Life Unknown

The country of India is nothing short of a universe. A person would have to devote multiple lifetimes to understand it truly and would eventually realize that the attempt will still fall short of understanding the whole breadth and length of this multi-faceted and colorful country.

Ladakh was a region standing beyond time, even in the 21st Century. Sharing its borders with Chinese occupied Tibet on the eastern side, Ladakh was the northern-most part of India. It is the home of the Indus Valley, named after the Indus River. This is one of Asia’s longest rivers and the lifeline of the archaic Indus Valley civilization.

The most addictive of all drugs, once we humans get a taste of it, we can’t get enough of greed. Elusively, it drives and empowers us and corrodes us internally without us even being aware of it. Then it slowly takes over every cell of our bodies to govern all our actions, leaving us utterly fractured at the core of our existence.

In contrast, on the flat, deserted land, there were many traditional, mud-brick houses constructed of locally sourced materials. It roused the sense that I had landed in an offbeat, mythical kingdom on another planet altogether.

Ladakhi is the term the people of Ladakh use for identifying themselves – and their language.

I was not trying to find anything, I was trying to lose it all- everything I foolishly thought I had gained in life because of the systematic, predictable chain of events that goes into the making of someone’s life in our present-day world.

The whole National Capital Region is an over-populated and ever-growing, human-derived reality. It drove millions to get up in the morning and strive for a better life than what they have. They do not have the luxury of retaining the physical or mental space to investigate the question: “What are we running this race for?”

Shamans are medicine men/women who can access and influence the world of the spirits through an elevated state of consciousness, which they then channel to heal people in the material world.

Eventually, I realized that I had to return to the mystical land of India, not as a visitor or countryman – but as an individual who no longer had an identity.

even though it was tough to keep on being denied by people, I tried to not take it personally and kept on practicing the art of “letting it go.”

Instead of worrying about what people thought of what I was doing, I focused on silencing the external noise, and at the same time, acknowledged the inner voice.

Your ability to interact with the material world and generate wealth for yourself may seem like the appropriate measure of your grasp of yourself and everything else in your life. However, that is the biggest illusion we’ve created for ourselves in this world.

These major Indian cities have already become living cages where people are welded into the fabric of a broken system that has historically produced wealth by the exploitation of people, land, and natural resources.

We have become more successful at calling ourselves futurists but struggle to own our present.

We Indians may think that we gained freedom from the British in 1947, but we have only lived an illusion of owning our liberty since then.

In July and August, rain takes over India’s land, except the region of Ladakh, which is in the rainshadow because of its high altitude.

My aim was to focus on immersing myself within my inner world’s unintelligible chatter.

Ladakh was a melting pot for travelers, who like me, came to lose themselves in the wondrous, spacious beauty of the land.

An inner fountain of joy is the key for humans to be living balanced lives for their brief existence on this planet.

Every Indian parent’s goal is for their children to get a good education, do well in business or any other high-profile job, earn a reasonable sum of money, get married, have children, and continue living. Anything other than this life-pattern is unfamiliar for modern-day humans.

I did not fall into the trap of germinating my ego by dressing a certain way or by turning into a specific religious identity. India already had a large market for the many self-proclaimed gurus and political leaders who were busy deceiving people while furthering their selfish agendas.

I just wanted to keep on living freely by experiencing the rawness of our creation.

People are being drenched in disempowerment in the name of God, religion, and belief systems.

I was not to fall into that trap and was to stay away from all forms of institutionalized religious propaganda. They only turn us apart from the actual path of truth.

People interacted with me, perceiving what they wanted to perceive, believing what they wanted to believe. I neither corrected nor wronged anybody but played along with the characters I was regularly seen as.

We made no plans but merely lived day by day immersed in whatever was happening around us.

we continuously strive to become a winner because we are so afraid of being a loser.

Instead of merely carrying out a task with complete surrender and devotion, we are purely concerned about its results and consequences.

The labels of “self-made” and “independent” are two of the most egocentric tags we put on ourselves. They undermine the reality that we are where we are and doing what we are doing because a lot of conceivable and inconceivable factors have played their parts in bringing about a pathway that supports the progression of our ideas, agendas, concepts, and aspirations.

Even though the world may sometimes feel as if it is in a disastrous condition, the reality is that a large proportion of our species’ physical survival is more secure today than ever.

In India itself, millions of people still live in the primitive, survival stage of having to secure their physical needs daily. They do not have the luxury of the mental and physical space required to think beyond physical survival.

I was frustrated by the jargon used in the name of truth, religion, and spirituality. It only made me realize that those people had not obtained freedom. They only got further enchained by another institution. It bolstered their egos and led them to portray the false self-image produced by their mind’s deception.

It is not about being enchained by an institution. It is about being able to live a life full of unyielding potential.

let the mind break out of its cruel cage and fly away into the widened sky with no goal in mind but complete immersion in living a life with no need to hold onto any fear or any bribe.

“What if” was no longer there because I did not care about anything.

I still was unsure where I was going – I simply wanted to get out of Leh. The rest I had left on the nameless denominators which carry you through your ride and get you to where you’re supposed to be, when you’re trusted to be there.

Pursuing a quest throws more than unexpected challenges at us, but also paves the way for the mind to be genuinely broadened by taking on immeasurable perspectives. Those perspectives can’t be obtained by carrying out life’s usual chores, but can only be when our mind is forced to deal with unfamiliar situations with nothing to lean onto.

I liked being in the presence of people who wholly devoted their lives to being liberated from the catastrophe of our derailing civilization.

I was not connected to the world technologically anymore, but felt more connected than ever before.

“My freedom won’t be based on a label I choose to live by. It will be independent of everything and everyone and allow my mind to hold a space that extends to nobody, including myself.”

Our entire lives are governed by the rules and ideologies we choose – or are forced to assume. They depend on which part of the world we are born in.

It compels us to live in trapped boxes where our minds can only make sense of things when they fit with the external framework we have assimilated over the years – which then commands that we be, and act, in a certain way.

What we chose or who chooses it for us is not as important as living according to its rules and ideas. It’s only another form of illusion – mere stories that have been planted in our minds to form our reality.

Nothing was certain. Nothing was clear. Nothing was dear.

I realized it is essential in life not to let our everyday turn into some unconscious mechanical operation.

The best of life happens when we balance between the need to sit down and do the work that needs doing and the times when we can simply be and take in what the world has to offer in its limitless potential.

It’s equally significant for growth in life to balance our time and energy between what we love doing in the material world and being grateful for the natural world around us.

I was not concerned anymore about where I was going – I was learning to welcome every new moment with a sense of openness fastened to it without needing to control everything.

We are not meant to conform to the prison constructed within our minds. With it, our fears, insecurities, doubts, and anxieties overpower us and don’t let us see the world clearly without those filters attached to our perception of the world.

I was entering another stream of living, which could not be labeled by the external world. And with time, I was willing to go to any extremes to uncover the depths of my existence, and more significantly, I could not see any other way to live life anymore.

There’s a deep sense of mysticism attached to being in the land of India. As a seeker, you wonder if the land itself caused the evolution of the human mind from its primitive form into a higher level of consciousness, back in the day.

Materialism then unleashed its full force on us and made us ignorant of everything else, including the mystical workings of the natural world around us.

It was a space of lostness with no purpose in absolute terms and no meaning to find.

We either constantly think about how we used to live – or how we are going to live. In the meantime, we forget to live.

We may occupy ourselves by fighting about the name of the god we believe in or what our religion is, but it is all an internal battle at the end of the day.

Nobody in my family could understand the choices I had made since my exit from New York – traveling to the Amazon Jungle in Peru or wandering through the Himalayas. Nothing seemed to be proceeding as per the usual plan enculturated into humans worldwide, especially in India.

Tibetan Buddhism’s influence was preserved within locals’ lives in several villages and could be felt primarily revolving around the values of happiness, compassion, and liberation.

Without a mindset governed by greed and ego-driven wealth creation, Zanskari wealth was still associated with happiness – not by how much cash and real estate a person owned.

Our planet’s limited resources can not fulfill the greedy desires of all the humans currently residing on it.

In the olden days in a vast country such as India, those who renounced everything in life to seek liberation were highly revered. Now, many consider them worthless, because they are not striving to achieve a goal that allows them to be labeled successful in worldly terms.

This world opens endless possibilities when we leave behind our comfortable lives stuck inside the caged, human-made palaces that domesticate our wild animal-selves.

Going through a deeply introspective and vulnerable time in myself, I had become sensitive to other people’s emotions. Everything they felt, I could feel through them, as I no longer held onto my guards and was becoming more and more connected to all life around me.

My ego’s attachment to that self-immage was my most significant obstacle to genuine realizations relating to the truth of our existence beyond our human-contrived illusions.

We just do what we’ve been told to do. We are caricatures in a devious play, unaware of the roles we are playing.

Parkinson’s, which was seizing control of her motor neurons and making them inactive and unresponsive to the commands from her central nervous system.