Voices! Tearing, insinuating, agonising, resentful voices!

You try to indulge in something else, in hope of taking them down.

But like sly little creatures, these voices know just when you’ve let your mind at rest for a moment.

And they attack, like a hoard of locusts, infiltrating every sinew in you.

Over time, It’s apparent that the more you push them away, the more that multiply. Like infectious bacteria they dominate and consume your thoughts, your mind, body and maybe eventually, your soul!

I haven’t yet found the cure.

Choke!

It didn’t take long after he came to terms with the shatter. It reminded him of a faint memory. A memory that ashamed him everytime the neurons in his brains chose to remind him.

It tore, just like he remembered. He associated. But couldn’t fathom. Obviously, the reasons were far apart. Maybe he chose not to measure.

Questions died before they arose. He skipped them just like a professional athelete subconsciously does when jumping through hurdles. Only obvious fact staring in his face was a response that would prove a point, from his summation.

So he reacted. Reprehensive, but ardent from his perspective. “Do you get the point”, he profusely pointed out under his breath.

A few hours later, he attempted his meditative analysis. Drew conclusions.

A few days later, tried validating his conclusions.

Failed.

Months later, he found himself exhausted & invalidated.

In time when he looks back now, he affirms that the reaction is hardly recalled. It’s the choke that still chokes!

His search for validation has been out of the window, years ago.

And thus, in invalidation & deception, were scarred the rest of the years, that began one solitary October evening.

He could feel the heavy spasms of breaths he was taking. It was a while now, but he just only realised that he was.

Breath, something we take as a given. Something we never really, truly pay attention to! Everything talks about focussing on one’s breathing when one has to learn to relax, focus, funnel, meditate, visualise, hope, take stock… take perspective.

Like a one stop shop to buy time in finding answers.

But the more he fuelled his attention to his breath, the more vexatious he felt. “How is this gonna help”, he wondered ambiguously to himself. “Maybe if I count backwards on every breath?” – 100, 99, 98, 97… “Why do we start counting from 100 when we think backwards? Or 10?”

Without allowing the question more light, he vexed in continuing… “89, 88, 87, 86… or maybe I should count forward – I’ve been counting backwards since I was a kid, it’s easy… maybe I need something difficult to focus my attention to…. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… Erm… what’s the point of this? Am I trying not to think? Am I avoiding thoughts to fill my mind? Maybe I’m trying to feel fit?”

“Maybe it’s….”

And abruptly as it was, he could suddenly feel the heavy spasms of breaths he was taking.

It was a while now, but he just only realised that he was.

It’s been eons!

And yet again I commiserate on my own apathy of the hiatus.

What’s the key? What’s the combination? What’s the ‘trick’?

These questions hound me of late.

Only one line that keeps playing on and on in my head like a broken record: “to infinity and beyond!”

Or maybe I’m just very hopeful towards Toy Story 3.

The strangest bit… I did a search on google for agony metallica lyrics and all that came up was the lyrics to one of my most cherished songs in this lifetime… “Fade to black”!

Now this is a song I never thought I’d really post here, but then again, this has to be special… so here it is…

So here I go, to prepare to post this song on my blog and the moment I log in, considering that I hadn’t posted anything in quite a bit, I spotted this “draft” post that I had written on the 27th of Feb… called “Take a Chance”!

Strangely enough… I could’ve let this be and revised it eventuate it into what I wanted it to be…

But I didn’t… and here it is… what the post “Take a chance” was meant to be…

If you’re looking for the lyrics for “Fade to Black”, you can find it below this…

Oh… where did that “agony, metallica, lyrics” search come from?

Now now… getting too way ahead of yourself are you? ;-)

Here’s Take a Chance (or whatever that was left of its beginning!)

At the edge of insanity the road turns, or so I’ve heard.

At the end the tunnel, there’s a bleak streak, or so I’ve read.

Distances forgotten, eloquently

Subtly forsaken, the miles

Relinquished from the vices, the memories.

“Beware”, a whisper whistles.

“Be watchful, as it’s a double edge sword”

For all you read, you missed the torn page

For all you heard, their words silenced the warnings

For at the the edge of hope, covertly, lies your fall!

And here’s Fade to Black… as promised (for all those ardent sadists!) – This song has always meant a lot to me… there’s a connection way too deep that I’ve drawn from this song which rings back to 1996 – and of course, it never fails me every year :P

Life it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me
Need the end to set me free

Yesterday seems as though it never existed
Death greets me warm, now I will just say good-bye

The unknown distance to
the great beyond
Stares back at my grieving frame
To cast my shadow by the holy sun
My spirit moans with a sacred pain
And it’s quiet now
The universe is standing still

There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing we can do now
There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing we can do now

And all that stands between
the souls release
This temporary flesh and bone
We know that it’s over now
I feel my faded mind begin to roam

Every time you fall
And every time you try
Every foolish dream
And every compromise
Every word you spoke
And everything you said
Everything you left me,
rambles in my head

There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing I can do now
There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing I can do now

Up above the world so high

Everything you loved
And every time you try
Everybody’s watching
Everybody cry

Stay, don’t leave me
The stars can wait for your sign
Don’t signal now

There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing I can do now
There’s nothing I can say
There’s nothing we can do now

Goodnight, travel well
Goodnight, travel well

There’s nothing I can say
Nothing I can do now
Good(night), travel well
Good(night), travel well
(Travel well)

Photograph courtesy of http://flickr.com/photos/stuant63/2255781557

Just minutes ago… it all made sense! It was just fine! Everything fell in pristine order, just as she’d known all her life to be… just as everything “worked” out for her!

A plan it was! A plan that always made sense! All predetermined, like everything else that drew up a perfectly functional blueprint in her life. Oh yes there were always the unexpected mishaps. The ones that in the heat of moment tripped her off completely and swayed her from reality. But it never took her long to get back to “the plan”!

If there wasn’t one at that stage, it always came up. Her subconscious was her greatest ally! Eventually, it always came to her rescue, before she could even acknowledge it!

But such was a day – a day which was nothing different than any other day she would’ve been able to have picked up on. A routine. An expectant. Nothing unusual. Nothing unnerving so as to have shaken her whole existence.

But tip-toed, it walked in. The feeling. The assured incense of comfort.

Walking hand in hand with the fear of unknown, it subtly slipped through the unnoticed crack of her doorstep.

And when it arrived, it surged her through a glimpse of insanity of utmost joy. The perennial joy of nirvana.

Within moments the fears that had walked with it, sunk in. The million questions she never even knew existed occurred in a flash of an instant.

She found herself battling, dealing with the surprise of the joy and the uncertainty of the fears at that same very moment.

Something changed that night. Something very unnoticeable in that continuum.

Something completely oblivious of the fragment of the definition of time as an instant.

She complied with natural, conditioned behaviour, and caved in to deal with it “naturally” as a human would.

But what was to come by, would be far greater than an average human was to be able to fathom.

She couldn’t see it just yet.

A miracle, was in the making!

The sun shone on his teary eyes, glistening beads of exasperation, evaporating, drying up quicker than it took to be formed.

He stubs his stale cigarette by his foot with all the might an empty heart can provide, as if he realised that he had no choice but to fight!

Such situations were never easy to deal with. However a behaviourial pattern that was formed since his childhood years, he inactively always chose flight. This time there was no flight! There were no hidden doors to escape. The enemy wouldn’t listen to any of his prolific meanderings. Trapped in an emotional catch 22 Alcatraz, the only thing he was blatently aware of was how quickly he was running out of time.

That’s when it hit him. Running out of time? Now isn’t that another elusive escape? A deceptive smile beckoned and encompassed his decree!

In an instant he felt relieved. There, right there, in the turbulent spasm of those handcuffs, dormantly layed his answer.

Basking in his triumph, he let go of everything. Isn’t that what he craved after all under the million different disguises?

There are so many books, citations, mere mentions on how a thought is all what it takes to change your life.

Having read so many of these books in recent past, I’ve always found myself stuck in the simplest question – believing in what you intend to have in your life.

To begin with, there’s are many reasons why you see this around – about thinking ‘happy’ and ‘positive’ thoughts. But how do you achieve that and remain in that frame I mind constantly?

Life will always push and nudge to bring in realities that don’t match up to your intention of success, your sanity.

I’ll share with you a very simple experience.

My current state of life, as I’ve known it, has been quite amazing over the last couple of months. I’ve been quite content ‘overall’.

Now the one thing that I’ve known to flip out and stress massively on is anything got to do with finances.

Having had made some pretty serious financial mistakes a few, infant years ago, I’m still in the middle of correcting my mistakes. 2 days ago I realised of some major payments that were to be made, ones which I had conveniently forgotten recently. In a bit of a crunch recently with the interstate move and the decision to ‘start from scratch’, I woke up this morning with only the thought of ‘how the hell am I gonna pull this off?’

I could not quiet my mind no matter what I tried. I worried endlessly and was constantly pensive in thought.

I consciously tried to remove myself and to visualise better things, to meditate… Everything just felt ‘lame’ at that moment.

Now yesterday, I had messaged a friend of mine, Carolyn , just generally expressing my state of mind. This morning she had replied to the message saying ‘Dev, I want you to actively try to guide your thoughts away from what you don’t have in your life right now, to what you DO have currently on your life.’

I was standing in the balcony, stressing unconsciously when her message arrived.

At first, I scoffed at it. My thoughts – ‘what does she know?’ and ‘how the hell is that going to make any difference to my worry right now?’

But then I noticed another thought. A little voice speaking within saying to me, “Dev, it all begins in the mind. Granted you don’t have a solution right now. But how will stressing on the situation help? Let’s try and make a mental list of all that you DO have in your life right now.”

With that thought I made an attempt to make a mental list of everything I am thankful for. Honestly speaking I could not think of anything at all. I could not break away from the worry I had at hand. Then I heard my own voice trying I command my thoughts… ‘Dev! Think! What are you thankful for in your life right now!’

With that, I felt like I had to just pretend to convince that voice, and maybe make something up so I could shut it up. So I thought, real hard… and as silly as it sounded, I came up with the first thing that I felt I was thankful for in my life right now. It was a stupid reason, and I laughed at myself when I thought of it, but I was thrilled that I did it. So I tried to come up with another one. Every single moment I kept questioning how the hell is this gonna help, but I kept going.

The worry didn’t fade away. But it definitely felt ‘tamed’ after a while.

I started feeling comforted within, an unrealistic comforting surge of faith that I can pull this off. I don’t know how, yet… But just the trust in that faith helped me feel way better than I was feeling!

What happened here?

Let me be very clear. By no means this ‘solved’ the problem at hand.

What this did, is that it put my mind at ease. Filled it with hope… And eventually gave me a perception of strength to be able to perceive solutions which otherwise I would’ve spent in nothing but fruitless worry and pile ups eventually.

Simply put, here are the INSTANT steps you can take to put a stop to gnawing worry and just feel centered:

1. Shut your eyes real tight. Tell yourself, ‘I am only gonna take 2 minutes from this worry to think of something else’
2. Now tell yourself ‘I’m going to count the number I times I breathe out 10 times’ – with that, do that!
3. Now think of the one thing you’d like to do if everything in your life was perfect. It may take a while, but that’s all you have to do, just pick any 1 thing that you would love doing, knowing when everything is perfect as you’d like to have it in your life.
4. Finally, blank out everything in your head and say thanks for that 2 minute experience to your mind. Be grateful to your mind that it listened to you and gave you those 2 mins you asked for peaceful day dreaming :)

That’s it! There’s nothing more to it.

Yes I know you’ll be like, ‘How the hell is this gonna solve my issue?’ or maybe you read this and scoff at it, saying under your breath, ‘Dev, my problems are far greater than this insignificant thing!’

I urge you to try this for just 3 days. Can you do that? As I said before, you only have to do it for 2 mins. You can do it as many times you can remember to do it in a day if you want.

I’d like to know if you did try it, what were your experiences?

As a closing line, I’d like to dedicate this post to someone I recently “met” in the online world – Carla White, the creator of The Gratitude Journal iPhone App which you can check out at http://www.happytapper.com. Thank you Carla for such a simple, yet an effective application for the world.

Five past six in the morning. The piercing siren of the alarm jolts him into wakefulness. He debates in that split open second whether he had heard that alarm before. Sleep beckoning, he abandons the question and involuntarily reaches out to put it off. He opens his eyes and makes do with the darkness. He never was a strong believer in surprises. He treated his eyes the same way – let the light come in slowly, not just yet. Let’s not incinerate pain, he profusely believed.

The blissful waking moment begins to fade as the oversights start gushing in. Last night, last evening, last afternoon and then very gently, like a blood stain making its way on a clean sheet, the pinhole innocuously expands, bringing in realities of his existence from his waking life.

“That moment, the moment just when you wake up, when you’re amidst seeping out of your subconscious… that moment… why can’t it last longer? Where, nothing matters. Where it’s bliss in its truest, naked form. When it’s…”, he arduously wonders to himself for a while before succumbing to reality.

Another moment of time, torn and tethered between an unconscious hiatus.

He breathes, alertly, begging himself to master the art of focus. The one where you can gently pull your thoughts together. The more he tries, the harder it gets to achieve a moment of serenity. Like every other day, he dismisses the effort and decides to get on with the day.

In every moment of his morning chores, hoard of his aberrations pile up, astonishingly in a chronological order of occurrences.

Imagine a mind numbing, unquenchable, throbbing headache?

His head felt fraught, laden with the unwitting accumulation of presumably every single wrong that had ever occurred, sometimes leading him to spend hours in his very early, delusionary past.

“Breathe”. He reminded himself.

He looks at his wrist watch, 7.47am. Better not miss the bus today. Which leads him to recollect how he almost missed an important acquisition meeting 2 weeks ago. They missed the deal and he couldn’t stop erratically grazing between standing up for himself and blaming himself. And of course, that leads him to relive the snarks, the comments and the pressure of relentless persecution at work. Like a wound that keeps on bleeding, reminding him not to think!

Smack right in the middle of his mind, very graciously reiterating the vexed experience that occurred a few weeks ago, he reluctantly lets out a scream!

“Please!”
“Please stop!”
“I beg of you, stop!”
“I cannot take this anymore!”
“I cannot bear this pain anymore!”
“I cannot fight this endless fight!”
“I cannot live like this!”
“I cannot live”
“I cannot…”
…
And the alarm shrieks out, jolting him into wakefulness!
He looks at the clock. ‘Five past six’. Within seconds the stark reality hits him. He realises, this morning, there isn’t going to be any blissful waking moment to ease him out of his serene subconsciousness!

Been here before
Been here before
Been here before
Been here before

Been here before
Been here before

Been here before couldn’t say I liked it
Do I start writing all this down?
Just let me plug you into my world
Can’t you help me be uncrazy?

Name this for me, heat the cold air
Take the chill off of my life
And if I could I’d turn my eyes
To look inside to see what’s comin’

It comes alive
And I die a little more
It comes alive
Each moment here I die a little more

Then the unnamed feeling
It comes alive
Then the unnamed feeling
Takes me away

I’m frantic in your soothing arms
I can not sleep in this down filled world
I’ve found safety in this loneliness
But I cannot stand it anymore

Cross my heart and hope not to die
Swallow evil, ride the sky
Lose myself in a crowded room
You fool, you fool, it will be here soon

It comes alive
And I die a little more
It comes alive
Each moment here I die a little more

Then the unnamed feeling
It comes alive
Then the unnamed feeling
Treats me this way
And I wait for this train
Toes over the line
And then the unnamed feeling
Takes me away

Get the fuck out of here
I just wanna get the fuck away from me
I rage, I glaze, I hurt, I hate
It hate it all, why? Why? Why me?

I cannot sleep with a head like this
I wanna cry, I wanna scream
I rage, I glaze, I hurt, I hate
I wanna hate it all away