that has got me, was the goal in my life, is to live in the present. The way I see it is this. I can not change the past. I cannot spend my life wishing for a better past, it's not going to happen. The future is anyone's bet. Que Sera Sera, what will be, will be. I can spend the time I have here on this planet, living right now. The only thing that matters is Right NOW!! This very moment. Life is a series of moments and I want to make sure that my mind is present for all of them. To be able to enjoy this gift of life that I have. I don't know what the future will bring, but, I want to make sure that whatever it is, I'm here for it, and that's the best that I can do.
The next thing that the book talked about was listening to the voice inside our heads. I know, voices in your head are for crazies, but, it had more to do with the voice of ourselves, within ourselves. Why do we do the things we do? Would we do those silly things if we stopped and listened? I still think that we could wipe out war in one generation if we taught our kids to meditate, and they did it everyday. I know that I should do it more, but, I am either lazy or just don't make the time for it. Mostly, I just don't make the time for it. But, when I do, I find that my mind is better at making decisions. There is much that I have to do that I really don't want to, but, I must. But, I will think about that later, right now though, I have an angel to sit with for a while. Peace :)
No comments:
Post a Comment