When I finished high school I relished the freedom to design my days however I wanted. It was a new feeling, and a powerful counter to the notion that freedom lie at the end of a long road through university and decades of toil. I resented giving away my best hours every day to someone else just so I could wake up the next day and do it all over again in the hopes I could one day feel the way I felt every morning.
In my late teens and early 20s I began to question the point of a consumer life. Society was pressuring me to conform, but I knew that something else awaited me. I dreamt of soulful tribal beats in far-off lands as-of-yet unexplored. I wanted meaning and purpose. I did not want bills and responsibilities and schedules.
I wandered around for several years, searching but not finding what I was looking for. But after three years, my prayers were answered and I had a spontaneous epiphany. In a single, electrifying moment I found what I had always been looking for: “god”. I experienced the highest degree of self-awareness for an hour, then it slowly faded away over the course of several months. That period of self-awareness gave me enormous strength of conviction that led to the decisions that changed my life forever.
The foundational decision was leaving America, where the high costs made it impossible to support a contemplative lifestyle. In moving to Asia, I was able to escape the endless cycle of aspirational toil. The lower cost of living, alien culture, and disconnection from anything familiar allowed me to focus inward for the first time. At the time, the rural Himalayan region I lived in hadn’t succumbed to the consumer lifestyle. People were family-oriented, rather than consumer-oriented.
India was conducive to what I call the reawareness cycle. It started when I began to question my life choices out of high school, and culminated in my epiphany. Thereafter, I would repeatedly enter moments of extreme self-awareness. At first they were separated by longer periods of time, but over the years the time between these moments diminished.
My reawareness cycle can also be measured by the “distance” I move from the moment of self-awareness. Earlier, I would return to the moment, then I plough through the other end. I would feel myself getting further and further from self-awareness, often-times forgetting it altogether and making decisions contrary to it. But as I sought to understand these moments and this self I was becoming aware of, my orbit changed. I was able to sustain longer periods of self-awareness, even if they were not as intense.
Presently, after many years of contemplation, I understand how experience impacts my reawareness cycle. I know what experiences take me closer, and which take me further away from moments of awareness. It is in understanding and pursuing my desire for lasting peace, above all else, and abstention from relief that will determine my reawareness orbit.
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