Remember that feeling of uneasiness when you purposely try to avoid something that is always around? Remember, the last time when you were walking home late, and you had that uneasy feeling that someone was following you, but you just wont look back to check? That sinking feeling you have when you can neither accept nor change? I avoid looking at my pictures
Its always been there. I remember getting scared of looking at it when I was young. Then, I don’t exactly remember when, the fear turned into a weird sensation of uneasiness and I began to avoid looking at it. I even remember sweating if my eyes fell on it…I felt my heart sink. It would scare me. So much so that would feel weird getting my pictures clicked, leave aside sharing pictures with family and friends. It was there, right there, in my face…but why couldn’t anyone else see that hole in my stomach?
And now when I think of it, it makes complete sense.
From a small black mark just about in the middle of my stomach, where some believe lies the energy of nature and some, the Zero, the unity, the completeness in the absence of everything; it grew as I grew old. As I grew in years and gained consciousness, I started feeling uncomfortable of it. On one hand I knew that no one else could see it, and on the other, I would make efforts to keep it covered all the time to hide it from the watching eyes. I carried it wherever I went. And then came a time, I began to hide it from myself. Every once in a while, I would deny its existence to myself. Then I would decide to check on it. It was right there…getting bigger by the day. Strangely, more I learned, bigger it became. It wouldn’t grow during happy vacations. Would gloat at an exponential rate at other times. Knowing about people killing people would make it bigger. Tears gave it more pace. By the time I got out of college, I could almost pass my arm through the hole and scratch my back!
And just a few days back, I began to realize that there was more to it than I thought. Lying in my bed, I began fiddling with it. My finger smelled weird…a tingly fragrance of…err…freshness? Yes. And then, for the first time in years, I looked at it…without fear, without disgust, without doubt. And it was beautiful. It smelt of wet mud…it felt like ocean froth. And I knew it was inside me. The perfect world. Where there was no fear or darkness, no suffering or embarrassment. All this while I had failed to realize that everything that I wanted to do, everything I wanted to be…all the change, which I was looking for everywhere, was right here. Bright, glowing, beautiful, fresh.
And today, as I walk out of the door, I don’t hide it under clothes of embarrassment. I walk naked to the eyes, shining with the infectious glow of the man who has realized that there is no joy or comfort outside of oneself. One can choose to be happy even if there is none around. One can choose not to suffer even when there is pain everywhere. And the change that one wants to see in the world begins from within…
