To come to the Truth, the universal truth with the capital “T”, we need a total overhaul from the way we perceive things, in short, life. I am not referring to “your” truth or “my” truth, which in reality is just a bundle of ideas, but rather Truth that is beyond the mind, beyond the identity of “I”. All of us – irrespective of our beliefs, views, colors, races, cultures – are plagued by the same “old” and only thing; the mind, that is obscuring us from seeing the Truth.
Irrelevant what shape we took on, how much we have, how good we are (or bad), how we lived our life, how young or old we are, what ideology we subscribed to; we have never, never left the mind. When all are being stripped off from us, what we are left is the mind. The mind, a stranger to us, is the source of all our ideas, emotions and thoughts. None of us ever lived our life without having a unique emotion or thought that is totally unexperienced, new or unheard off – either with ourselves or with those around us. Unless it is a unique spiritual revelation, our lives revolve around the same old ancient recycled stuff brought into newness – happiness is of the same kind, except its degree, misery or stress is the same old feeling, fear is something all of us are so familiar with, not to mention jealousy, grief, and everything under the mind. It is a universal disease that is plaguing each and everyone of us, moment to moment – the mind.
But when we don’t address this mind, and see it as the cause of our conflict and dis-ease, we have the compulsion of seeking something out there to appease our ills. Our entire life will be spent unknowingly, entertaining this addiction through judgments, comparisons, complaints, jealousy, revenge. It will be a life of futility, doing things that are spreading the disease rather that uprooting the ills that are found in our system.
Difficult it is to see the mind as the cause of our suffering. What suffering, you may ask? So long as we don’t see the mind as an imprisonment of all our experiences, we will never see our life as suffering. We may be enjoying ourselves within the prison walls, oblivious to the fact that we are trapped in it. But the soul is ever weary, calling us out to stop and to start finding our way out. Seldom do we hear that inner calling, so preoccupied with seeking and craving for things and relationships, all for the sake of filling up our sense of lack, of emptiness.
To the uninitiated, that is just the norm of life, the unquestioned part of life. To the weary soul, that is the cause of inquiry, the beginning search for the meaning of life. The empty heart is the place to start, not a place to be filled.
The journey of the spirit is not something to be forced. Until and unless the meaning of life becomes meaningless, the world is still a fun place to be in, unaware of the danger that lurks at each turn – not the danger that is found outside, but the danger of an unquestioned mind – the invisible prison.
All revenges, vengeances and wars are fought meaninglessly, for the cause is not to be found in the world.