On March 24, the Prime Minister announced a 21 day lockdown. The next day was my mothers birthday and I decided to go to my parents home for a couple of days before I came back to the sanctity and quiet of my own home for the rest of the lockdown.
Today is May 13, and I still haven't gone back to my own house, for many reasons. However this post is not about those reasons, but is about an inner journey from the despair and anguish i started with, to a state of peace and flow.
In the first few weeks, there was so much resistance. The world had gone mad. Every where people were panicking and trying to comprehend what had just hit us. This was a suspended reality - a chasm between what "normal life" was and an unknown future of what it's going to be.
And that's what anxiety is - a feeling of uncertainty for what will happen in the future. And was I scared - every single plan I had made for my immediate future, had in one moment crashed and landed into many little pieces. I had just moved into my own home - and with that moved forward into a phase of my life filled with excitement. It was gone! Not only did I lose hope, but there was a massive burden that I had undertaken - RENT! Without being able to work (my teaching work needs me to initiate people in the physical body) - how would I pay rent for an apartment I was not even living in?!
First, came all the anger at the unfairness of the situation. Yes, I was grateful that I was with family, but the whole point of moving out was to be on my own, and here i was back to where i started. That was just not fair!
Then came the sadness and grief as I realised what I was really angry about - unfulfilled dreams and shattered expectations. I was in mourning, but not for "real" things, but what seemed like a lost opportunity, a stolen dream, and what looked like a bleak, uncertain future over which I had absolutely no control.
When the mourning period ended, I realised I needed to embrace the current moment. The future could be anything! and what I was actually mourning was MY idea what I thought it would be. And that wasn't even real, even though my emotion was. This is what Buddha referred to as suffering, which only comes because of attachment. What was real was, that here I was, with my family, and my laptop, and with no access to my house. And what was I going to do?
I stopped fighting and spent every day trying to stay in the present moment. Meditation, self-healing, awareness - all of it helped. But what helped the most was dropping the resistance to accept the situation,
exactly as it is, for what it is, without any emotional drama. Acceptance followed with much more ease as I started living day to day, just for that very day.
I started telling myself that I will first handle today, and do what I can today, and when the month end arrives, I'll see then, on that day, what to do. I started to look for ways to create work for myself. As soon as I opened the internal door, the universe responded. By the end of the month, I had made enough to pay my rent.
Even today, every time I think about two months from today, or even two weeks from today, or even two days from today, my head goes into a tizzy. Because my mind cannot possibly fathom with certainty what the future will look like, I feel a sense of lack of control and my friend, the anxious little weasel starts to pop its head out.
So I stopped wondering. I stopped engaging in conversations that were driven by fear and were based in randomly chatting about the state of affairs and the future. I started changing my meditations to more awareness and mindful practices. I started deep breathing and praying. I started to surrender, which in my case was simply learning to accept this moment for what is is, fully and completely, without fighting with myself, God or the Universe.
These are my lemons.
Surrender means - make lemonade.
