I saw a video where a man was demonstrating something. He used tamarind and salt, tasted it in the video, and asked whether, just by seeing him eat it, saliva came into our mouths with a sour taste.
Then he said that what he had just eaten was not actually tamarind and salt.
Yet, simply by watching him, the viewer may experience something similar.
He was demonstrating something about the narratives we see on social media — how even something that is not actually true, when presented convincingly, can create a real experience in the person watching it.
I found it interesting because I too spend a lot of time on my mobile, and I have often wondered: why am I actually doing this?
Maybe this video gave me an answer. Or maybe it is simply my own interpretation, but it somehow feels real to me.
Maybe our screen time is high because we are constantly hunting for experiences related to our own desires.
When we watch something anything we have an inclination towards perhaps it is because it helps create an experience within us, allowing us to experience something without actually living it.
Maybe this is also one reason for the birth of cinema. We watch a movie and experience something without actually going through that experience ourselves. And now, with the mobile, we have access to almost every kind of experience all the time.
Then I started looking at my mind in a similar way.
My mind is like social media. All kinds of information and narratives are there. It creates pictures based on fear, desire, memory and imagination.
And just like social media algorithms understand what we are interested in and keep showing us more of it, the mind seems to have its own way of creating bondage through our likes and dislikes.
What we like, it keeps presenting to us because we want to experience it again.
What we don't like, it keeps throwing back at us in another way, creating resistance.
I can see this as one of the ways the mind plays its game.
Even when we are involved in some work, the mind seems to present something that we like. Once it has grabbed our attention, it can simply stop offering that experience, and again something else appears to pull us away.
It is almost like social media the mind has its own tricks for creating experiences and keeping us engaged with them.
And when an experience is happening within us that we don't like, we seek distraction.
Maybe this is why meditation and yoga are not only about calming the mind. They also help us become aware of how the mind functions.
They help loosen the bondage with the mind itself.
When we become conscious of what is happening within us, perhaps we don't have to compulsively act according to every thought, desire, fear or dislike that appears.
It feels like becoming conscious of the one who is acting awakening from a kind of dreaming state.
Then perhaps one does not have to live entirely inside the illusion created by the mind.
One can remain in touch with what is actually happening, with existence itself, and if one wants to create an experience, one can consciously create it without getting trapped in the experience itself.
