Being conscious of ourselves and others is as simple as our everyday chores — if only we are receptive to hear the echo and experience things around us. Yet, the apparent thing is we tend to drift to a different level when we are aloof of our own self, or side-step our experience. This takes us to a state of not being mindful of things around us — a lopsided equation. The more we embrace consciousness, the more quickly we connect with the present. On the other hand, when we repel the inner realm of our consciousness, it heightens our ambiguity. It elevates our uncertainty too and depletes our natural language of living in the present-moment.
Conscious awareness is synonymous with mindfulness. It has got nothing to do with what one would think of as consciousness in a given context. This includes a plethora of states we are conscious of, or responsive to, or understand them through our thought processes, feelings, images, dreams, and physical, or other, sensations. You’d think of them all as being beneath and above your psyche, including your corporeal and spiritual perception of being consciously embraced by that radiant, spiritual light that resides in us.
You’d think of consciousness as being equivalent to your mind’s compass and radar too. Granted that this allegory is far too expansive, wide, and also tapered — depending upon our own boundary of thought and outlining of contexts and their diverse, also palpable and not palpable shades and tones. This is not all. When you equate your mind with its processes, conscious or not conscious, it becomes a part of your self-consciousness — just as musical rhythms and their subtleties are to the harmony of the spheres.
For philosophers, and their ilk, consciousness is part of our attentive awareness — a state with ease of access to our mind, body, spirit, or soul. It is not restricted to being awake, or wakeful, where everything surfaces like a dizzy array of cerebral images and experiences — graphic and aural. It is a fact that when we are awake, there are, at times, a number of things that we don’t experience at all, even when we are mindful of oneself and our surroundings.
The core story is we are often unmindful of ourselves and our surroundings. Put simply, we are in a state of deliberate isolation — far not only from the frenzied horde, but also oneself.
Socrates imparted to Plato that the fool-proof alleyway to wisdom was allied to sound reflection, while being a pupil of knowledge, or insight, was the utmost formula of life. Plato, likewise, taught his pupils that each of us wants to be a part of something higher, or a transcendent reality, of which the world we perceive is but a small fragment, although it unites everything into a single harmonious whole.
What this simply means is that each of us wants to scuttle out of the cavern of darkness and ignorance and walk with the torchlight of truth. His celebrated acolyte, Aristotle, typified that our route to knowledge is the lucid, methodical unearthing of the realm around us, along with subtle, or apparent, details that decorate its context.
What does this connote? That it is only when we begin to grasp the ‘core’ of our spiritual mindfulness would we know why a thing — good, or bad — ensued, or why it did not. Or, that every situation that we are challenged with is a new learning, also enriching experience, or understanding, that provides us with the competence to grow, act, and not retort, at the ‘drop’ of a conversation. This exemplifies, no less, the divine reality that each of us is endowed with — the ability to embrace the whole quintessence of mysticism that is all-pervading.
This brings us to yet another connotation — the primary text of the sound and the subtext of its echo, or modern thought. It has been an age-old question, ‘Do such contexts, thoughts, or behaviours influence emotions?’ The answer is they do; and, in more ways than one. Medical research surmises that certain behaviours enhance the level of serotonin, the feel-good chemical, in the brain. For instance, when one is not ‘grounded,’ and depressed, or hear not the sound, or its echo, serotonin levels are much lower than in people who are not depressed. In other words, some behaviours relieve depression; some amplify the condition. It does not require a mind scientist to figure this out, notwithstanding the several ups, and downs, in life.
All we need to, therefore, do is keep ourselves smiling from our heart, not just on our face, while hearing the sound, also the echo, and by investing in oneself, making happiness a pursuit within, and telling ourselves that difficulties don’t last long, but determined folks do. You’d certainly include contemplation, meditation, and art therapy, as a requisite in the progression — they all ease your stress levels, including depression, or moody blues.
Well, the best thing to do is to ruminate of yourself riding a bicycle. Picture the front wheel as your mind, or regulator, with your body and emotions being the back wheel. As you ride the bicycle, try to purge your dejected feelings. Now, come to the cause of your despair. When the front wheel turns full circle, try to latch onto a new thought. One that helps you surmount your unhappy feelings and also comportment. Move on; don’t look back. Look ahead — with optimism, joy and resilience.
You may not ‘cuddle’ the bicycle metaphor, promptly, because it is like conceding things too quickly, or far too hastily to correcting the essence, or framework, of your thought — although it could possibly help you to mend things, or disagreement, make friends, or bridge the gap, among others. Yet, all said and done, and contrary to popular perception, the bicycle paradigm assists us to think without coloured glasses, while accommodating things as they are. It also pertains to the belief that all values, including higher values, are not simply idioms, or aphorisms, but also the fundamental realities of life and existence.
— First published in Madras Courier
