A friend said this on a phone call today morning. It was an interesting discussion.
It’s true, isn’t it? Think about everyone you know in your life, is there anyone who you really 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 like? And compare that with the love for your child. The love we experience for children is in most cases, quite unconditional. And that is not because we are capable of unconditional love, oh no not at all – but because we actively reject and deny every aspect of our child which we don’t like.
We allow the parts that we accept as ‘part of being a child’, of course, most parents go crazy at how naughty their kids are, how they drive them up the wall, etc etc, but no, that’s not what I’m talking about. As parents we actively reject the idea that our child may be the sort of person we wouldn’t really have liked hanging out with. It is an area we’re too afraid to explore. ‘I really don’t like you, but I love you because I gave birth to you’ – is really not an option. Some people, when they painfully realise that their adult children are people they don’t like, just reject the child outright as a waste of investment. Others try to force them into becoming what they thought they always were. “You’ve changed so much, your friends are brainwashing you.”
Even scientific studies show that parents have the least perspective on the true personality of their child. Because to allow yourself to love your child unconditionally, you’ve created and fallen in love with an illusion that does not exist. The person you are in love with is a figment of your imagination, not your child. Scary right?
It doesn’t have to be. If we felt free to dislike the person our child was, and didn’t expect the child to be what we wanted them to be, then we can teach them freedom and teach them how to respect differences between people – something that is starkly missing in the society today. And our children will also grow up completely self-assured that they are loved no matter who they are, and no matter how much their parents dislike their personalities or disapprove of their choices. Imagine that kind of freedom
Some years ago I saw a couple sitting together. They weren’t exactly young, but the way they were interacting with each other, it looked like they hadn’t been married a long time, maybe 3-4 years. There was so much love in the way they looked at each other. Then a friend mentioned they were married for 30 years.
THIRTY YEARS??? I’ve seen a lot of couples that love each other; no matter how deep the love, it always gets ‘old’ – familiarity sets in, there are aspects of the each other they’ve given up on, etc – what I was witnessing was impossible based on what I had seen thus far. So I had to investigate. I asked her what the secret was. “Never shut down to the other” she said. She gave a few examples but I don’t think I really ‘got it’, back then. As I’ve applied it over the years, I understand a little bit more.
It depends on what you’re looking for in a relationship. If security and longevity is your primary goal, scroll away, this is not for you. But if experiencing love more deeply and more powerfully, and connecting with your partner on deeper levels is what you seek, I have never found better advice than this. The prerequisite is that you are with a person who respects your space and heart, of course, and that you are capable of doing the same.
But the truth is, no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try, you ARE going hurt and get hurt. Normally we ‘shut down’ – build our walls and conclude ‘this person will never change’ and toughen up so that we don’t get hurt. But then you cannot feel the love that deeply anymore either. The door that lets in the pain is the same door that lets in the love. So you feel ‘settled’ in the relationship and there is hardly any pain anymore, but you also forget the intense love you experienced once.
So this Valentines Day, let there be pain. If you want to love more deeply, keep your heart open, knowing that there will be pain, for sure, but it is worth it, and you are strong enough to stand back up. Breathe it in, breathe it out, and hold it in the light of your love. And watch the magic come back to life again.
Happy Valentine’s Day my dear ones. May there be Love.
I never thought I’d write an article on love. It is a topic too vast, and in my opinion a realm where the learning never stops. Nobody can ever claim to completely understand or ‘master’ love, as I see it. So I always thought that writing on it would be a pompous, self-deluding exercise. But here I am anyway, in response to a distraught friend who asked me ‘What is Love?’ at the end of a relationship. It is a question I have asked myself too, so I don’t claim to know the answer. But a little clarity has been there, which is what I attempt to share here.
Emotional abuse is so normalized these days, that most abuse is misconstrued as love. What’s worse, when one tries to call it out, one is often accused of rejecting the other’s love. But the differences are stark and clear, if you’re trying to look for them. So this isn’t meant to be a guide on how to love – that takes years of self-work and healing – but a guide for those trying to figure out if a particular relationship is loving or abusive. Check by studying yourself, not the other person, because love is about giving more than receiving.
You Want to Surrender, Not Control
Control and manipulation are signs of the absence of love and heart energy in a relationship. It means that the person is coming from a space of fear and lack – and someone functioning from that space is not in a position to love.
In abuse, the other person is held responsible for one’s feelings. Osho said that when in love, during conflict the person thinks that there must be something wrong with them. The moment one thinks that there is something wrong with the other person, it is a sign that there is no love anymore. And this is my experience too. Love is acceptance of who you are, as you are, while at the same time calling out your delusions or mistakes – but it does not accuse you or put you down.
You Want to Give
In love, you give for no reason other than it makes you happy and the other isn’t expected to be grateful or to acknowledge how much you do. The statement “I did so much for you, and this is what I get in return” is a clear sign of a lack of love. That was business. There was an investment, and now you’re upset because you didn’t get appropriate returns on your investment. You could be in a relationship for years, and you’d never feel like the relationship was a dead investment – even if it ends badly – because you were never investing in the first place. When doing things for the other makes you happy, then there is no baggage attached to that giving.
What Can I Do for You?
It is always during a conflict of interest when the true colors of love come out. In a loving relationship you will find that both the people are trying to ask ‘what are you going through, and how can I make this right?’. In an abusive relationship, both are defending their positions and accusing the other of not doing enough. Or worse, telling the other person how they need to change.
You Seek a Win-Win
You know how all those stories circulate, about women listing out all the mistakes their husbands have made over the last decade, in every fight? Well that’s normalized abuse for you. It is a sign of an abusive relationship where one demands and the other eventually gives up on trying to comply, or keeps trying, failing, and feeling inadequate. Love seeks resolution so that there can be a win-win – where both partners can be comfortable with a solution. When it’s ‘my way or the highway’, take it for granted that that is not love being manifested there.
Another consequence of seeking a win-win is that it makes it easier to be more forgiving of the other’s mistakes, and also makes you kinder when you’re both hurting.
You Don’t Want to Hurt the Other
Anyone reading this statement is likely to go, ‘Oh I never want to hurt another person’ – and if you just thought that, you’re not only wrong, but you also need to work more deeply with your level of self-awareness. There is a tendency to want to hurt the other person when you don’t get what you want from them, and even more if they are hurting you. Sensitive people are usually more aware of this in others and can feel either deeply traumatized or infuriated when they sense this.
Observe yourself carefully. If you feel like hurting the other person when you feel wronged – either by saying something nasty or mean, or by doing something – even hurting yourself – to bring about pain and/ or guilt in the other, you are not only not coming from love but also being highly manipulative and abusive.
An Apology is Easy. And Meaningful
I think apologies need a separate article on their own, I’ve seen so many people completely screw this up. But you’ll find that when there is love, this comes naturally. When you realize that you’ve hurt the other person, you tend to automatically feel sorry to have put the other person through pain or distress, and you promise yourself that you won’t repeat it. And then you don’t.
“Sorry, but…. ” is not an apology. There may sometimes be an explanation to help the other understand why you acted a certain way and clear the ‘why did you do this to me?’ question in their minds. But there’s a big difference between an explanation and an excuse. An explanation says this is what happened, and I’m really sorry I acted this way and it caused you pain, and an excuse says I’m sorry, but this is why I acted this way, I couldn’t have helped but act like this (and often – if you had acted differently, my words/ actions would not have been hurtful).
There are no rules
We have a tendency to attach rules to love. If it’s true love, it’ll last forever, if it is true love, we’ll never fight, or we’ll never sleep without resolving a fight, true love means never giving up no matter how painful it gets, and so on and so forth. You know what, none of these are true. Nothing is. Love is not bound by a bunch of belief systems. If you’re trying to analyse whether someone else has experienced love, you’re wasting your time and need to find something better to do. If it is your own relationships you’re trying to assess by these standards, let go. Do the best you can, and leave the rest to God. The heart opens bit by bit when the time comes, and you will find yourself more loving as time passes, if you are sincerely working on yourself.
And lastly,
Here’s a video I fell in love with. Botton talks about how love is not ‘natural’ and needs to be learned and taught. Being in a relationship is about patiently teaching the other how to help you feel loved. And patiently and sincerely learning how to make the other feel loved. It is one of the most beautiful videos I’ve ever come across on relationships and I hope you enjoy it too.
What about forgiving ourselves? How do we forgive ourselves for the decision we made?
Forgiving ourselves becomes an issue if we think that external situations control our capacity to be happy. If one choice could have made you happier and one less happier, then you are better off with the ‘wrong’ choice, because that wrong choice will help you learn much more effectively that choices – and external circumstances don’t have anything with your capacity for joy. When you realise this, forgiveness becomes redundant.
The second aspect is, if you are focused on a spiritual pathway, you are changing and growing everyday. So the person who made that wrong decision is not even who you are anymore, so who are you holding the grudge against?
I needed to hear this. But what if the decision is something not replaceable? Of course, all decisions are not replaceable, but for example, if we lose one job, we can get another job, or if we lose one lover, we can get another one. But what if the decision we made is something that we can never replace, then the it comes with regret. Yes it is true that we need to realise that external circumstances do not make us less happy… (ultimately), but how do we deal with such regret? Just see it as a “lesson”?
Then you ‘integrate it’ into your life. Ultimately we never chase things, we only chase how those things make us feel. So ask yourself what feeling you were chasing and remind yourself that you can feel that way without an external trigger
Hello Ashwita. Is marriage truly necessary. Concepts like – better half, one’s partner completing oneself and the Hindu concept of Marriage being one of the samskaras. Are they to be followed or is it OK and perhaps good in a certain way to not marry.
I have also heard a spiritual teacher say something like – some people come to this world to fulfill a bigger purpose and they aren’t meant to have a family.
Please share what according to you is the right perspective on this.
Things like ‘better half’, ‘completing oneself’ etc come from a space of deep unfulfillment and rarely bring sustainable joy. Ultimately, it is simple, vinasha kaale vipreet buddhi – when your time is bad, you’ll take all the wrong decisions, shun people who can guide you in the right direction and support you, and turn to those who will mislead you.
You ask ‘is marriage necessary’, and I ask ‘for what’?
As an antidote for loneliness, marriage is useful for about 2 years if you find the right partner, after which you will find yourself back at where you started. Ultimately you are lonely because you have abandoned yourself. The presence and the distraction of a partner can mask this for a couple of years. If you have a child after 2 years, you can mask it for longer, but you are only masking. Of course, if you marry the wrong partner you will simply be miserable and lonely for many years, so the point is defeated.
Many people think that life will become easier after marriage as there will be someone to share responsibilities. More often than not this is rarely the case. If anything, marriage doubles your responsibilities. If you want a man so that you’ll have someone who will.. I don’t know, pay the bills, drive you around, or if you want a woman who will maybe cook for you, do your laundry, take care of your parents – please, just learn to do all this yourself. Be the man/ woman you want to marry first, because if you don’t, any situation where your partner is incapable of fulfilling these needs will tear your marriage apart.
If you want a partner to raise children with, it may not be a bad idea, provided you find someone who will last with you peacefully until they’re old enough. Quite a hard task these days, but it may be worth trying. A child being raised in a toxic household is probably not a good idea, and single parents might just do a better job, so again it is debatable from this perspective.
If you want to ensure you will not end up alone in your old age, then it is pointless because chances are high your spouse will die 10-20 years before you do, your children will likely be abroad or far away and meet you once a year. If your spouse is alive, you will probably not be able to stand each other after a few decades of rubbing each other the wrong way – look at any couple that’s been together for 3+ decades and you’ll know what I mean. Very rare to find people who are genuinely happy spending time with each other and capable of talking to each other deeply after spending decades of growing apart and ignoring each other while they focus on kids and on making money. So in such a case it is better to simply marry when you start getting older so you find someone you are actually compatible with at 50 and someone who looks fit enough to last another 3 decades with you.
To increase the population and make sure human race is not wipedout from the face of the earth, marriage is a useful tool, yes – although this is a purpose that is long gone, what with 7.5 billion of us threatening to wipe out all other species instead.
To keep an order in the society, maybe marriage is a fairly useful tool… probably. As a therapist especially in India I have very little regard for marriage as I have seen marriage more as a tool which pushes people to have extra-marital affairs. People stay in marriage for the sake of the society and go have relationships with whoever they want, too afraid to be honest and open (even with themselves) about what they really want. This is slowly changing but anyone who is open and supportive enough to have friends who share their personal stories knows how rampant this still is.
Is marriage truly necessary if we want spiritual growth? No. For spiritual growth, nothing is truly necessary except brutal honesty with oneself and utmost sincerity and dedication towards the path. Everything else that you need to develop, the universe will bring into your life and you will surrender because you will know that that is right at that point in time, no matter what others, the society or the sacred books tell you. (Note that this is a dangerous thing if one is not brutally honest and completely sincere with oneself because then one can follow one’s wild fantasies in the name of ‘doing what feels right’ – this is what many of Osho’s disciples did and went completely haywire, and I still see a lot of people on the spiritual pathway doing this)
So – am I saying marriage is completely unnecessary? Well, yes and no. Is it necessary? I don’t believe it is, no. Unless maybe you’re going to need the paperwork or moving to Dubai where you will get arrested if you live without marriage, or unless you are having children and your country needs the parents to be married. If you do find a person you love deeply, who loves you back equally deeply and you both want to commit to each other, then marriage can be a truly beautiful, divine thing. But as with most divine things in the world, this is usually just defiled and used as a means to a whole lot of other ends.
Bottom-line? If you meet someone with whom giving seems natural and effortless, and it makes you want to spend the rest of your life making that other person happy, do it. Otherwise, take a good hard look at what you are really seeking and whether marriage really is going to fulfill that need.
As a therapist, I think the largest part of my work involves telling people that it is OK to be going through what they are going through. Our society has become so afraid, so unaccepting of negativity today that it is breaking people down.
I think one of the most extreme cases I heard recently was when a girl who had just lost her boyfriend, told me that 3 days after his death her parents told her to ‘get over it’.
We just can’t take negative emotions anymore – in ourselves or others – and want to snap out of it as quickly as possible. To make matters worse, we have all this propaganda from ‘positive thinkers’ that you choose to be miserable and that you can choose to feel better. If only.
Step 1: Reverse the Approach
Most people that come to me are grappling, trying to stop feeling so miserable and negative. The harder they try, the harder it gets. Now picture this – if you’re walking down a street and see a few stray dogs, what would be the smartest thing to do? Run? A smart person knows that running isn’t the solution. In fact, the faster you run, the more dogs will chase after you. It’s the same for negativity.
Stop trying to feel better. Let the pain come. Contrary to what you think, you will not remain depressed for the rest of your life or cry for days. That happens when you resist your pain. For once, let the pain come. Don’t resist it.
Step 2: Face It
Depression, anxiety, fear, and other ‘negative’ emotions are most commonly just a sign of a healthy mind. Of course when a person loses a job they’re going to feel afraid and unsettled. Of course when they lose someone they love they are going to feel lost and in pain. It is a sign that you are feeling. It’s natural!
What makes it permanent is our refusal to acknowledge and feel it – must like the refusal to acknowledge and handle the trash in our house, it will soon start to stink and create disease. Which is exactly what it does.
Feel, don’t Think
When we face our emotions, it is important to stay true to our feelings – not our thoughts. A thought is a programmed response to an unpleasant feeling. So whenever the mind starts going crazy, instead of trying to control the mind, ask yourself one question – ‘what am I really feeling right now?’ And feel that more deeply.
If the feelings are too intense to handle, do this.
Step 3: Be Honest
This process often works like magic. And those who have seen its effect have a strong tendency to fall into the trap of pretending to feel so that the feeling goes away. If you find yourself thinking ‘Oh I’ve been feeling my emotions for the last 2 days and I still feel miserable’, you aren’t focused on the emotion at all, you’re focused on feeling better, which is exactly the opposite of what you need to do.
Sometimes a feeling that is associated with our core identity can remain for months before it goes away for good. Sometimes the pain comes emotionally and sometimes it is physical. In either case, what you are doing is surrendering to your present moment with your full awareness. Do this honestly.
When we planned a trip to Vietnam, one question bothered me vaguely, at the back of my mind. ‘Why are we going to a country that was so devastated by war? Will it be too much to handle?‘ Luckily for me, I was too busy to actually think about it.
Places where trauma has happened almost scream back at you. In Berlin especially, one can feel the intensity of pain where the concentration camps once were. The Jallianwala Bagh still vibrates with intense pain, so does Cherokee, an American friend on this trip mentioned.
And yet, as we landed in Hanoi, I was struck by the absence of any such vibration. Indeed, all I could feel, was peace. I was very surprised. This country thrives. And it isn’t even the commotion that many people use to mask their pain. It was simply quiet. One normally finds stillness only in temples or sacred places. As far as countries go, Vietnam is the most ‘still’ country I’ve ever been to. It was amazing to see such hard working people, not driven by a desire to
Our surprise intensified when we visited the War Museum in Saigon (It is called Ho Chi Minh City now, but I somehow still prefer Saigon, like many of Southern Viets). This museum showcased thousands of photographs taken during the Vietnam war, showing how people suffered. The Americans violated international laws and agreements and flooded their rivers for 10 years, with highly toxic chemicals. Not only did this destroy the lives of many alive at the time, but also deformed babies that were being born. The result is handicapped people, still being born decades later.
A former nurse, next to her 23 year old disabled son. Between 2-5 million people were directly affected by the chemical, and many more continue to be affected, as these people have children. On the right, is a picture of bomb craters left behind, by B-52 planes, or ‘Whispering Death’ as they were called.
I have a fairly small threshold for intense stuff, and I spent most of my time in this museum trying not to burst into tears and resisting the desire to run out. It was hard not to hate the Americans by the time we left the museum, even more so because they still continue to hurt entire countries. Even so – if we found it hard to forgive after a couple hours of seeing photographs, how could these people, having directly borne the atrocities, move on?
The USA still spends money on Vietnam war veterans – apart from everything else, they needed therapy for years. How did Vietnam move on? We finally asked someone.
‘Everybody wants to win’ she said, explaining away all the horrors of the war. ‘We just focus on the present. Now we have welcomed Americans and Australians into the country, and hugged them. We treat them as friends.’ There were no traces of bitterness or hatred in her voice, or on her face.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It couldn’t be that simple. How does one simply move on, deciding to work on building a better future? As a therapist I know that just that much would only lead to suppression, and an eventual need for therapy. It couldn’t be the complete story.
The real answer occurred to me a couple of days later. It really boils down to a deceptively simple phrase. Shit happens.
Sounds trivial, doesn’t it? Reducing all of that pain and healing, to two words? But when you really understand and integrate this phrase into your life, it can make a world of a difference.
Our story isn’t meant to be perfect. Nature didn’t intend for life to be a bed of roses. Life isn’t fair. But growing up listening to fairy tales with ‘lived happily ever after’ endings teach us something else. ‘Good things happen to good people’ is a dangerous lie we grow up with. No, they don’t.
We’ve formed a wide set of belief systems in a bid to find some security in an unpredictable world. We convince ourselves that if we act a certain way, things won’t go wrong, that there will be no suffering. This is all a lie, and if anything, it only creates more suffering. Won’t one just be left asking ‘But I pray everyday/ go to church every week/ I’ve never hurt anyone, why did this still happen to me?’ A lion doesn’t ask a deer about its moral conduct, before it kills it. There is no real insurance against misery.
And having battled outsiders for many decades, maybe even centuries, it is only natural for the Viets to know this. She was right. Everybody wants to win, and wars of all things, are not fair.
When we learn to accept the calamities of life as a part of life, we don’t cry out in pain asking ‘why me?’ There is no sense of entitlement, something the current generation across the world is infected with, explaining the growing need for therapy and the increasing incapacity of people to function effectively. And without this sense of entitlement, there is no need to place the blame – either on others’ or one’s own shoulders. One can just move on.
A little over the last two months seem to have been tough for many I know. And I can see that it is really cleansing, some sort of flushing of old accumulated toxins that is happening, but these processes are never easy. This is only one of many rounds of purification that we have been going through, and it is bound to continue, whether we like it or not.
Two people in just the last 2 days, have told me that they don’t want this anymore ‘I just want to be a normal person like everyone else’. This is something we’re all going to feel at some point in time or another, and it is ok to feel this way. These are powerful times, and the soul often ends up choosing more than it can comfortably handle, much like going a bit crazy and buying more than we can carry, at a supermarket with an extraordinary sale. It hurts, but just stay with it.
The New Moon
New moons are special, and this one especially so, because it is associated with the release of accumulated trash, as well as a ‘ghosts of the past’. In some cultures in India, people throw out the trash tomorrow morning, chanting something to the effect ‘let the old go out and create space for the new’ – something that sums up the essence of the new moon.
Burn It
Fire is a great tool for transmutation. It alchemises base, fear based emotions to those based in love. It has the power to transform and heal. Using fire to burn away old patterns can hasten the process. The next time you witness a fire, just gaze into it deeply and surrender into it everything you wish to let go of. Even better if it is a sacred fire.
What to Burn?
One thing that often accompanies cleansing, is some sort of illness. Cleansing is rarely a cause for illness, the resistance to it, is. Absolutely any illness is possible only where there is some sort of resistance at a mental or emotional level.
There is a common tendency to want to get rid of everything we don’t like – like disease or discomfort, but these are the result, and surrendering them to the fire can only help so much. On the other hand, if we surrender our attachments, and our resistance to what life brings us in the present moment, we will find a lot of problems vanishing quite quickly.
Meditate
I experience a lot more thoughts and disturbances during new moon times – so much more comes up for resolution. Meditating with fire can make it easier because it gives the mind something to focus on. Here’s a meditation that uses fire to transmute past baggage.
It makes references to mango wood and ghee, materials that are used for sacred fires in India. Ghee is clarified butter. Best to meditate at sunset time during a new moon, but it will work just fine at any other time as well.
The first time I saw a woman distract a child when he fell and was crying, I was confused. Why would a mother want to do that? My mother explained that when distracted, a child stops crying because it forgets its pain. It still didn’t make sense to me. Why would you want a baby to forget its pain? Took me a lot of years to realize that I really was onto something.
Needs Vs Wants
Until a baby is three months old or so, it can only cry every time it has a need. It is either hungry or has wet itself, or there is some other problem. For these three months, a child needs the complete attention of the parent, and mothers often see an (almost) inhuman increase in endurance and capacity during this time.
After this though, the ‘drama’ begins. The child starts to learn that crying has its own merits. The easiest way to manipulate its parent is to scream its lungs out. It drives most parents crazy, and most of them relent, thinking oh come on, how much damage can it do if he gets this one extra toy, or plays that one extra game?
How Much Damage Can it Do?
Children are learning rapidly at this age, and this learning is geared to teach them how to survive in the world. Parents represent the world at this age. Therefore, when we fulfill their needs every time they cry, we teach them that the world is a safe, nourishing and loving place. Every time we give in when they cry for the wrong reasons, we teach them that crying is a fruitful exercise. If you want something from life, just cry.
We can see this in play already. Our own generation was mostly raised by working parents in nuclear families. Depression today is at an all time high, and the numbers are only rising. What did our parents do wrong?
They taught us that it is profitable to cry.
When you really delve deep into depression, you find that it is essentially your fight against life. Life hasn’t given you what you wanted. And now you want to be miserable, because maybe if you are miserable long enough, life will feel guilty enough to give you what you want. When you’re deeply connected with yourself, you realize that you don’t really want to get out of your depression or anxiety or anger, because then you fear that things might remain the same. So you hold on to the misery. Is it worth it?
What are we doing to our kids in the name of love?
Every time we distract a child, we teach it that the best way to deal with pain is to pretend it doesn’t exist, and to focus our attention on something new. Over time, the child has no idea how to handle his/ her emotions and will end up having physical or mental disease when things reach a breaking point.
Every time you give in to your child’s unreasonable cries, you are teaching your baby that whenever it cries, life will fulfill it’s demands. It will grow up to be a miserable, depressed person, because there are many times life doesn’t work out our way, and this child was taught that it is not through hard work but through crying that you get what you want. And the child wasn’t taught that sometimes you never get what you want, and you’ve just got to deal with that.
So what do we do?
Well, the title says it all. Let your baby cry. Not the sort of crying where you look the other way and pretend nothing is happening. Look at your child. Let him/ her cry. Watch. Just don’t reach out and hug or try to comfort in any way. Remain at a distance, and feel your own pain. Let your heart scream. Of course it will, that is natural.
And when you settle into your own pain, without trying to run away from it, you teach your child by example, that sometimes bad things happen, bad feelings come. But if you just sit through it, it will go away. Then you just get up, wipe your tears, and move on.
A few years ago, we had spent a few days staying with a sadhu (ascetic). Amidst our long discussions on spirituality, he’d rave about his guru, still clearly enchanted by him. One of the things he mentioned, was that his guru would spend hours meditating on movies. He especially liked the ones with a lot of fighting.
I couldn’t believe it. While I had some indications that the guru was quite genuine, this fact had me perplexed. Meditating on a movie? The whole idea seemed ridiculous.
Not anymore.
I’ve mentioned before that meditation shouldn’t be limited to a small practice as part of a daily routine. It has to become your moment to moment state. And when this starts happening, movies can bring about so much healing.
Movie Therapy?
What does any real therapy do? It involves remembering painful incidents, surrendering to the pain and releasing it. What could be better to do this than a movie? One is far more hypnotized in a theater than in a therapy room.
When you have been meditating for a while, you start to slowly detach from the drama of life, while still participating in it. This changes the way you do everything – including watching movies.
I keep saying movies and not soap operas, because so far, I’ve found that soap operas and other programs on TV are too short and inconsistent to allow one to delve deep. Also, serials almost always put the focus on the future and not the present itself, which is a temptation the mind rarely resists.
Movies, more so the Indian ones, have so much drama in them, and drama always triggers strong reactions. Intense movies, especially those covering war or similar painful incidents, present us with an opportunity to witness and transcend trauma that humanity has experienced as a collective – provided you are able to remain in meditation without getting pulled into the drama.
If we can allow ourselves to surrender to the joy and the pain the movie brings, we can relax a bit more when we experience these things in life. When we are in sync with life, we often find ourselves watching a movie which brings up deep, repressed emotions.
Not that we need movies for healing though, there really is enough drama in our own minds to keep us occupied for an entire lifetime.
