Shhh.....

From the time I wake up, the mind starts running it's marathon of thoughts. Thoughts about something that bothered me yesterday or a few days back, or the things I plan to do today, or things that I don't want to do, thoughts about someone, about my feelings associated to something or someone from the immediate or distant past, followed by the worries about the future, today, tomorrow, few days, months, years from now. And then a relieving 'huh' sigh, a brief moment of silence in my mind. So brief a moment, maybe a second or two or sometimes even less, and then back again, I open the flood gate to the thoughts. Next I start adding some gatorade to it - check my phone - messages, FB, mail, work mails. More thoughts, some pleasant, some unpleasant, some causing more stress, and some triggering more thoughts...and there I go again.

I've trained them so well for so long, that now they are no longer under my control. They just run and run, and I let them run me crazy.

That's why whenever I go to a calm place, top of a hill, by a lake, or a temple, mosque, church, or get a massage, any where quiet, where it quiets my mind, even if it's for a few moments, I feel such relief, followed by a surge of a happy feeling, followed by a few moments of feeling like a warrior who can conquer the world right now, and then followed by thoughts again - what I can do, what I should do, what I shouldn't....and there goes my mind, back again on the tread mill.

In those few precious moments of silence, the mind is empty, nothing absolutely nothing, no agenda, and I am simply living, just breathing, just being, reposing in the Self. I realized how just a few moments of empty mind, clears away the clutter, creates space for new ideas to flourish. Just emptying the mind, brings a sense of relaxation and clarity.
A calm mind leads to an empty mind. An empty mind is a clear mind. A clear mind is an open and alert mind. An open and alert mind is a creator.

How as children, we are born with a brand new mind, no concepts. And then as soon as we learn to communicate, concepts start forming, and we start judging everything from then on, that comes in front of our eyes, based on the concepts. New things appear, and we update our concepts. Soon we train ourselves to stop acting, and start reacting. Acting is responding involuntarily through our very nature. Reacting is processing the scene in front of us, based on our concepts, forming and opinion, and then acting. The concepts harden every minute as things, people, situations appear in front of us.

Even when I am still, oceans of thoughts rise and fall inside of me. Lives I've lived, and wanted to live, are lived within my mind. I long to run away from my mind. I long for a moment of silence.

This Thanksgiving I gave the most precious gift to myself. I silenced my mind. I took an Art of Silence course. I treated my Self, my mind as a baby, coaxed it, and it let me in, let me deep within, let me cater to all that had accumulated, let me bid them farewell, let me silence it, let me rest in peace.

The bliss that followed cannot be described in words, it can only be experienced. I am now able to be a spectator rather than a (re)actor of my thoughts.

I experienced - "You are solidified silence, awareness. A thousand hours of speech cannot equal one glance: A hundred glances cannot equal a minute of silence - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar"