3. Ah, Now I See!

ENHANCING YOUR AWARENESS

AH, NOW I SEE! ENHANCING YOUR AWARENESS

A few months back, a man brought his fourteen-year-old son to me. The boy had been expelled from school for hurting another child badly with a piece of glass.

When I asked the child why he did it, he gave me an answer I never expected:

He said, I was bored.

Can you imagine!

At fourteen, the child was so bored with everything that normal life had to offer, that the only thing left to explore was violence!

Extreme boredom is a special disease of our time! By the time a child is five, he or she has already learnt the meaning of the word boredom.

What does it say about them? That they have already finished seeing and doing everything of interest by the time they are five!

Along with depression, hurry and stress, boredom is a gift of our modern lifestyle. It is a typical symptom shown by the urban rich and the highly intellectual.

I asked the boy, How did you manage it? How did you manage to get bored?

To be bored requires a tremendous capacity to ignore life. Boredom is the anesthetic that numbs you to life!

Life is pulsing with life! - if only you open your eyes and see.

Have you noticed how, in moments of great personal danger, the clock seems to slow down? Suppose you have a fall or a motor accident, when you think back, every moment of that event seems to have happened in slow-motion! That's because only at that time have you called up all your faculties of awareness! Only at that time are you 100% mindful,

totally aware of the moment. Only in that moment have you really lived. When you are totally open, you will find that each moment, there is something new, fresh, interesting happening. In our normal routine, days pass into weeks and weeks into months without our even noticing. But when you go on a weekend vacation, the two days seem to stretch into eternity! When you live each moment fully, you can extract the whole juice of life. Now we are just throwing away the juice, we don't know how to enjoy every moment, every drop.

The truth is, we have forgotten how to look at life as it is. We see everything around us through the coloured glasses of our own desires, habits and fears. Today, Quantum Physics goes so far as to say that reality itself is only a construct of our minds. This is what our ancient enlightened masters called maya, illusion. Maya is nothing but the distortion of reality by our own greed and fear.

In our time, we have one more joy-killer: cerebral knowledge. Our lives have become altogether too cerebral. We live too much by intellect, and too little by experience. If you notice, it is the most intellectual people who are the most easily bored. You can say, they have become blind with knowledge, because knowledge makes a theory out of everything. Knowledge tends to fit life into a box of the known and the expected. In other words, we see only what we expect to see. No wonder we find life so boring!

I am not condemning knowledge. Knowledge is essential for carrying on our daily living. It is also not wrong to feel bored. Feeing bored sometimes is normal! Like I said, boredom is a sign of the superior mind. Have you ever seen a bored buffalo? So don't feel guilty about getting bored!

What I am saying to you is, don't substitute knowledge for awareness, for experiential understanding. Don't let your intellectual approach blind you to the daily wonders of life.

To live in awareness every moment doesn't require you to be doing something very different. You don't have to have an accident or take an exotic vacation to truly experience life!

Be very clear: there is no utterly different place to go; there are no tremendously different things to do. It is how you choose to see it! So don't ask me, My life is so normal, so boring. What is there to be noticed with wonder?

You will be surprised. Perfect awareness even in your daily living can show you the wonders of life.

A small story:

A wise man met an old lady on the village road. The lady was coming back to her home after grazing her goats. On her head, she was balancing a pot of water from the river. The wise man thought he would give her some advice.

Why do you still busy yourself with these worldly tasks? he asked her. At your age, you should be leaving aside everything else and turning all your attention upon God!

Who said my attention is not upon God? the lady asked. Even at this moment, when I am talking to you and herding my goats, my awareness is upon the pot I am balancing on my head, and at the same time upon God!

Bring awareness into your daily living - and each day will actually begin to look like a miracle.

Boredom is not a sign of low energy. It is a symptom of the poor utilization of the energy and abilities that you have. Existence has gifted us with boundless energy but we don't know how to use it. We don't channel it into awareness, into creativity, into productivity, into love.

It is a sin not to channel your energy in the proper direction!

You have so much energy circulating inside you; what will happen to it? If you don't utilize it, you will fall directly into tamas (lethargy). Then follows depression and boredom, which prompts children to hurt each other 'just to have some fun'.

It is not just children who tire of their toys in no time. We too are forever bored, forever looking for something new that can capture our interest. That's why any new product introduced in the market is sure to

find takers. The success of a product is directly proportional to the number of bored people in its target market!

We play not only with things; we also play with people. Almost everybody has a standard complaint that their family and friends are the most boring people in the world! We have to keep switching to new people all the time - new friends, a new neighbourhood, a new club, a new boyfriend. These days, people feel the need to change their car and their girlfriend at least once every three months!

We get bored of our surroundings, bored of one another, and ultimately, we get bored of ourselves. The truth is, we find ourselves so boring that we can't spend five minutes alone. We are afraid to see how utterly uninteresting we are. All our socializing is nothing but an escape from ourselves.

Be very clear: life is not boring, only the mind is boring!

It is the mind that reflects the world, and if there is dust on the mirror, how can the world appear fresh?

The mind makes you insensitive to life. It is the nature of the mind to get accustomed to anything. And when you get used to something, you start taking it for granted. That's why the flowers in your own garden are never worth a second look. Your wife is never as interesting as the women you meet outside.

Today, try something new: take a walk in your garden, or on your own street. See how many things you have missed noticing till now.

How many plants are in bloom? Which colours?

How many houses are freshly painted?

What are the sounds you hear?

As you walk, be aware of every step you take.

Be aware of the sun on your face, of the breeze on your skin. Walk with total mindfulness.

You will be amazed to see how much you have been missing all these days! Life is such a precious gift, but you have been taking it for granted. When life itself is so new and changing, how can you possibly be bored? Mindfulness is a great meditation technique.

When you live in awareness, you don't give your mind a chance to start talking! When you enter totally into the present, the mind can't impose the past or future on you. No memories, no plans. Just total awareness of the present moment. Simply with awareness, you can fall into the experience of no-mind. With mindfulness, you can attain enlightenment!

Somebody once asked the Buddha, We have heard so much about your powers! Are you a god? No, answered the Buddha. An avatar (incarnation of god), then? No, answered the Buddha. Then a wizard, a magician? No, answered the Buddha. Then what are you? I am Awake, answered the Buddha.

Preserve your sense of wonder. It is precious!

With awareness, you can see your life for the daily miracle that it is.

Simply with awareness, you can transform your world.

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