Monologue

                                                       Stuck at the Heart


Half of my youth was spent in meditation. I wandered and gazed at unforeseen skies within myself and became one with the universe. The mystical experiences were so enthralling that sometimes I felt I’d become God. Whenever and wherever I closed my eyes, I’d find myself engulfed in an ocean of silence and peacefulness. Most often I had to stop myself from closing my eyes lest I might become addicted to that feeling. For hours and hours I used to sit cross legged and watch my breathing, feelings and thoughts. Samadhi was my only goal and sometimes it seemed so near that I even had ideas about becoming a new messiah.


Those days are gone and the loneliness that I used to cherish, stings me without mercy now. The rigorous meditations slowed down when I realized that even if I meditated twenty four hours a day, I’d still be a meditator looking for enlightenment whereas enlightenment is a blessing and not a thing to be sought for. So one day I decided to quit meditating and live the everyman’s life.

Thirty years old, I’m jobless and my family feeds me. Even though my heart wishes to be in a cave, I always decide against its longings. I think I am so miserable now because I was struck in the heart during my search for truth. Six years ago, after too much a struggle and a heart-rending patience, my kundalini got aroused. The electricity rising from the coccyx and ascending my spine shook me with its awesomeness. I’m still surprised by the mysteries we live with and the everydayness that covers all the magic of our existence!

The kundalini, after its waking, made its way upwards making me feel excited, lost and afraid. I was at the mercy of the powers that move the universe. But suddenly, the excitement stopped at the heart. In the days that followed, I tried a lot to pass it upwards but couldn’t succeed though I had electric sparks running across my throat, head and the muladhar chakra. In the following days, in deep meditations I began to encounter pleasure and fear in their crudest forms. Sometimes I became bliss and at others fear overpowered my being. The fear was so great that I had to wake up forcibly; it had the face of death! I’d been told to go through it and come out reborn but try as I may, I couldn’t. Since I could not die then so I couldn’t die later.

As time went by, I found my self more vulnerable to emotional distresses. I’d stopped meditating, in a way I was avoiding the ultimate death and relishing in the twilight in exchange for the ultimate illumination. I’d find myself crying over a piece of music or being moved to tears by some words from a song. Even more people had made me a means for their catharsis, when they found that I could listen to their miseries, fears and frustrations for hours at an end. Even strangers, after a brief conversation, would start pouring themselves out. Most often I’d be gazing at faces and my heart would bleed with tears for all the pain, loneliness and incompleteness they expressed.

Six months ago, I fell in love with a girl of nineteen. Until then I had been thinking that everyone thought of me as a freak who’d spent his twenty nine years with himself, had no job and looked heartless as a stone. She is beautiful, talkative and mysterious. I need her so much, I find myself whispering her name like a new mantra. I’ll give up all my mystical experiences for a moment with her, for just a short conversation like “Did you have your meal?” “Yes” and she asks “Did you?” gazing into my eyes with all the passion and care. The depth in her eyes makes time stop and feels like a satori. Though we both know that we are in love, no one has whispered an ‘I love you’ or any other words related to that fact. Well those acts are totally out of my character hence I’d never be able to hang around her, give her gifts, take her out on a date or say to her that I love her. But when younger boys propose her and send her gifts, I get filled with anger, jealousy and self-pity. I feel angry, for her being so charming and accepting gifts as trophies, jealous of her and her admirers for being so young and romantic and self-pity for me being so boring and ageless.

A week ago I found a journal which says that the kundalini, if stopped at the heart, can be disastrous for the meditator. If not lifted up to the head, the sadhak will be prone to emotional disturbances and madness! These days when I watch her face, I tend to know where my madness will arise from.

For your info although I have stopped my cross legged meditations, I have always tried to be aware of all the emotions and actions that passeth before me and that too, without choice. I have watched myself lonely and lost. I have watched her full of life and her desires to bloom into a thousand colors. I am aware that it was not me who fell in love but love fell upon me like a blessing. Maybe there are predominant psychological and physiological factors, working without our knowledge in making us choose our mates but I think I was always aware of my minutest desires and motives. I just let them flow and did not suppress, sublimate or hinder them in anyway. Either she is playing with me when she flirts and accepts gifts, making me feel like a persona non grata or I am playing with her with this choice less awareness shit, of being in the game without being a player. Even more I could be in a greater illusion regarding my perspective about the world and every thing due to the disturbances created by the kundalini stopping at my heart. It seems I have to make a definite choice to clear all the mist settling on my being. Either I have to make her mine at all costs or play along choice less with this game called life or raise my kundalini to the highest, cure myself from this heart disease and cure my world. If I asked you for a choice, what would that be?
                                                                              The End