Article without topic

Need a topic to write on. I am still wondering. Just rambling around …aimlessly? Will I get any topic to write about? This has to flow through. Something has to be written. It will flow out slowly...yes; I think I am getting into it.  To me it looks like this is just like running. When you run, someone has said, the longest distance you run each morning is from the bed to the floor. For me the most challenging part of running has been going from the bed, wearing my shoes and hitting the road. Once I hit the road, the flow automatically comes.

And today, this is one such experiment in writing. I didn’t have any topic to write. There was no idea. I kept wondering since the morning...trying to get topics, ideas, stories that I could write on. Now it is 9:00PM in the night and then I realized that if I don’t write something right now, I will not be able to post this week’s blog. So grudgingly, I started writing. Just poured out my thoughts and now I think I am ready to write more.

So many times, we promise to do something regularly. Say writing a blog or running regularly. Let’s take the running example. We start out with a big bang. Depending upon our past lifestyle, we may or may not like running for the first time. But assume, somehow we persist for long enough that we get a kick out of running. Then we become quite regular as we start liking it. But then after a few months, monotony creeps in. We do not get the high that we used to get earlier. Slowly, it is because of habit that we keep running.

One fine day, some other high priority activity demands our attention. We stop running for a week or more. We think it is ok. The other activity is of higher priority. Or that I have no other choice than to stop running. Other times, we do not go running because we do not feel like it. We think that may be the time is not right or that the weather is not conducive. We cook many excuses in our mind to somehow fool ourselves believing that it is ok if we skip it. So, who is the culprit here? Who takes the decision to stop doing something that we are supposed to do?

I believe the mind is the culprit here. It works in mysterious ways to make us believe what it thinks is right at that moment. Some other time, it may think something else is right and will try to fool us in believing the other thing. You may be a bit confused here. Who is fooling whom you might ask? Isn’t our mind the same as we are? Well, I don’t think so. The mind is an instrument given to us whose primary function is to think. But we are not our mind. Just as we are not our hand or feet or any other part of our body. The mind is only that part which helps us in thinking among other things. Since thinking is such an important and critical activity in a human being, it is able to influence us the most. It is able to shape our attitude in the short run and our character in the long run.

Most of our activities are dictated by our mind. These activities may be generic involuntary activities or voluntarily conducted activities. But isn’t it true that any activity, whatsoever type it may be, starts as a thought in the mind. The thought floats as waves on the surface of mind. Slowly, that thought embeds itself deeper and deeper into the walls of our mind. Among the innumerable thoughts we may be thinking in a day, only some thoughts seep deeper in our conscious mind. If we focus on them and think more and contemplate on them for a longer duration, it may even go to the next level of sub-conscious mind. Still holding the same thought in mind for even longer duration allows it to seep even further into the unconscious mind.

And when something goes into the unconscious, it has the maximum effect to shape our attitude. But the most interesting thing is that, though that thought in our unconscious mind dictates and builds our attitude, we are not aware of it at all. We never really realize why our attitude is as it is.

Is there a way to be free of the stranglehold of mind on our life? Yes, there is. It can be done in many ways. But again the way is though the mind. Here, the mind is used as an instrument to free us from the mind-hold itself. For example, if we want to change our attitude, it can be done by changing our thoughts. A mind that is under control is able to think only on need basis.

But what happens if someone decides to be really free from the clutch of his mind. If we want to really free ourselves completely, it can be done by having a thoughtless mind - a mind without thought. Such a person is not even influenced by his own thought process. He is the truly the most independent and free man. A man whom none can influence; not even his own dogma or paradigms; cause he doesn’t have any. This is the pinnacle of freedom. But isn’t this eerily similar to the description of a madman? A man with no-mind?

By the way, now I am at the end of today’s post. I think I have been able to free myself from the clutch of my mind which had been thinking the whole day today that I don’t have anything to write.  Small victory though. I think I have been able to write something coherent in spite of not feeling like writing anything throughout the day today and even when I started writing just about an hour back. And now when the time comes to name the title of today’s article, my mind suggests me to use “A mind without thought”.  It says that this will complete the hat-trick of having the word without in the post title in the last three posts; however unrelated the trilogy. But I may want to name it, “The Culprit Mind”. What say? Comments please!