This Mercury retrograde season has been one ride for me, as I’m sure for us all. It’s been a journey through the peaks and valleys of ‘I am not’. What an ego shattering and humbling experience! But ‘I am not’ my experience and therefore I can share. It started while I was still back at the commune in late April. Something, completely unrelated to me, triggered me and as I usually do when I’m triggered, I turned inward to seek the source of the trigger. Although I first reacted instead of responding, Coz I didn’t wait for the trigger to settle.
The trigger itself was gone in a night. There was no need even for a response but the lesson was yet to be learnt. By guesswork I gave the right answer in that test by retracting my energy. The question confused me. I knew it was something that shouldn’t have triggered me yet I was and there was no source, no direction from where it came either. So I let it be. As Bhagwan says, when you relax, it comes to you. As I start penning this post, almost 5 weeks later, on the date that Mercury stations direct, I’m starting to finally see where the trigger originated from. It was from my own Inspiration(s). I found it interesting and something that we may all empathize with.
When tiggers become less and less, with continued healing; and a trigger presents itself, it is louder. It seems more important. This one’s root was not easy to find. It took me through many layers of my own conditioning of my relationship with ‘inspiration’.. But I didn’t know until now, what existence was showing me through this experience. I only know now as I pen an experience of ego death.
According to my western astrology birth chart, I’m all water, and according to my Vedic astrology birth chart I’m all Air. By that I mean, my Sun, moon and rising falls in all water or all Air signs. Water is emotion. Air is intellect. Together that’s emotional intellect. As my mother often says, Water or Air, it either flows or it takes the shape of the vessel it occupies. It has no shape or colour of its own. I’ve learnt with time, when I’m not flowing, I better choose a vessel I’m sure I wanna occupy. Bhagwan and sanyas seem to be that vessel for now, vast enough to contain me. Vast enough so I can be contained, yet I can flow.
But trust me when I say, I haven’t always occupied the best vessels for me. They haven’t been from the unconditional vastness of existence, but only of the world. Nothing of the world can be vast enough to write my own story of the sky. Even if it’s ‘inspiration’.
My relationship with ‘inspiration’ is old. I’m rarely inspired by a person but when I am, it is total. By that I mean, I’m not inspired by who they are in the world (only), but rather by who they are as a being in totality. And the story that brings them here. My oldest inspiration, as clichéd as it may sound, is my mom. She is quite a rare being actually. My mom is what the world would call, a complete woman. She has worked 18 hour days for as long as I can remember. She’s an entrepreneur you see. But she is also somehow, a complete wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister, aunt, community club member, and so many other hats she wears which I don’t even know.
Everyone who’s ever known her, gives only two descriptions of her, ‘superwoman’ or ‘she’s always there’. I’ve already surrendered and said to her, ‘I can’t be you’. And yet with all she does, her only pain is, ‘I’m all alone’. She isn’t alone, alone. We’re all alone, she is only lonely even though she’s surrounded and celebrated by people all the time.
I’ve also been immensely inspired by the being of Late actor Smt. Meena Kumari. Everything about her, is mystical, to me. Not just as an actor, but also as a poetess, and as a strong feminine presence in the cinema of India. And most for her capacity to love. Maybe that is what existence returned to her as love from millions.
Her tragic life and her ability (or maybe requirement) to laugh it all off, has been inspirational for my own creative expression. Except, now that I write some here and there, I can see it is not the same. She writes of loneliness, and I write of aloneness. Her experience of life was lonely, my experience of life is alone. Lonely is tragic but alone is blissful. She writes of the pain of love, I write of Love itself. Essentially, she writes of worldly love, and I live in Divine Love. In Divine Love I found inspiration in Meera, which is a post for another time. Here I’ll only say that Meera had no pain, she was only love and celebration. The pain was around her. She felt nothing but love. And Love is God.
When I am inspired by someone, I identify with their being in some way. When I identify with their being, I accept all of that being; shadow and light. Pain and pleasure. Success and failure. On subconscious levels, I make it all mine. That is reflected in these two words, ‘my inspiration’. ‘I am not’ my inspiration. I have my own story to write. The one of my own being, inspirational or not. One that is written of my own experience & understanding of life. And that can only happen when ‘I am not’ my inspiration.
In 2019, I was going through a peak in a separation consciousness period, which was manifesting as a separation in my life. I remember reflecting on my years of inspiration with the stories of women I identified with. Meena Kumari ji, holds a very special place in my heart. I’ve learnt alot from her of art, artist and life. My bonding to her capacity to love & thereby her pain too, definitely strengthened me to the idea of a life alone during that whole year. But yet, upon reflection, I didn’t want to be lonely. In 2020 a decision, changed my perspective from lonely to alone. During COVID, I moved base, and started falling in love with aloneness. Being my best friend. In 2021, I was initiated and found sanyas, the true celebration of aloneness, alone or in communion. It is choice less.
The trigger was essentially a fear of loneliness which I reacted to fight back in the face of it. I needed to accept & not fight. I was scared of the loneliness that comes with achievement, for all of my conscious life. That is why I always chose Love over success, dream achievement, goals. I’d seen enough people around me, have a perfect life on the outside but feel lonely inside. I’ve been inspired by those whose lives I don’t want. If there is one thing I want, it is to just ‘be’ me.
It was the fear that I was carrying from my identification with the pain of my inspiration(s). It is not my story and It is not mine to carry. In identifying with an inspiration’s story, expression or being, I take on all of their shadows as well, their pains as well. Now I’m in love with my aloneness and that makes the fear of loneliness quite baseless.
When I’m happy alone, how can I be lonely? But I was carrying the fear inside of me which certainly needed a big enough trigger to come to the surface and be released. It’s old fears that create a blockage in our own experience of Love, of freedom, of life, as Rumi said. That pain has no place in my experience of life anymore.
The trigger itself, came from a source, who is an inspiration as a being for me in many ways. I am not even my own pain, my own experiences. I am separate from all of that. I’m on a journey of ‘what am I’; Then how can the pain, expression or experience of another be mine.
‘I am not’ my inspiration. ‘I am not’ even my experience. I can remain inspired to experience my own; but I need not identify with my inspiration, with their pain essentially. Unless I want to experience pain too. When I identify with them, I’m accepting all of their being, their shadow & their light. If I do, I’m letting a narrative, idea or story, another’s expression of the understanding, the experience of life; have control over me. So I react. Even if the circumstances are similar, no two stories are the same, Coz no two beings are the same. We are all unique. I express my own as I write my own.
When I saw, in someone I’m inspired by, that which I was carrying in me of another, I was triggered. In all honesty, it seems like I was shown it, so I would be triggered. Only a couple people in the world, can actually trigger me still, only because there is obviously some attachment to their being still. Connections of the silence, take longer to understand. First the silence must be understood, then my reaction to it. And then to top that, a Mercury Retrograde.
Am I regretful for my reaction? Well, honestly, I’m a bit embarrassed, a bit surprised at life for the way it chooses to teach; and yes sorry! but had I suppressed my expression of my trigger in that moment, I’d never get to the root of it and understand it. I’d never ask, ‘why’ did I react, what was triggered? It was so deep rooted. In understanding is healing. In healing is freedom. So if anything I’m grateful for the experience. Grateful for the understanding that, ‘I am not’ my inspiration.
So the answer will always be in the ‘I am Not’?🤔
