Balaji Prasad
By Balaji Prasad
At the end of the day, you call the shots, whether it appears that way or not. And you live through the consequences of the decisions you make.
Other people may play a part in your decision-making. Circumstances may also influence what you decide and do. But it should be crystal clear that “the last mile” of the circuit that rings your bell is owned and operated by you!
The gift of “the last mile”
Ownership is both a blessing and a curse.
On the one hand, it endows you, the captain, with a unique power that only you can ever have, and which allows you to steer your ship even as the whimsical winds gust around you and the waves buffet furiously against your vessel’s hull.
The flip side of this is that you cannot plead your case in the court of the universe, saying that it was “them!” You can attempt that line of logic, but it won’t matter. The universe will still dispassionately render its sentence upon you – a sentence that you, and you alone, will need to serve out.
And so, as the owner of both a key input to and as the recipient of the key output from this cryptic machine, you have a grave responsibility. To yourself. Your life is a gift that must be unwrapped and unraveled with care and attention; but you have been given an additional gift too: the tool with which to do that too, so long as you can discover this inside you. That tool is your mind.
Your mind is powerful – far more powerful than you may be able to completely grasp.
It is a shame to waste the precious gift that is the mind, and to largely outsource its capabilities, especially to those who have little to no stake to protect and further the ultimate gift that is your life. This is not to say that one should not make use of other minds that may generate things of value. The point is to realize that to do that in a value-oriented manner, your mind needs to be the one to sift and calibrate – and ultimately, own – the raw, unfinished products of those external minds. The buck stops here!
Know thyself!
Those that see that their mind is their gateway to their life may live very different lives from those that don’t. For one, they may focus acutely on the architecture of their mind and be critical of its contents and capabilities. And look to rearchitect aspects that are detrimental to their lives. They may, through this process, create, over time, protective layers that inspect everything that attempts entry into the inner layers of the mind all the way up to the sanctum sanctorum of the mind: the things that underpin everything else, and kick in sharply, swiftly and decisively, with or without your conscious awareness.
They may be aware of these sharp kick-ins which have an “emotional” quality to them rather than a slow, thoughtful, analytical character that accompanies “conscious” thinking. And realize that going against the emotional forces arising there may be hard, since it will pretty much overrule everything else that sits on the surface layers above it, unbeknownst to those layers.
You can’t go against the King, try as hard as you might, however stupid or corrupt the King might be. Because that is how the King has grown up over time, for better or for worse. The superficial layers of your mind may attempt to devise ways to justify decisions through accepted standards of “logic” and process-discipline, but the reach of the King at the core into these layers is strong. These reasoning layers will merely produce a “logic” that aligns with what the King had decided much earlier, and will serve, at best, as a rubber stamp that provides an illusion of reason and diligence having been done.
Ignore “thyself”
There is only one way out of this tangle where you suspect that the King may be corrupt and will dominate this time too, because you have had such experiences in the past, where the King has been wrong. Very wrong. And all your “logic” layers have been mere toadies to the King, fearful and desperate to please, while going through a charade of exercising an independent process, logic and diligence in decision-making.
The way out is to realize that the King too is a bit player when it comes to the power of the universe: the reality. You cannot “reason” your way out of what the King wants you to do, while you are so intoxicated with the King. Your reasoning layers must ignore the King, effectively ignore the emotions that arise there, and pay homage to the greater God: The Universe.
You accept with grace what the universe offers. But you also pay close attention as the universe reveals itself, look for opportunities where you can play in the cosmic dance, and maybe shift things a bit here and a bit there. And never turn back and look at the King who may be frothing at the mouth. Just do it! And the rest will follow.
Balaji Prasad is an IIT/IIM graduate, a published author, SAT/ACT Online and in-person Coach, and K-12 Math Tutor at NewCranium. [email protected].
