Balaji Prasad
By Balaji Prasad
“Faith is stronger than so-called reality.” ~ Herman Hesse
TUI is similar to DUI. They both have the potential to cause serious damage to your existence. It’s worth pausing to reflect on TUI’s twin (from Wikipedia): “Driving under the influence (DUI) is the offense of driving, operating, or being in control of a vehicle while impaired by alcohol or drugs.”
Your goal in life, whether you consciously realize this or not, is to survive … and to thrive. Just as your goal on the road is to drive … safely!
“Hey! I am not under any influence,” you say. You assert that there are no addictive substances warping your mind as you wend your way through life. But … is this really true? If you have ever felt the presence of an anxious “I”, you certainly were under the influence. One of the most addictive and intoxicating substances in this world is the thing you call your “I”.
Aye Yai Yai!
“Aye Yai Yai” is right. This exclamation is the cry of surprise and frustration that you might find yourself involuntarily letting out when you see something going south. This wannabe expletive is something worth adopting because it could remind you of the deeply insidious and subversive thing that you fondly call your “I”, especially when it is important for you to be apprised of its dominance.
A little indulgence with your “I” is probably okay in the little things in life. However, you will want it exiled and out of your sight, as you ponder the most serious decisions in life – the really big ones that can make or break your thriving; the big things are decisions about whom you get married to, breaking up, leaving a toxic environment, starting a business, etc.
Avoid the I of the storm
When you are in the throes of grappling with a difficult decision in life, it is important to do a quick check to see whether you are in the I of your internal storm or are standing at a more-than-healthy distance from the whirling thing. How you know this is by getting in touch with what you feel.
Do you feel a raging storm inside? Does your mind thrash around trying to get a foothold onto some idea, some direction? Do you feel fear and anxiety? Do you feel a sense of a deer-in-the-headlights transfixation that paralyzes you? If the answer to any of this is a “yes”, your I is intoxicating you.
Just as with driving, thriving safely requires a keen awareness of the state you are in. Beyond that, you need discipline to push your I out of your own mind so that you yourself are not an impediment to your own thriving. But how do you do that?
Wu Wei: The wayless way
The Daoist philosophy of Wu Wei emphasizes the paradoxical effortlessness in bringing all your available resources to bear that enable you to not merely survive, but to thrive.
An analogy may help. Messi, the soccer superstar, is a pleasure to watch when he is “in the zone”. He does have a goal: to score a goal.
He might see problems if he so chooses: several fierce opponents focused on blocking and tackling him, the possibility of his getting injured seriously as he makes his way toward his goal, the risk of losing his extraordinary reputation with his fans if he flubs it, etc.
But, if he chooses differently, he could put both his goal and his “problems” more or less out of his mind. The goals are understood, simple and fully internalized. These can be relegated to some dark corner of the mind, out of conscious awareness. And … problems are not really problems. They are just things to deal with. And while there doesn’t, on the surface, appear to be any direct line from where he is to his goal, there is a good amount of space that will get rearranged as he and others move around, enabling him to, at some point in this progression, weave a zig-zag pattern of lines that ends up connecting the place he is in to the place he needs to push the ball to.
And so, he moves. With ease, like a lion going for its kill. And they, in turn, move. And then him again. Then them again. And so on. Then a sudden, breathless hush descends over the crowd. And, a bolt of lightning streaks across the field.
Gooooooooooooooooal!!
An eye for an I!
Being a Messi on the field of this messy life is not always easy. But a mind that is not obsessed with what it wants or what it fears, or its word- and logic-soup of abstract and out-of-touch imagined ideas, many of which exist because of past indoctrination is a mind that can score the goals needed to thrive safely.
The universe is much bigger than Messi’s space, and offers a whole slew of opportunities, as you move in it, and it reconfigures around you. You have abilities that are much larger than you are able to see, and which will come to your beckoning at the time you need them. But, to make all this so, you need to lose your I to gain your inner eye. And have faith in it.
The real crux of all this is that you need immense faith! Faith in the bounty of the universe, and that it will catch you when you jump. And in yourself, and that you will always find a way to dance in rhythm with the universe as it moves in and around you.
Balaji Prasad is an IIT/IIM graduate, a published author, SAT/ACT Online and in-person Coach, and K-12 Math Tutor at NewCranium. Contact: [email protected].
