in touch with reality....

are we in touch with reality or do we pretend to live in our "projected ideals", whatever they may be.
in one of my early encounters with my master, he listened patiently to me and said, " Sundar, I can hear Jiddu, Vivekananda, Bach, Rand and others from you. But I am yet to hear you."

That hit me.

I was Mr. Borrowed Concepts, trying to shape and fit my life into the reality of others.

for me they were no more than mere concepts, far away from my reality.

He remarked that reading a map was not the same as visiting a place.

My acquired spirituality was a mechanism to cope with my various failures and discontents in life, nothing more. It was intellectual masturbation.

i was trying to justify various events in my life and mask myself behind my "sorrow management" mechanism.

My reality was misery, a dryness of feeling within.....dead automation like movements as i went through life's motions. Meaninglessness, Boredom, Lethargy.Trying to do the "right" things as I perceived them.

There was a discernible gap between the "what is" and the "what i aspired to be" . I believed myself to be many of the things I aspired to be.

A reality check proved otherwise........

i tried to "love" my mom ....i discovered i was innately incapable of it..in the realms of the mind, we only know to use and abuse each other....to fulfil our needs...relax..dont rush to defend...what i discovered is that the mind is intrinsically incapable of love and joy.i found spirituality to be "conflict-free " living which essentially operated from the heart.....a faculty whose basic nature is joy and love....one does not have to try to love....that is pathetic and humiliating.....similarly joy was intrinsic to certain states of being, not a matter of simulation through selective events or efforts of any kind....paradigms and fortresses of perceptions and mental formations within me began to crumble....it was often frightening....as closely held beliefs and concepts collapsed on intense scrutiny....the hollowness of life as i was leading it dawned....as light started coming in, the darkness had to give way..huge pockets of energy released inside me as clogs were cleared.I started breathing.

Nothing conceptual....the experience of freedom within was physical, not even psychological.

Grace..the word acquired a new dimension....Awareness levels deepened bringing with them fresh insights and greater releases.

The process continues......the voyage of discovery ........on the foundation of my realities, rather than concepts....