Tied mind,

Tight body,

Tidal emotions.

Just the though flowing while my personal trainer made me stretch my body at the gym. It felt like an aha! Moment, while he held the band to stretch my hamstrings. I smiled and he pulled, and I smiled and he pulled, and I smiled and he pulled, till I actually had to stop him. Guess what I was still smiling and he was smiling back proud of our collective achievement. My physical trainer has been working extremely hard to make my body more flexible, and I believed till this aha moment of the day that I was putting in every effort to help him, help me achieve flexibility. 

That’s where the problem lies – the efforts. The tied up mind pushes, pulls, cries out in pain, swears when made to push boundaries, ooof, efforts, efforts and more effforts. The rope that ties up the mind is the word Effort. “I need to put in effort to make my body flexible!” Right, lay, you actually have put in so much effort over the years that you actually created for yourself a rigid body. You are stiff right through the joints. You are so stiff that you can’t even feel the rhythm of the blood flowing through you veins. Your efforts have tied you up!

To explain it better, an effort is required when you need to do something that could actually belong to the unnatural category of doing. Take for example, if it is natural to be a sloppy, lazy boo, then effortlessly you will wake up late, sleep a and when. If it is unnatural for you to be active and up at dawn, then you’ll have to put in every effort to charge up the body to agree to wake up for that early morning flight.

The efforts shut down the natural flow of being, as it comes into the realm of doing, as against letting it happen. Efforts cause stress, stress causes stiffness, stiffness causes tidal emotions, and then obviously, the hormones have a field-day, every day bouncing up and down, upon the trampoline of efforts.

How exhausting it is!

Loosen up! Let go! Let happen! Drop efforts… Shhhhh…. Calm breath in an out, happening just like that, effortlessly.

The root of the problem exists in the obsessive compulsive distractions we indulge ourselves in, because we claim we need things to be perfect. Well, just as beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, perfection is a perspective and not a fixed, definite, defined structure. Perfection is the journey, and not the destination. Perfection is like that water that takes the shape of the vessel and holds no shape of its own. Perfection is the spirit that binds the Universe, and yet flows through every creation.

Unfortunately, within the limited confines of our minds we give perfection a definition, and then argue with ourselves when the mind seeks joy in what we call imperfections. We curtail the seeking mind. We tie it down by our limited visions. We believe only what the eye sees, is actually what vision entails. We do not allow the sight to penetrate into the soul, so that we experience the depth of what the eyes intend to show us. Everything is a matter-of-fact.

Enslaved by what we see, we believe we have confine ourselves and function within those boundaries. This then leads us to indulge ourselves in obsessive compulsive distractions. We sees perfection in shelves arranged in a particular way; we see perfection in un-creased clothes; we see perfection where we believe there is no error.

Yet, what I may see as perfect, maybe imperfection to you. 

The chase for perfection, is like the dog chasing its own tail. The dog believes the tail is an object he needs to catch to gain control over his being. The wag of his tail to him is his imperfection. We humans chase our own tail of perfection, because we see it as something wagging and teasing us. Well, perfection is appreciating you.

Perfection allows the mind to wander freely in order to be inspired creatively and allow things to happen. 

I am a slave of my own obsessive compulsive distractions that take me away from the joy of living. This is because my mind is trapped by fixations of how things should be. 

Print-over-print; too much print; no vibrant colours; this should be this way and that should be that way; everything should match in contrast or blend; everything should be symmetrical and balanced. Every i should be dotted, and every t should be crossed; everything should be in exact order that I set things; everything should be put away, so that space is enhanced; the husband and I should match our clothes, the husband should love me the way I deem perfect; the father should love me the way I deem perfect; the sister should respect the husband the way I deem perfect… Everything needs to be perfect – in proportion, in symmetry in matching; in the way I want things!

How exhausting this is!

How limiting this is!

How noisy this is!

How distracting this is!

How rigid this is!

How hormonally imbalancing this is!

The problem is that mind is bound by the limitations set by the intellect. This is what we carry forth from birth-to-birth. The memories carried by the sub-conscious prods us into developing obsessive compulsive distractions that take us away from our natural, spontaneous, child-like innocent self. We are bound by the scripts of instructions. The morals, the laws, the values, the censures, the persecutions, the strictures, the defamations, the shame, the inflicted… we carry it all in the memory.

Thankfully we don’t remember it all, but we are prodded by those memeroies to restrict us from experiencing our perfections. This causes immense stress, which in turn sickens the body, and creates tsunamis of emotions – raging anger; flooding sadness, destructive envy and jealousy – and medically its called hormonal imbalance. 

While anyone, at any point of life faces this, we women in our peri-menopausal phase have to definitely deal with it. 

Uhmmmmm… Not deal with it. Defintely don’t fight it. Rather, become aware of it. I feel everyday for me is an opportunity to bring to awareness something that is nudging to come out into the open and lead me.

When I am asked where does awareness lead me, my reply is prompt; away from my obsessive compulsive distractions, one-by-one, and closer to my carefree blasé creativeness. It helps me break the shackles of bondage, one-link-at-a-time, inspiring creativity one-brainwave-at-a-time.

This does not also entail freedom from discipline. In fact, discipline leads to freedom, while the obsessive compulsive distractions lead to bondage. Discipline empowers the mind to seek inspiration to achieve greatness, using the body to manifest its creations.

Unfortunately, we believe that cultivating obsessive compulsive distractions is the as being disciplined. Actually, they belong to two extreme ends of the spectrum. 

Obsessive compulsive distractions are actions we take, indulging in activities that are driven from a crazy, small whole in the mind that lacks the ability of visualizing, as it is bound by the boundaries of seeing. Through this whole the minds creates its own concept of perfection, and keeps reminding itself that seeing everything in that set structure is perfection. So, for example, spending 20 minutes to iron-out every crease of the shirt to perfection is an obsessive compulsive distraction. Because this task should take no more than 3 to 4 minutes. And for such a person, it is not just limited to iron the shirt, but also the trousers and the handkerchief. So, in total this person could be spending 45 minutes to simply iron the clothes to his sight of perfection. The rest of the day, his biggest concern is to ensure his attire does not get crinkled; and if he notices anyone wearing clothes with even the slightest crease, the mind is completely distracted by anger and irritation, as the crease is disturbing, what the hole in the mind considers perfect. 

Imagine this person, spending every day of his life, obsessing compulsively on crinkling of clothes… what a waste.

On the other hand, discipline says, wear ironed clothes and get going. Discipline does not care if the clothes get crumpled while on the go, nor can creative brainwaves stop flowing because the mind is stuck on the crinkles of another’s attire. 

Obsessive compulsive distractions means spending a couple of hours getting things done to the mind’s little hole’s sight of perfection, even when one has to wake up at 3.00am for a flight. Discipline says, “Lets just get into bed, get some sleep, so that I am fresh for the flight and the rest of the day.”

Discipline is the freedom to be, and obsessive compulsive distractions is the bondage to do.

While we are made to believe that we need to strive for perfection, I beg to differ! 

We are a constant work in progress, until we are born into the body, again and again. We are neither evolving nor regressing, for there is no measure in any realm of existence – neither on the physical plane; nor the spirit layers. We are constantly moving, we are always experiencing, moment-to-moment.

While the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines obsessive compulsive disorders as “an anxiety disorder characterised by either obsessions or compulsions, recognized by the afflicted person as excessive or unreasonable, causing significant distress, wasting significant amounts of time, or markedly interfering with everyday life, occupational or academic performance; of social interaction.” I feel we need to give it a more positive dimension, by looking at it as obsessive compulsive distractions that tie up our mind, tighten up our bodies, and cause tidal emotions.

Our entire life is about overcoming the temptation to indulge in the distractions in order to achieve freedom of the mind, flexibility of the body and calmness of the emotions. And yet, it is not achievable in totality. For when it is achieved completely, the ECG graph will be a straight line.

The journey is all about becoming aware of the obsessive compulsive distraction that is blocking inspirational brainwaves, stiffening the body, causing tsunamis of emotions. When one comes to awareness, it begins to make its way out, if one lets it go effortlessly, by observing how much more open the mind is, how much more flexible the body is and how much more calmer the emotions are.

Drop the efforts and let it happen, just like that. 

A lesson well learnt, I claim joyfully! 

Perfection is my journey, as this moment perfectly leads me to the next moment.

As the breath perfectly flows in to flow out in perfection;

Imperfection is a celebration of the:

The Untied Mind,

The Loosened Body,

The Calm Emotions.