Take a vacation, within

Dear friends,

Ever so often, it’s nice to hang out with our Self.  

The Bhagavad Gita points out that a wise person has the ability to enjoy the bliss of the Self:

prajahāti yadā kāmān sarvān pārtha mano-gatān
ātmany-evātmanā tuṣhṭaḥ sthita-prajñas tadochyate (Chapter 2, verse 55)

Literally translated, When a man completely casts off all desires of the mind and is satisfied in the Self by the self, then he is said to be the one of steady wisdom.

Although, the Self, in the Gita, is not the ‘you’ that you conventionally think of or have spent most of your life identifying with. The Self—with ‘S’ in caps—is not that person based on your interpretation of your own body, mind, personality, your roles in life, your self-worth, or your self-image. You are, most likely, not what you think you are.

What is the Self then?

The real Self per the Bhagavad Gita is just pure awareness. It is untainted by the hues that our body, mind, or intellect have painted it with, over the course of our lifetime. The Self is our neutral awareness of the world.  It is devoid of thoughts, feelings, or opinions—it just is and witnesses the world around. Imagine if time were to stand still. Now imagine yourself sitting within that stillness, resolute and just observing the world. That’s the Self, per the Gita. It’s our witnessing consciousness, or the Sakshi (See a previous post on Sakshi). And, since it’s neutral, it does not judge and is a friend within us, for life.

However, most of the time—mired as we are in the daily demands of life, and the emotions provoked by our body, mind, and intellect as the key actors—we are running away from our Self rather than towards it. We look for answers and solace outside us, rather than within us.

So, let’s take a break and journey within. It does not have to be, and it cannot be done in one sitting. It’s a mindset that needs to be cultivated over time, this desire to be a witness and hang out with our Self. This mindset ultimately helps us learn to recognize that everything we need to know already lies within us. It’s just a matter of allowing ourselves to journey into it and discover it. The right answers hit us in the quietude of our Self than in the hustle and bustle of emotions and thoughts.

Yes indeed, the journey into the Self is a meaningful vacation.

Meaningful, because the epiphanies and the self-knowledge we are bound to gain, take us closer to the person we are, devoid of the layers and layers of interpretations we have created around ourselves and about ourselves—I am stingy, I am stubborn, I can’t change easily, I am depressed. These are machinations or judgments of our mind for the most part. In reality, we just are.

Vacation, because the eventual calm provoked by meeting and making friends with our Self rivals the peace found at a quiet beach or a mountain resort, and what’s more, it’s free! Most importantly, we find that we can live with ourselves easier after meeting and reconciling ourselves with who we truly are.

Ten years back, quietude and the Self were far from my mind. I had a conventional full-time job and being amidst colleagues, friends, and family most of the time was part of my life. Nothing wrong with it, but I was muddling through a conventional life, busy as one can be. How would I after all, kill time without a routine of a 5-day, 8-10 hours a day job? Man, per the social contract, is a gregarious animal and not meant to live marooned in a home.

But there was no way for me to discover meaningfulness without a trek inward, and my situation was enabling me more than anything else to reach outward, stretching myself thin in catering to the demands of a certain life, rather than huddling down and discovering me and what I wanted to do, I realized. So, I paused the muddling, and experimented, in the name of meaningfulness. It was hard taking a definitive stance to quit a conventional job. With the job gone, I took away, in essence, the sun that my life orbited around, and induced some forced isolation.

Devoid of a maddening routine, I was able to pause—scary at first—and address, confront, and befriend meaningfulness or the lack of thereof in the activities I chose to take up in life, and tackle what came to the top of my mind that I might have shoved aside. What is the footprint I want to leave behind on the sands of time? I am still trying to figure it out, but the journey is more meaningful and self-directed now. The journey inward brought me closer to the person I ignored for years. It was nothing dramatic, but a slow unraveling. Subtle changes in thinking, being, and living life over time happened. It’s like getting an oil change such that everything runs smoother without the jerkiness and awkwardness that happens when something does not quite fit or work. The car is the same, it just functions better.

One thing that my vacation inward has taught me over the years is to be gentle on ourselves. We might be constantly living up to some expectations—bane of our existence—of our head or are externally dictated. The reality is, they don’t matter. We are all imperfectly perfect. The Self won’t judge, and if someone does, they are not worth having around.

Can you share an epiphany you have had in the quiet lap of your Self?

So, let’s vacation more, within. We may not come back with the tan of a beach getaway, but we are sure to be more enlightened.

Meaningfully yours,
Anu