Finding grace, harmony

Pausing to perceive what we had previously ignored is a way to go into ourselves and see how deep the place is from which our life flows, writes Arthur A Sackrule

Arthur A Sackrule

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When we practice self-awareness, we are more intimately in contact with ourselves. We may end up finding harmony within as we begin to marvel at how our incredibly complex organism functions, and how, through our five senses, we can find our place in the mystery of existence. We begin to realise how interconnected we are. We begin to build bridges to reach other sentient beings. We begin to cherish this gift called life...

Sometimes, it seems, paraphrasing James Joyce, that we live a little distant from ourselves. The speed with which things change, especially in our consumer society of disposables, is such that we do not even find a shred of time to be with ourselves. We are constantly bombarded by novelties, the latest model of technology, without which we are led to believe that we cannot survive. Television channels are in the order of thousands, we cannot live with only one, and so, some of us have acquired the taste of zapping from one channel to another in the constant search for new stimuli, because in the absence of these, we fear we will be forced to look inward and may end up finding a world too foreign and unknown.

Even as early as school age, the pace of activity, sometimes, seems unbelievable. Many children are taken by parents from school and rushed off to do, sometimes, more than one sports activity before finding themselves again, literally or metaphorically, that is, returning home. In the world of work, a similar situation repeats itself, the arc of the day is long, the things to do are many and are all urgent and people are always in a hurry. Workplaces look as if they are full of predators from which people are on the run. Many feel the tyranny of time when, in reality, it could be that the predator is the one that resides within us and has become like that because we feel so fragmented and bewildered that we hardly know who we are.

Despite all this, we meet ourselves several times along the journey of life, though in different guises and in different contexts. Often, this happens because we find ourselves repeating the same mistakes, in some of our daily choices. A significant example is that of people who leave one romantic relationship and start a new one, only to find themselves with the same identical problems that compromised the previous one. For some, the new girlfriend not only temperamentally resembles the previous one but may even physically look like her. It really seems that we learn little from history and from our past experiences, it seems that, like Sisyphus, we are doomed to push the boulder towards the top of a mountain just to see it roll back to the base each time.

We can remedy this condition by starting to inhabit our body and our senses some more. Starting with breathing, and with each breath, we can think that oxygen is in love with us and does not want to leave us. We can picture how our body expands inside with each in breath and how, when we exhale, our body contracts as if to embrace us internally. We then allow our eyes to open to what surrounds us and to appreciate it. If we look out of the window of our house or the office, with a relaxed look, and continue doing so for a few more seconds, it is very likely that we will notice something we had not seen before. Maybe a colour or a shape because every leaf of a tree has a hue and a shape that is different from the others. We will be more present in our eyes. If we look at a wall, we will notice that it is not completely uniform but, here too, there are several irregularities. Even if we find nothing, we can simply let ourselves be captured by the beauty of the landscape we are observing or some aspect of it. And soon, we will find ourselves feeling more aware of our presence, of the presence of a life flowing within us and, at the same time, we will realise that we are part of the mystery that presents itself daily in front of our new eyes.

The practice of observation is also useful when we walk on the street and see so-called marginalised people. By extending our attention respectfully, we will be surprised to note how many aspects of beauty reside in them, also, like the diamond in the coal, the pearl in the oyster. Even the toothless old hag with a hooked nose reveals her beautiful appearance and this, too, is a new way of pausing to perceive what we had previously ignored. It is a way, according to Rilke, to go into ourselves and see how deep the place is from which our life flows.

(Excerpted with permission from Graceful Living: 50 Reflections for a Harmonious Life by Arthur A Sackrule, published by SAGE Publications India.)