Watching my thoughts

Something happened a couple of days ago. Something that had not happened for a very very long time in my life, inside me. Since the time of certain realisations, I've been very careful about my words, actions, and reactions, which mostly happened because of my acquired awareness. But the realisations didn't lead to permanent awareness, though it did expose me to the power of awareness. More than situations in life it were the people who helped me in those realisations which in turn led me to awareness. Though this stage of existence was interesting, with an additional sense of power over the self, there were moments when I slipped. But those slips were not with strangers, but mostly with people I knew very very well or with whom the comfort level was so high that my awareness guard went down. But had no regrets with that.

Now comes the transformation phase in the  ego's playfield - the mind. The slow realisation started getting into my head and that became one of the parameters which defined some aspect of my narcissism. I hardly reacted to difficult people, even when they were extremely abusive towards me. But then I realised that I wasn't non reactive  because I was a good person, instead, for the sheer pleasure of my ego getting high on the power of self control, which I felt I had more than the other. And that entire thing didn't leave even a bit of unhappiness, but only the sense of self empowerment. Thus difficult people helped me to improve myself with a little bonus of enjoying forbidden ego pleasure.


Now the purpose of this text.
Once in a while certain people come who can alter the course of mind travel. You may just meet them, have a short and simple conversation, but they may change you in a matter of few minutes. One such incident happened a couple of days back. It was an easy conversation with an individual who happens to be relatively very calm and balanced. Such people may be aware or they might be just like that, by their sheer existence, or maybe because of their culture that conditioned them. During the course of some activity that involved conversations too, for some unexpected reasons, my reaction to the situation was totally uncalled for. I have this habit of playing mind games which involves the certain emotionally sensitive factors in which I usually don't lose. And there's no risk when there's no emotions at all. But here the problem was different. No emotions, no critical subject, but for a fraction of a second, I lost the balance and reacted, reacted like a small child who didn't get what he wanted. My reaction went on for a few minutes and for all that moments I did not realise my awareness was totally lost. Driven by ego, my reaction was for something that I didn't even wanted in the first place.

A few moments later I realised that I had lost the game this time. It wasn't a game for me any longer, but a sense of realisation driven by a failure experience. Adding to that was the frustration that the situation induced in the other person. To quickly balance the situation, I apologised, but the story didn't end there. This experience kept playing in my mind over and over, making me realise that I am only stronger as long as I am with weaker people. And once I meet someone who is less reactive, more subtle than me, there was a high chance of me losing the game.

This time it didn't hurt my ego, neither did it effect my self respect. I was relatively calm, but the incident still kept playing in the mind. After two days, while traveling in a bus, a thought blew my mind. The occasional realisation of awareness was not just enough to make me a better person, and neither there's any game of winning and losing in this. The purpose of awareness is beyond that, else even ego will use awareness as a ball in the playground known as the mind. And the individual gets lost in that game. Awareness is not the only factor that can help us lead a good life, but also the respectful and the timely practice of it is equally important. It's not for the other person that we do this, it's for the individual self and self alone.

Thoughts.. yes, that's what today's realisation was for me. I realised that even when aware, my thoughts were having party in my mind. My mind, with ego, makes scripts to situations that can potentially help me execute mind games every now and then, and I keep looking for potential victims too. But that is not what helped me this time. My life journey taught me that thoughts are usually useless, and indeed it is. But this time I missed because my thoughts had clouded my awareness, and I was played by my mind itself. So from today, I start to watch my thoughts, from the eyes of my awareness. And it's happening since morning and I can see how many thoughts come and go, but this time they don't stay since my awareness is active. When a thought stays, it consumes energy, which then builds Karma or bonds and then leads to attachments.

I keep away from attachments since that's been the biggest trouble for me since my early age, but the process of detachment was a patch work. But checking thoughts seems to be the best method to avoid attachments, and the following miseries. And the long term benefits seems to be the control over one's own karma. It's a constant practice to improve oneself and one day I hope I'll be very good in that. The message has been sent to the universe.