"UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO DIE FOR IT, MEDITATION CANNOT TRULY BE KNOWN AND EXPERIENCED TO ITS ULTIMATE PEAK. MEDITATION MUST BE APPROACHED AS IF IT IS A DEATH, THE DEATH OF THE EGO. ONLY IN THAT DEATH CAN YOU COME ALIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME."
Excerpt from ‘Don't Meditate Just Be’ by Khel Kalyan
THE SILENCE IN WITHDRAWAL
hen you abandon the tendency to stop acting constantly and choose to simply be, the anxiety that accompanies sudden silence will hit you as a stark contrast to the life of becoming you’re so used to. You will soon come to terms with silence through an acceptance of your natural state, but you should be prepared for a mild shock.
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You will quickly notice how loud your mind, activities, and habits are in comparison to the peacefulness of your inner space. Amid the incessant noise of our objective world, we have become desensitised to simply existing in the expanse of silence. You may fear that there is no activity in the silence. The human mind craves problems to solve and something to focus on. In the beginning, silence is regarded as a cruel lesson, both boring and terrifying in what it may reveal about your true nature.
The quietness reaches out unendingly into an incomprehensible void of nothing. “Are you able to cope with the stillness?” your mind may jeer at you. Yet hushed tranquillity is all around you, you just refuse to let yourself hear it.
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There are hints of silence in the gaps between the words, the pauses between the notes of music. Meaning is articulated and created in the spaces between the things we use to construct the universe around us. In the hashtag world of non-stop communication, the lulls between words are forgotten and meaning becomes confounded with a torrent of syllables and sounds. Being by yourself in meditation, withdrawing from the constant clamour of the world, allows you to explore the silence, stillness, and space that houses the being in you.
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Entering this new, noiseless territory is a courageous leap into the process of embracing your inner being. In some respects, it is a new form of communication precisely because it is bereft of language. There are no clear signposts to tell you what to expect in the silence or how it is to be interpreted. You will be detached from logic and reason as the ineffable profundity of silence is made clear to you. Allowing yourself to experience prolonged stillness eventually reveals the true nature of its textures, the enormous life and vibrancy contained within it, qualities which transcend the vocabulary of structured prose or rational thought. There is no vocabulary that can express the sound of the universe, just as there is no way to accurately describe the ache of a broken heart.
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Religious scriptures have often used different varieties of vibrational frequencies to comprehend, or at least peer at, the cosmic “Aum” expressed by the silence of the universe. By exploring ways of harmonising your inner frequencies through stilling your body, mind, and heart, you can travel within the immensity of silence found in the eternal universe of being.
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One day, when you’ve become receptive enough, silence will find you. You will wonder: “What is that sound!?” That is indeed the sound of silence. Yes, silence does have its own voice, the universal melody, which cannot be caught by human ears. But it has long been referred to as Aum: the celestial soundless-sound. This sound is your inner voice. If you are fortunate enough to hear its whisper, stay with it, drown in it, and it will lead you to the beyond.
Excerpt from ‘Don't Meditate Just Be’ by Khel Kalyan
THE BLISS OF BEING SINGLE
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eing single is typically considered as a regrettable interval between two relationships. Television, movies, and even the less insightful kind of books reinforce this perception, painting romantic loneliness as something ill-fated and embarrassing. For that reason, everyone without a partner is left hoping, anticipating what comes next. But why should anything need to happen? Is being without that special someone, or perhaps just anyone you can at all tolerate, really such torture?
It really isn’t; in fact, being single represents your chance to find out what love really is. I would even go so far as to say that anyone who isn’t comfortable with loneliness has no business attempting a relationship. The entire world is going about love the wrong way.
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The importance of my highlighting the beauty of “single life” is because it is the ideal and, more significantly, the only time in which you can learn about love. Contrary to what you’ve believed your whole life, love is actually found while being alone. Real love is is not a product of hormones nor the result of being linked to another person. Therefore, everyone should first seek to find self-love and become complete within themselves before finding the perfect match. This is the one and only route to a love that matters. As long as we continue down the old path, no matter how perfect and beautiful your beloved is, eventually your love will only prove a mediocre example of an experience you’ve already had, a new iteration of all your former heartbreaks.
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Love is yours. It is your own special currency, and you have unlimited amounts of it. It is radiating out from your soul and overflowing from within you. Love is not contingent on anything other than what exists within you. Only once you’ve discovered this fountain of inner love can you share it, only then do you become the ideal partner for someone.
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The anxiety of being single will only lead us to fall for the wrong person, time and time again. Soon enough, we realise that we were better off on our own, but somehow we never tire of our attempts to find the perfect partner by dating practically at random. As we continue searching for love outside ourselves, we are eventually left demoralised, coming to believe that the kind of love we desire doesn’t really exist.
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Love is fortuitous, it can’t be expected or forced, and it should be treated as a happy coincidence when it does arrive. This view isn’t shared by many people, who believe that finding the right person and being in a relationship is either an inevitability or a task to be undertaken with the same systematic, focused attention you would apply to repairing a washing machine. The approaches they use, like speed-dating events, smartphone dating apps, and matchmaking websites, are actually symptoms of the problem rather than potential solutions, so it’s no surprise that they experience one disappointment after another.
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There are billions of single people in the world all hoping to find someone who will love them and accept their love in return, but these stories only rarely have happy endings. This is partly because most one-on-one relationships are a kind of psychological battle which constantly tests our affection and respect for one another. Being single is our time to learn what love is, and only by embracing self-love do we learn how to communicate love for the other. Without self-love, our relationships with others will always be a challenge, an attempt to draw validation we should be able to generate ourselves.
Too often, people stay in loveless partnerships because of the fear of being single. Realising that a relationship is going nowhere is a rarely exploited golden opportunity which has to be seen for what it really is: your time to be selfish and explore who you are, experiencing total freedom and, more significantly, discovering that you are worthy of loving yourself.
When you find yourself unattached, you’re tempted to jump at the first romantic opportunity for fear of being alone again. I’m telling you that it doesn’t have to be that way. Whether you’re hesitantly testing the waters of a new relationship or thinking of giving up on a dying one, being alone is your chance to find real love. You will find that the seeds of that discovery are already within you. Though starting to love yourself is a singular experience and means adapting much of your worldview, it becomes feasible when you don’t have to take a partner’s feelings in consideration too. Embrace and rejoice in the liberty that comes with being untied to anyone for the moment. Enjoy the levity found in being alone.
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If you can accept the cold, hard fact that you may never find the “perfect” love, the fantasy partner who you imagine will make you happy, you will unearth an overwhelming love within you. It has always been there, yet it only becomes visible once you cease trying to control that which is ultimately out of your hands. But, most importantly, do not give up on love itself just because of the possibility that it just doesn’t form part of your destiny. Love is not contingent on a human connection. Love is everywhere. There are abundant opportunities to awaken love within you. It is found in everything. Love is subjective. It is not a one-size-fits-all experience, meaning that you can feel it within you without focusing on anything outside of yourself. Then, you will finally have become exactly what you were searching for all along
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Never lose sight of the fact that you are the protagonist in this drama. As soon as you position the spotlight on yourself, without waiting for a supporting character to turn up, you will find everlasting love bursting from within. I am simply shedding some light on the significance of being single, a state that is often rejected as loveless and empty. But, whether you are single or in a relationship right now, you only need to look within yourself and you will find what you desire the most, even if you don’t realise it yet: only by establishing self-love can you truly love others and, in turn, attract their love.