Looking back and now....

I've been at home the past few days, back from Coimbatore and with alot of pain in my teeth. So I've pretty much been resting, relaxing and today as I was just going through the documents on my laptop, I happened to open up my old folder of write-ups. Since I've been 10 I've always owned a diary, but I also tend to write all over the place. Sometimes I scramble for the nearest sheet of paper, small note pads, big sheets, newspapers - I've perhaps written on them all.
For the last two years that I've had this laptop, it too has borne the brunt of alot of my writings - happy times, not so happy times, reflective thoughts, just rambling, deep thoughts, absolutey silly ideas.........it's been with me through it all. In fact sometimes this laptop feels like its my best friend in the whole wide world, cause it's been there with me when all others had given up on me, or I was on the verge of giving up!
So anyways, today I just happened to go through some of my old documents and realized how at every step I've been searching. Whether it be trying to understand people, why my friends were behaving in a certain way, why all my relationships weren't ever materializing, trying to figure out what it was that interested me, going through pangs of becoming a doctor, a councellor, a psychiatrist, a corporate trainer, a dancer, a storyteller or a teacher..........I was always seeking something beyond which my understanding. It's funny now to see those lists of what i like to do and what i dont like to do, as an attempt to understand what profession I might be more inclined to. Or that document named "Feelings" after a night of partying with my friends where I came home crying because I couldn't understand how people could just have fun with eachother, talk garbage and then go home and forget about eachothers existance completely. Or those "thinking" documents where I would just blab about my thoughts on my life. At each and every step, I was feeling stuck, stuck in this mind and trying to understand so many things that just weren't making sense, yet I so desperately wanted to come to terms with.

And then I noticed, that for the past 4 months, since searching has not just become a notion, but has taken on the very essence of my life, these writings have become less. It's almost like I can see my thoughts, my actions more clearly now, and I see myself as having the power to make or break those thought patterns. I've realized how there is no end to the thought process, to understanding things. One needs to break it by getting into a space of no-thought. Even then breaking old patterns of being, certain states of compulsions is so hard, because to break them we have to be fully aware and alert at every moment, which is very difficult. But it is interesting to have those moments of almost becoming an observer of your life, rather than constantly being drowned in the process of questioning and thinking.
I've found that my reading habits have also changed. Earlier its almost like I had a magnet in me that would automatically get attracted to the "spiritual' section of books. Krishanamurthy, Sri Aurobindo, even the doctors of pyschology people........I would just read them like applying some soothing cream to my soul. Now I find a distinct change, as I don't find the need to read those books anymore, with the very clear realization that everything they talk about, all the knowledge of the world, all we are seeking is within us if we look carefully.
For the past few days I've been reading children's books.........going back into the land of fairies and gnomes and witches and monsters. Back into the fairyland where dresses are made of blue mist and yellow sunshine, where they pick out stars from water puddles and sprinkle dew drops on leaves in the early morning hours. Back into the land where things aren't that complicated and life unfolds in rather magical way. It's a great feeling to be back there....where chairs look like people, doors look like soldiers, you overhear the conversation between your car and the truck standing next to you on the red light, the patterns on the bathroom floor tell you a story about a king and witch, where things don't need to make logical sense anymore.............it makes me think......when the mind is afar, that is when the twinkle in the eye reappears.....