The Mindful Chill Pill

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR

We live in the best and the worst of times, to use a Dickensian phrase, albeit the great English novelist may not have pictured the gloomy COVID-19 hurricane. To cut a long story short, the foremost thing that each of us could do is making, not just attempting, a constant and resolute effort towards harmonious living and good work-life balance, while heeding to our body signals and using appropriate medical advice and improving the quality and depth of our conscious awareness.

In other words, we’d do well to unlock ourselves from meaningless apprehensions and angst. To achieve this outlook isn’t easy. We have to apparently use our instinctive and intellectual mind with good judgment, forethought and perception. This will propel us to disentangle ourselves from our faulty emotions. This will also help us to understand ourselves as ‘capable-of-being-spiritual individuals’ — and, not just corporeal entities with a fixed mind and proximate, yet ‘distant,’ soul.

Call it the pursuit of mindful consciousness — or, what you may — this attribute is the most potent salutary force that exists within each of us. It supplements and drives every task and process in our body. It augments our natural healing processes with a spurt of curative energy that directly influences every tad of illness. It also leads to nothing short of what we call as ‘maximum’ cure while heralding the surging influence of our expanding mindful consciousness that encompasses everything in us. This comprises of our beliefs, feelings, cells, tissues, or anything that you’d connect to — inside and outside of us. It echoes our conviction — not just emotions.

For most people who ‘dig into’ and are attentive towards their ‘mindfully-conscious-spiritual responsiveness,’ their resolve is apparent — to preserve and embrace the ‘divine in us,’ at all times. The most remarkable part is when one walks the path, or finds the framework of the ‘divine connect’ in them, one begins to understand that the core of their present-moment reality is just as connected to the mind as one’s inner soul. What does this connote? That true awareness, including what philosophers and mind researchers refer to as mindfulness, is the essential crux of our entire being — a transcendent whole that epitomises the breath of life, or prana, juxtaposed by the grammar of all our feelings and emotions.

This appears self-effacing on the surface; but, it is actually profound and intense. This is because no matter the essence of our life experiences, there are certain thought progressions that are not enduring. They are merely fleeting, not long-lasting. It is only when we achieve a stable state of constant, continual awareness of our self, that our conscious awareness becomes long-lasting, and also achieving, as it were.

All of us need a persistent, or long-term, sense of self-consciousness to access the most profound levels of our insentient self — this is, of course, not as simple to achieve as it may seem. It connects to what we wilfully experience, or comprehend, as godly being somewhat restricted to such a self, aside from the threshold of our emotions and feelings from deep within and also the inside out. The best thing we’d all do to surmount the humdrum is to attain a robust state of conscious awareness — one that is in complete fusion with the universe.

Most of us envision the self as subtle. Picture this — without our body, tongue, ear, or eye, we’d not have spoken, or heard another’s voice, or verbalised anything. There would be no ‘contact,’ or ‘bumping into’ acquaintances, too — owing to a distressing lack of sensory experience. We would have felt there’s nothing to know, or question. To envisage such a state is awfully disturbing — because, we are so used to talking, listening and mulling over almost everything. The living body is the foundation of such a contact — not just with your loved ones, friends, colleagues, associates etc., but also oneself.

New research suggests that all our troubles not only exist in our mind, and emotions, but also our genes. Our genes predispose us to anxiety, depression, misery and a host of other illness states. Yet, in the midst of paradox, there is a silver lining — not all unpleasant conditions, such as anxiety, fear, or depression, are totally awful. They have a significant biological function — to protect us from harm. Just think of it. A person, who may have lost the ability to feel pain, may injure oneself with disastrous consequences, while not being aware of it.

Balance works best in every situation — good, bearable, bad, or ugly — provided one is conscious of their emotions and expresses them with a positive intent. When one suppresses their feelings, they will not only bottle up negative energy, they will also use far too much active, bustling energy to keeping their distresses in check, while not being able to dealing with their anguish effectively. When they, likewise, endeavour to ‘beat’ their agony from deep within by way of powerful positive emotions and without unwanted baggage — from the centre to the periphery and slowly out of their system — they will begin to feel better than before. They will also be able to ‘purge’ their disquiet, stress, anguish or fear, with good, positive outcomes.

Mindfulness conveys to us that our strong unified logic of ourselves is primarily a reflection in the mirror of consciousness. This does not lead to the idea of ‘only us,’ or ‘I-me-myself.’ This simple virtue of reasoning connotes a definitive conviction, or buoyancy — even when we fail to identifying ourselves through our rational minds. Mindfulness does not alter the perimeter of our thought, yes — it changes how and what we see, including our view of our mind and our world. It provides autonomy from our so-called ‘special’ identities. It emerges for a good reason. It also empowers us to integrate optimised positivity in the mindful radar of our soulful expanse.

— First published in The Himalayan Times, Nepal