Power of Thought

The Power of Thought !!

This morning my second patient was a nineteen year old. The chief complaint section on the chart said : 1. Stress 2: Hair loss

When I walked into the room I greeted the young man who was probably close to 6 feet tall, somewhat hunched at the shoulders. He was fair, with blue eyes and brown-bronze tone of blonde hair, slightly disheveled. No obvious balding was visible. His demeanor is hard to describe, he did not look anxious or disturbed, may be a bit lost. I had reviewed his chart earlier and saw that he had a couple of appointments with a behavioral health professional in recent weeks for adjustment disorder. 

I greeted him and got straight to the reasons he was here for the appointment. Tell me what’s going on? Why is a 19 year old like you stressed? I asked him with a friendly smile on my face. “I think I’m stressed because I worry about the future and have a lot of expectations for myself. “

The story I got out of him after a few questions was like this :

He had left his parent’s home in Tehachapi for pursuing football at junior college in Bakersfield but after 8-9 months of staying in a shared apartment there he began to lose interest. His parents were helping him partially with the rent. He worked at a job to cover other expenses. But the job was demanding and he simply didn’t feel it would take him anywhere. He quit and returned to live with his parents. 

What are you doing now?

He was pursuing a course to become a firefighter.

What do you want to do in the future?

Become a firefighter.

So you are already enrolled to train for your dream job. What makes you worried about the future?

Did you miss your class today to come to this appointment? 

No. The first semester was in person classes. Now it is online. The course began yesterday and I have to complete it by the 22nd.

Did you start working on it yesterday?

No

Are you depressed? Is that what is stopping you from starting your work?

If you are depressed and therefore not feeling like doing anything, the first thing you ought to do is accept that you are depressed. And having done that , if we prescribe you medication for the depression, you need to take it as directed.

He insisted : I am not depressed. The counselor I met kept saying to me “ be gentle with yourself “ . That didn’t help in any way. What does it mean I should be gentle with myself?

Me: You say you have high expectations for yourself, you worry about the future. You are already enrolled into the training for what you want to be. You feel certain that you are not depressed. Yet you are not getting down to do what you are supposed to do each day. And you are saying you are stressed! 

Does that make sense to you?

I told him I am sixty years old. But that doesn’t make much difference. We both have 24 hours in our day and a set of things before us to complete in the day. I saw the last patient, I completed her chart, then I moved on to you. I am addressing your problems in the present moment when I’m supposed to be here. After I’m done with you, I will go compete the note in your chart. Then move to the next patient and keep on track till the last patient of the day. My assistant too has 24 hours and her set of duties to complete within reasonable time. If I don’t keep moving in present time with what is before me in the present moment, I will stress out too and start running behind life instead of walking with life. That’s what you are doing. Your class opened yesterday but you didn’t start working on it. You have your life but you are running behind it instead of doing what you need to do in real time, and then stressing out worrying about the future. 

He listened. 

I see what you are saying, he told me. 

We talked about the concerns he had about his hair. I suggested a few labs to check his general health. He expressed fear of blood draw. I told him about how I deal with my wariness of needles by simply closing my eyes during blood draw. I assured him it doesn’t hurt. He agreed to go ahead do the test. The appointment was concluded. He thanked me with sincerity and left. 

I was on track to see my next patient. 

I left my personal conditioning aside every moment I was attending to the task in front of me. And there was a flow. A rhythm. An effortless transition from one moment to another like a ballerina. No awkwardness. No resistance, internal or external. Perfect eye contact and conversation with a 19 year old, 31 year old, 45 year old, 64 year old , 73 year old or 84 year old. Somehow the right questions arose in my mind to get a better understanding of what they were here for and the right answers came out of my mouth to satisfy their needs. It seemed like the entire day proceeded with contactless communication. Zero gain. Zero loss. I was the same before I started the round and the same when I was done. The slate was blank from moment to moment. 

Once I was settled into my hotel room my mind went back to that kid I had seen in the morning. The “ problem “ in his life was a creation of “thought”. Aren’t most of our lives’ problems like that? Created by thought or at least, complicated by thought. 

What did I do to help the guy today? 

Used a different thought to undo his thought! 

I didn’t sweat. I didn’t prescribe him a medication. Just showed him a different way to think. His life remains the same. He remains enrolled in the course  that will lead to the career of his choice. I just removed a barricade in the way that was entirely imaginary. With the help of what? A strategy that too was entirely to be imagined! 

Life is really not that complicated. The moment we learn to live in the present moment and understand to prioritize what is at hand, life becomes a delightful ballet. 

The tricky part is how to live in the present moment ! What clouds the present moment is our conditioning. We are so wrapped up in this conditioning that we can’t identify it as separate from ourselves. And basically we miss out on the freshness of each present moment because of who we believe we are and how this person stands in the way of every present moment . 

Now what I am about to say will make you think I have completely lost touch with reality! The person who we believe we are is nothing but a thought crystallized and frozen in time and occupying space. It slowly begins to thaw as it begins the search for its true nature. The moment it gets dissolved under the heat of contemplation it evaporates and only the present moment remains. 

Why is it that most people don’t find this truth?

There are many reasons for that.

First and foremost is unwillingness to believe in such a thing.

Even if one may believe, to get there requires serious contemplation. Usually there is not enough inclination to pursue contemplation. Inclination calls for a burning desire, a lot of time and putting aside all other beliefs.

And even after someone dives in with the determination to get to the bottom of it, the existing person within plays a proxy war. It fears extinction. It resists being negated of an existence. It is in no mood to understand the philosophy with clarity because it feels threatened. Its own viability is threatened. It begins to project thoughts like the young man today was doing, without understanding what he was doing. It gets confused about how to maintain its own relationship with family and the world around. It goes through a whole circus or a comedy of errors until someone sensible taps on the shoulders and tells him that you are going to be ok. I am with you. 

And who is that someone?

The present moment! 

It is alive!

It is life itself. 

It is the real you. 

You must go the entire nine yards to discover it. Even though it has always been with you. But you didn’t recognize it. 

It is quite funny to think, but true, that each of us has to learn to be alive. We learn many things while we go through life but nobody teaches us to be alive. Because most people don’t know it has to be learned. They only know they don’t want to die.

Another funny thing is that those who don’t know that they are alive are fearful of dying. I am not talking about those who think they are alive. Those who know they are alive know there is no death. 

To be able to some day learn to be alive we must first learn to walk hand in hand with life.

Not run behind it or ahead of it. You really can’t do either of those. You can only pretend to do those two things. And most of us live pretending. Few will accept that this is true. Pretending would be ok had it not been the cause for stress. Like the man I saw today, it is the running behind or ahead is what brings stress. I hope the young man learns to walk hand in hand with his life. 

If I have to quote Dnyaaneshwar Mauli: 

Vishwa Swadharma Surye Paho 🙏🏼🙏🏼

विश्व स्वधर्म सूर्यें पाहो 🙏🏼🙏🏼

P.S

Another crazy thing I experienced firsthand, in real time last evening, albeit very briefly, while feeling completely alive, in total absence of the conditioned self, was that the entire world did not exist! It was evident as merely a delusion.

And if this brings any doubt about my orientation or dysfunction in cognitive ability, no, I had no alcohol or any stimulant drugs or anything at all before, during or after the time when I was writing about the day’s events. That experience in the present moment is a memory. A very vivid memory like many other things I have been able to recall from the past.

Ideally I should title this post as “ The Power And Limitation of Thought”. But at the conventional level of human functioning, it is adequate to understand the power of thought, both negative and positive and use it in a constructive manner for the benefit of all.