LIFE POSITIVE: ARTICLE BY SUMA VARUGHESE

LIFE POSITIVE

This too, this too

By Suma Varughese

June 2012

A new mantra is causing an inner confluence and giving rise to a deep sense of relaxation, says Suma Varughese

I found to my delight that this summary dismissal of negativity reduced their impact on me. I sprang back to equanimity sooner and sooner.

Suma Varughese is a thinker, writer, seeker, latent
crusader and Editor-in-Chief of Life Positive.
Write to her at suma@lifepositive.net

 

Growth seems to happen layer by layer. As you work on each layer of your conditioned self through constant awareness and acceptance, eventually it parts and you find that you have fallen into a deeper part of yourself. It is always a delightful experience when that happens. It feels like a new domain which you explore with anticipation laced with wonder.

For the longest time, I have been working on going beyond the many negative labels I had given myself – emotional, clumsy, absent-minded, lazy, low self-control and so on. But it was increasingly becoming evident that if I were to ever move away from the labels, I must reduce their impact in my eyes, while amplifying the real divine self that I was. Hence I would constantly and tirelessly repeat to myself each time a thought or a feeling or action aroused a spiel of negativity, “None of this is relevant because none of this is me. Who I am is whole, perfect and complete.” In this way, I made less of anger, jealousy, indifference, or anything else that bothered me. Even thoughts were summarily dismissed with this incantation.

I found to my delight that this summary dismissal of all negativity reduced their impact on me. I sprang back to equanimity sooner and sooner.

Then one fine day, I found myself sinking to the next layer. Here I found that this dismissal of something that was still a part of my reality was causing an inner tension, a duality. And the mantra shifted to, “The thought is me and therefore perfect. Resistance to the thought is also me and perfect.”

I had forded the gulf between the ‘good’ part of me and the ‘bad ‘ part of me. Now by my new definition – everything was part of me and everything was perfect.

From neti, neti (not this, not this) I had transitioned to iti, iti (this too, this too).

No sooner had I arrived in this new terrain than I discovered a deep inner relaxation. I had never really been able to relax – there were too many parts of me at war with each other.

I had once gone for a cranio-sacral massage and the therapist remarked that I would sink to a certain level of relaxation but then surface again. I recognised that as a characteristic part of my behaviour. But as the inner confluence happened, I realised that the existential unease that had been part of my inner life was dissolving.

And with this relaxation, comes deepening peace. I had always been quick to react and take offence. Anger used to spurt out of me at the slightest provocation – a consequence of my own uneasiness with myself. With peace deepening, the anger and reactivity are reducing. I have more space for myself and therefore for others too.

Other emotional states that were almost endemic such as worry, anxiety and fear are winding down too. Faith in myself, in life and in God are on the up. Life is increasingly being perceived as easy, effortless and beautiful. My earlier perception of life as ceaseless struggle is slowly fading away.

One beautiful consequence of this new development, I intuit, is that my health will improve. Wholistic healers are well aware that in the presence of stress and tension, cell walls close down and therefore are not open to healing and change. As peace gradually trickles into my system, I do believe that my health problems – poor digestion, asthma, arthritis and so on will ease up. Because all of them, after all, are part of me and therefore perfect. In short, why worry?