Sitting on a Volcano

'Hey man! finally, weekend is here..', told my colleague. I replied, 'yeah, finally... So whats the agenda for the weekend?' He did not say much. Monday morning, I asked him, 'So how was weekend man?' He replied quite lazily, 'nothing.. the same old thing. Watched TV .. had lunch, watched TV again and then had dinner and again watched TV.. ' He even admitted, 'man, I was bored of watching TV.'

I asked him, 'if you were bored watching TV, why didn't you do something else?' He replied, 'nah, there was nothing much to do.. so I was just watching TV..'

I am sure we have done this many times. While we are sitting at home, we suddenly feel theres nothing much to do. And we do something or the other which is not at all interesting to keep ourselves busy. We watch TV, we watch sitcoms on computers, we blast music at the highest possible volume... if nothing works out, we call a few people and check with them if they are free in the evening..

On a lighter note, Swami Nithyananda says - on sundays you will see there are so many people who sit and read the whole news paper, from the first line to the last.. they don't even spare matrimonials and classifieds' :)

Have we ever tried to analyze this situation? Why do we do this to our system? What is happening inside us when we are given an opportunity to be alone? Why do we look for avenues to fill that space?

A simple answer is we are scared of our own self. We do not want to look inside us. We are scared of our fears, of our desires, of our whole being. We are so scared that we just find different ways to escape those fears. Imagine a volcano brewing inside us, ready to erupt anytime. We are sitting on top of it, desparately hoping nothing will happen.

The fact is we can't sit quietly for more than 5 minutes.. I guess 5 minutes is too much, may be not more than 2 minutes. We become restless. Just sit for a few minutes alone and check for yourself. We just can't sit alone. We get scared. Our mind plays all kinds of games. We scared to see our fears, insecurities, greed, desires, cravings and what not. Our mind races between hundreds or even thousands of thoughts.

To escape from this scenario, we resort to external sources to fill that space. We watch TV, taking in whatever junk is coming. We go out spend some time outside meeting friends and talking something which sometimes we are least interested in.

If you see my question in the beginning, I said, 'What is happening inside us when we are given an opportunity to be alone?' Yes it is an opportunity.. Nithyananda says that being alone is an opportunity for us to look into ourselves. When we peep inside and understand what's going on, we suddenly become more aware of ourselves. With a better understanding of ourselves, we can channelise our resources, energy better. When we understand our desires, fears, worries, we can tackle each of them better. Meditation is all about infusing awareness into ourselves.

We normally let our mind take control of us. We are not even aware of what is ruling us. When we understand what's inside, we stop letting them take charge. We take charge instead.

We have always tried to look outside and fill the gap. For a change, why not look inside and fill it with awareness...