We Are Always the Receiver

I want you to contemplate on just one simple thing: Can you predict your next thought? Like can you tell me exactly what thought is gonna arise in your mind five seconds from now? No, you cannot. You can think upon a thought once it arrives, you can act upon it, reject it, let it go or even build an entire philosophy around it but one thing you cannot do is know what thought is going to arrive next. Now isn't that fascinating? We spend our entire lives believing that we are the thinkers, the creators of every thought, the controllers of everything happening inside us but if you observe carefully you will discover something extraordinary, we are always receiving something.

Just look at your life from the moment you were born. You received your body, your family, your surroundings, the language you speak, the culture you grew up in and even the beliefs you hold so dearly today. Most of these things were given to you before you could even comprehend what they meant. Then as you grew up you started receiving experiences, knowledge, emotions, thoughts and slowly you constructed an identity around all of them. You started calling yourself this or that, associating yourself with your body, mind, religion, nationality, profession and countless other things. But have you ever stopped to question who is actually experiencing all of this? Because since birth everything has changed, your body has changed, your thoughts have changed, your understanding of life has changed but your ability to observe these changes has remained present throughout your conscious life.

I have always been fascinated by the analogy that our mind is just like a television set, receiving different signals and transforming them into experiences. Now imagine you are watching a television and suddenly a beautiful scene appears, you enjoy it fully, then something horrifying appears and you become frightened, then something funny appears and you start laughing. The screen remains the same throughout, only the pictures displayed upon it keep changing. Isn't something similar happening within us? One moment you are happy, another moment sad, another moment angry and another moment deeply in love. All these experiences come and go but the awareness in which they appear remains available to witness them. This is a philosophical analogy, not proof that thoughts are literally transmitted into our brains from somewhere else, but it points towards something you can investigate within yourself.

Now take something even more interesting, creativity. You must have experienced this yourself that sometimes you are just walking peacefully, taking a shower or doing absolutely nothing and suddenly an extraordinary idea strikes you. Where did it come from? You weren't consciously thinking about it, you didn't ask your mind to generate that particular idea and yet there it is, appearing out of nowhere. Think about scientists, inventors, poets and artists who have experienced sudden moments of inspiration after spending days, months or sometimes years working upon something. Their minds were constantly gathering experiences, knowledge and observations, and then one day something beautiful emerged from all of it. Whether these ideas arise through unconscious processing or something deeper is a fascinating subject to investigate, but the experience itself reveals something beautiful: we don't consciously manufacture every thought that enters our awareness.

Now this brings me to something that I have been contemplating for quite some time. If thoughts, emotions, sensations and ideas are constantly arising within us, then why do we associate ourselves with every single one of them? Why does one negative thought have the power to ruin our entire day? Why does one person saying something unpleasant make us question our worth? Why do we constantly keep holding on to our past experiences when they have already happened and no longer exist in the present except through our memories? It's because we have become so deeply identified with everything we receive that we have forgotten the receiver itself.

This is precisely where meditation comes in. Speaking from my own experience, I used to overthink a lot and would constantly get caught up in my thoughts. But through meditation, journaling and reading I gradually began understanding something beautiful, that I don't have to act upon every thought that arises in my mind. I can simply observe it, let it come and let it go. And the more you practise this, the more you begin to experience a sense of lightness because you are no longer constantly fighting everything happening inside you. You don't have to suppress your anger, sadness, excitement or desires. Just become aware of them. Observe how they arise, how they change and how eventually they disappear. Awareness gives you the space to choose how you respond rather than mechanically reacting to everything.

And don't confuse this with passiveness. In fact I advocate precisely the opposite. We should be active, creative, courageous and experience life in its totality. When a beautiful idea arises, work upon it. When love arises in your heart, express it. When your inner nature calls you towards something, explore it with full energy. The point is not to reject what we receive but to stop being imprisoned by it. You can receive an idea and transform it into a beautiful invention, receive knowledge and turn it into wisdom, receive suffering and learn something from it, receive love and share it with countless others. Isn't this what makes human existence so wonderful? We are constantly receiving from the universe and through our actions contributing something back to it.

Now let me take you towards something even more beautiful, Kashmir Shaivism. One of its central insights is that consciousness is not merely a passive witness but possesses the freedom to know, experience and manifest. The entire universe is understood as an expression of that one infinite consciousness, appearing in countless forms and experiencing itself through them. Just contemplate upon this possibility: what if behind all these changing experiences, behind your body, mind, thoughts and emotions, there is something much more fundamental that you have been overlooking your entire life? What if instead of constantly searching outside yourself for answers, you simply turned your attention towards that which makes every experience possible in the first place?

You have been thinking in reverse all this time. You have been trying to reach consciousness through the branches, through your body and outer experiences, when consciousness is the very thing making your experience possible. So why not leave all the jargon between you and consciousness behind and instead meditate directly upon it? Why keep exploring the infinite roots beneath the sand and infinite branches above the tree when you can contemplate the trunk which connects them both? This is something I find so beautiful about the spiritual wisdom of our ancestors. They didn't merely give us theories to believe in, they also gave us methods through which we could investigate our own experience.

And there's another thing I want you to contemplate. We often think that to become free we must gain control over everything happening within us and around us. But perhaps freedom begins when we stop demanding that every experience should happen according to our desires. You don't have to control the arrival of every thought to be free. You don't have to ensure that only happiness enters your life. You can experience sadness, anger, disappointment, love, excitement, everything, and still cultivate the awareness to respond consciously. The blessing of life is experience, my friend, and why should we restrict ourselves to only one portion of it?

This is what my philosophy of Swatantrya, Total Freedom, means to me. You are free to explore, free to question, free to create, free to love and even free to change everything you believed yesterday. You don't have to make every passing thought your identity and you certainly don't have to remain imprisoned by the conditioning you received growing up. Become aware of it, examine it and decide for yourself what deserves a place in your life.

So during your next meditation, I want you to try something very simple. Don't force your thoughts to stop, don't try to manufacture some extraordinary spiritual experience and don't even try to become peaceful. Just sit and observe whatever comes. Thoughts will arise, sounds will appear, sensations will come and go, emotions might emerge and memories might visit you. Let all of them come and go and then contemplate upon this one question: Who is receiving all of this?

Don't rush to answer it intellectually. Don't open another book to find someone else's conclusion. Look within and experience it yourself because ultimately every scripture, every guru and every philosopher can only point towards the truth, it is you who has to walk upon the path.

We have spent so much of our lives paying attention to everything we receive that we have forgotten to inquire into the receiver itself. And perhaps the moment we begin turning our attention towards it, an entirely new understanding of our existence begins to flower.

After all, the greatest mystery is not merely what we are experiencing but who is the one experiencing it all. ✍🏻