The State of Freedom
A journey of Truth into the mind’s sanctuary
with the destination of inner Freedom.
Α4. I detect an annoyance.
In order to start my work for the reconciliation with the weaknesses of my mind, I first need to get to know them well, to follow the associations caused in my mind by an unpleasant event, the anguishes triggered by these associations and their immediate ramification on and in my body. In other words, I’ll need to observe in a detached way the process of the unintentional temporary identification of my whole existence with the unpleasant event and the thoughts which ensue.
At the moment of this identification the mind forgets everything else and applies himself on the unpleasant event one hundred percent. All others, no matter how pleasant they are, are unable to give him any joy at that particular moment. They are as if they did not exist. His whole existence has been unwittingly, obsessively I would say, totally identified with what causes him annoyance and pain. He would prefer to share his attention also to other more pleasant things at that time, but he feels that he is not able to. He is in a situation of obsession at such moments, that is to say obsessed, filled, replete by the one unpleasant event which destroys his entire mood. Like when a tooth is in much pain and makes us feel awful, groan and suffer, without being able to consider as any kind of help the fact that the rest of our body is totally healthy.
Today, for instance, I was informed that one brother whom I did not know until yesterday refuses to pay me a financial damage which he recently caused me. This brother happens to be much richer (from the aspect of money) than me. Once I learned of it, I was overwhelmed by much sorrow, rage, feeling of injustice and thirst for revenge, all negative emotions and none brotherly.
My unsuspecting mind at that time resided in the familiar and safe world of his peaceful and creative reasoning. He no sooner learned the bad news, than he instantly forgot all these beautiful things he was currently doing that were filling his life nicely. He abandoned them abruptly, although his occupation with them did him so much good, and suddenly he flung with extreme speed like a ball in a pinball game. He began colliding onto the obstacles right and left, from the one inextricable and tragic thought to the next one, longing for and not managing to find a solution against the act of blatant injustice which someone was committing at his expense.
Within infinitesimal time, although he was creative, calm and pleased with himself, he was suddenly left at the mercy of his associations and his old unredeemed agonies, which the oblivion had not managed to eradicate for good. Although he felt warm and nice inside the niche of his creative work until a few moments ago, he suddenly could not stand quiet anywhere. He was anxiously seeking after the solution; he was endeavoring to hang on to an idea which could give him liberation, but in vain. And whenever he came close to the voracious hole which every pinball game has between the two repulsors, I refused to swallow the injustice, I pushed the button and re-catapulted him into the arena of the violent mental drubbing. Sometime the tiredness befell, I did not manage to push the button before it was too late and, burned out, I swallowed the ball-injustice.
The first thought was, “what a pity, what a big damage”. Immediately, the fear about future followed and the body quailed. Momentarily the arms and the legs blunted; the mind cannot bear poverty. After that, the monkey hung from the musty twig of injustice; the eyes wanted to burst out from their sockets, the throat was tied to a bitter knot and the heart was constricted. The breath became faster, superficial and the heartbeats accelerated.
Consequently, the hurt manly egoism paraded, the confounded one, who cannot bear the psychological pressure of failure and would like to suppress his pain in gorging and drinking. The stomach suddenly thought to be hungry. But the mind has played for many years the drama of fugue of this type and now becomes fed up from the very first mouthful. Then, the guilt feeling for the degradation of the weakness burst forth, constricted the stomach and tied it like the injustice did to the throat.
The mind continued his insane course and found a temporary refuge in the stubbornness, the fury and the anger. He raised his adrenaline, heaved his chest, swatted forcefully the table with his fist and cried: No, this will not pass!” He immediately began to hatch out plans about litigations, proofs, evidences, lawyers, witnesses and loads of threads which altogether weaved the most torturing and insisting of all webs, because especially this one, leaning on the principles of the commonly acceptable human justice, was convinced to exist fairly.
A haunting recurrent association was built and enslaved my mind, closed my heart towards every brother; I didn’t care about anything except for the victory against the enemy, whom I thought to be outside there.
I soon remembered the unnecessarily lost time and despaired. Then, my mind dropped into self-pity, hopelessness and even more despair about the future, as he realized well that, if he goes on like this, he will find time neither for the conquest of the woman nor for the ensuring of the gold; and the mind cannot stand a life wasted in inextricable associations, without recognition and security and without nice filling of his time with extraneous joys and enjoyments. Such a life he cannot bear, he says.
While making here and now this retrospect to the unrestrained route which my rampageous mind followed a few hours ago triggered by an amount smaller than my personal income of ten days, I marvel at his inventiveness and ingenuity: within a few minutes he covered a complicated route and passed from all the stations I just mentioned and twice as many, and probably even more, which I am unable or there is no sense to recall right now. I contemplate, if he had not so many fears and fixed ideas, how much good he would have been able to render during the same time to suffering brothers which he claims to love, if he dedicated to them all this intelligence and inventiveness.
If all this happened only once, it would not be a problem. But the truth is that many times per day the mind underestimates the sunlight and the fresh air and loses himself in such intricate, smelly and sunless inner halls with penumbra and musty air, thus losing the beauty and the essence of life.
He completely forgets such hours among all goods the most valuable ones, which are rendered totally free of charge provided that he is prepared to receive them and let them fill his valuable life with richness, joy and warmth here and now. These goods, available every moment if the mind chooses them, are brotherly comradely travelling, factual solidarity and love, which are the only values that have often in the past given him deep and imperishable joy. Nevertheless, he still forgets them every time that an incident makes him get entangled in the swirl of his unredeemed anguishes and let himself identify with them entirely.
Don’t explain; don’t complain.
You better remain plain.
In order to explain,
you need to exit from your pure plain self.
When you complain,
you commit a crime against your pure plain self.
Therefore, you better refrain from
both complaining and explaining.