My parents’ house was full of spiritual books. As a child sometimes I would peek at them, losing interest immediately. Words like “consciousness creates an illusory sense of SELF, attaching itself to certain forms, feelings, desires” I interpreted as “seek to detach from everything, feel nothing, until you disappear”. And I would think: -How awful!
Years later, nomadic life showed me that detaching is not terrible, what hurts is regretting the inevitable. “We cannot hug on a videocall”. I know, but given that I travel, we can suffer or call eachother and celebrate the bond that unites us (in 2020 many people in lockdown had to catch up with that circumstance, replacing “travel” by “there’s a damned pandemic”).
Practising to let go helps stuff not to get stuck in your head without resolution. Thinking about how everything flows, starts and ends at every moment, is especially helpful when one of those things is pain.
In recent years painting around the world, experiences (mix of happiness, stress and sadness) hit me like waves -one after another with too much intensity. Meditating helped me to take some distance. This didn’t mean to stop feeling, but to have more mental space; to move aside and watch the wave crush from an additional point of view -not just from below. It is not achieved overnight, and I don’t know if you ever succeed entirely. But practicing helps a lot.
Little by little I’ve changed my “self” to something less hermetic. I learned that if I take too many steps inside my head before speaking, the words come out of my mouth like a bullet train and I don’t make room for anything else. Speaking is not always necessary to communicate (for a verbose Argentinian this is hard to learn). With people I don’t share a language, it was frustrating at first. Then I learned to share silences, paying attention to things that I did not understand, and there was no chance to ask, but just being there was enough to enjoy it. This was deeper than any words I wished to use. Life was suddenly filled with humble adventures
Neuroscience explains that the brain is configured according to the experiences we live, and the most beautiful thing, that it has the ability to reconfigure itself (neuroplasticity). It pretty much aligns with the Buddhist idea that the mind is nothing more than a complex entanglement of passing mental states. So the “I am this way” doesn’t exist, nor is reality written in stone. We can craft options, to choose how to face what life throws at us. Understanding that, was like knowing that there are hidden treasures everywhere.
*This article first appeared in my newsletter: 10/29/2020 – Disappearing of the “self” | Animalito’s Stories #7
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