Kelekatan Duniawiku

 

Akhir-akhir ini aku banyak membaca tulisan-tulisan dari internet untuk membantu pemahaman diri. Ada satu artikel yang paling mengusikku dan membuat jari-jariku ingin menari lagi di atas laptop. Artikel itu mengenai non-attachment atau letting go, melepaskan kelekatan-kelekatan duniawi yang selama ini mengikat kita dalam bentuk keinginan-keinginan. Misalnya, keinginan untuk selalu sukses dan berhasil dalam pekerjaan, atau keinginan untuk diperlakukan sedemikian rupa dari pasangan. Saya ingin berfokus pada apa yang barusan ini saya alami terkait hubunganku dengan seseorang. Ini bukan tulisan yang mudah bagiku dan banyak orang yang tidak tahu mengenai ini, tapi aku akan mencoba untuk menyalurkan keluar apa yang aku alami sebisaku.

Salah satu kelekatan duniawiku adalah keinginan untuk dicari, diinginkan, dibutuhkan, diperhatikan. Tulisan ini bukan untuk memahami apa yang menyebabkan kelekatan itu padaku karena penyebab itu sudah pernah aku tuangkan di sarana lain dan juga karena penyebab itu personal buatku. Untuk saat ini, melalui tulisanku aku hanya bisa jujur mengenai kelekatan duniawiku, kerapuhanku.

Selama sekitar dua tahun terakhir ini aku menjalin hubungan dengan seseorang yang menurutku suatu hubungan roller-coaster, penuh naik dan turun, penuh gelombang, gejolak, tarik-menarik, kebimbangan, ketidakpastian. Mungkin bisa dikatakan bukan suatu hubungan yang sehat bagi kami berdua. Selalu ada yang mengganjal hubungan kami, seperti ada suatu ruang di tengah kami yang memisahkan. Saat berada di ruang kami sendiri-sendiri, maka kami baik-baik saja. Tapi begitu aku mencoba mendekati dan mulai masuk ke ruang yang di tengah kami itu, maka aku masuk ke ranah roller-coaster itu, naik turun, jatuh bangun, bagaikan sedang berada di tengah laut yang bergejolak dengan gelombang ombak yang besar menggoncang kami.

Bila aku telaah lagi dan melihat ke belakang, yang aku lihat menonjol dari sisiku adalah kelekatan-kelekatan yang aku sebut di atas itu, yang dengan berjalannya waktu berwujud tuntutan-tuntutan baginya. Dan karena cara kami berelasi dan juga mungkin karena kepribadian kami, entah bagaimana awalnya, pokoknya aku merasa keinginan-keinginanku itu tidak terkabulkan, dan itu malah tambah memicu lagi kekuatan dari kelekatan itu. Penafsiranku waktu itu adalah aku ditolak oleh dia, aku tidak diinginkan, aku tidak dibutuhkan, tidak diperhatikan, dan seterusnya. Parahnya, karena ini adalah suatu kelekatanku terhadap keinginan itu, yang terjadi bukannya aku pergi dan meninggalkan hubungan itu, aku malah bersikeras untuk lanjut terus dan kelekatanku juga semakin menjadi-jadi. Mungkin hampir mirip semacam obsesi jadinya bagiku di awal hubungan kami. Itu menjadi dance-ku dengannya selama mungkin dua tahun lebih. Aku bolak-balik antara menyalahkan diriku sendiri dan dia. Selama proses itu memang aku mencoba terus untuk menyadari diri, memperbaiki diri, dan seterusnya. Bacaan demi bacaan aku lahap, retret demi retret aku ikuti, dan memang aku merasa ada perubahan dalam diriku, bahwa aku menjadi lebih baik dengan berjalannya waktu. Akan tetapi, aku merasa tidak bisa memperbaiki diri lebih baik lagi bila terus berada dalam posisi dimana aku terus diingatkan akan kelekatanku.

Barusan ini aku diingatkan lagi betapa lemahnya aku dengan kerapuhanku. Masih banyak yang masih perlu aku pahami dan terus upayakan untuk belajar memahami diri dan memperbaiki diri. Jujur, aku kadang merasa sangat sangat lelah dengan semua proses ini. Jauh lebih mudah mungkin untuk menyerah saja, pergi saja, tinggalkan dia, tinggalkan semuanya. Tapi ada bagian dari diriku yang membisikkan untuk jangan menyerah, karena pasti ada makna indah dari semua ini. Hanya harapan itu yang bisa aku ingatkan diriku terus supaya tidak menyerah.

Apa yang akan terjadi dengan hubungan kami ini, entahlah. Sebagai bagian dari proses melepaskan kelekatan duniawi ini, aku juga mulai belajar melepaskan hal-hal yang tidak bisa aku kontrol, termasuk keinginannya dan keinginanku yang sepertinya tidak cocok. Belajar melepaskan, bukankah itu kuncinya? Maka apa yang akan terjadi, terjadilah. Ini sudah pernah aku katakan kepada diriku sebelumnya, tapi mungkin bedanya antara perkataanku yang dulu dan yang sekarang adalah…sekarang ini aku lelah sekali. Aku sudah capek jatuh terus. Aku capek kecewa terus. Aku capek karena kepalaku terbentur terus karena memilih untuk berjalan secara buta. Aku capek karena memilih untuk terus berada dalam posisi “menginginkan” dan berharap dia akan menerimaku, menginginkanku, mencariku, dst. Mungkin kelelahan inilah yang akhirnya membuatku sadar bahwa ini saatnya bagiku untuk melepaskan semua harapan itu, karena semua kelekatan itu menjadi sumber ketidakbahagiaanku.

Apakah aku masih mencintainya? Dulu aku pernah mengatakan bahwa aku bingung, tidak tahu sebenarnya alasan aku berpegang terus padanya dan hubungan itu — apakah karena aku memang mencintainya atau karena tidak ingin melepaskan rasa ingin menguasai hubungan itu yang dipengaruhi oleh ketakutanku untuk ditinggal atau ditolak. Saat ini, aku sadar bahwa selama ini yang lebih kuat mempengaruhi keputusanku untuk terus lanjut adalah alasan kedua, yaitu tidak ingin melepaskan. Ketakutanku akan “kesendirian” tanpa ada yang mencintai dan menerimaku jauh lebih kuat selama ini. Tapi, dalam beberapa hari ini dengan lebih banyak waktu untuk merenung, yah, aku menyadari memang ketakutan itu ada dan sudah aku temukan dan bawa ke alam sadarku. Akan tetapi, aku juga menyadari masih ada rasa sayang yang tersisa. Apakah itu cinta? Mungkin. Apakah itu akan cukup kuat untuk bertahan dan dengan berjalannya waktu akan semakin kuat untuk mengalahkan kerapuhanku? Hanya waktu yang bisa menjelaskan.

Namaste.

 

Tulisan di atas terinspirasi oleh: The Art of Non-Attachment: How to Let Go and Experience Less Pain by Lachlan Brown di Hackspirit.com

 

 

How Opening My Chakras has Changed Me

 

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon after giving a talk in a seminar earlier that day for over two hours and my body felt like crashing when a notification showed up on my cell phone, telling me that I had a message on my Instagram account. I dismissed it as just another click of “like” on one of the pictures I posted. It wasn’t until later at night when I opened the Instagram that I realized it was a comment from a friend. The comment was made on the image of chakra meditation I posted a few days ago. It was an image I stole from the internet, not my own, to announce my newest interest in daily routine. Isn’t that the purpose of Instagram — that people use it to announce something about themselves, right? Anyway, my friend had inquired about my post and asked me the following question, “What specific needs did you get from it that other types of meditation don’t offer?” It was an intriguing question, and it got me to produce this writing after not writing for quite some time…and in English too.

It’s been a while, dear friends. To say that I’ve been busy in my life may sound like a cliché, but it’s true. I would love to be able to produce more writings, but my attention has been taken away to concentrate on my needs, on me. Sounds selfish, but self-healing requires perhaps a bit of selfishness. Nobody else is going to take care of me other than myself, so I decided to try some new activities as part of my self-healing. I don’t know where and how to start my story about my journey of self-healing within these past 2 or 3 months, or maybe even longer than that, but I will try to do it anyway. It has started somewhat slowly about 6 months ago when I got a chance to deepen my faith in my religion and did a deep soul-searching trip inside myself, asking many thought-provoking questions and daring to look into my past. Many people and activities I’ve done have helped me so far, and chakra meditation is just one of them. This essay is meant to answer my friend’s question, but also deeper than that. It’s my own recollection of my journey in improving my view of my self and the world.

I admit that I am not an expert in chakra meditation. I’ve only been doing it for maybe only 2 weeks so far, but on a daily basis. I can only testify as according to my experiences so far. I have known about chakra meditation before but never tried it. About two weeks ago, I went out of town and stayed in a hotel that uses some words explaining about chakras as part of its decoration. The name of the hotel is Good Karma, so that explains about the decoration. I took a picture of each of those 7 writings of chakra, and that still did not raise my interest yet to try them. About a few days later, I was browsing google play store on my phone looking for some peaceful meditational sounds or music to help me relaxing before sleep, and somehow coming across an app called Chakra Meditation and Healing after a series of installing many meditational apps beforehand only to uninstalling them right away again. Many of them were awful, trash, just full of advertisement. Some of them are just confusing to use. This chakra app though, has been accompanying me daily ever since.

What do I like about it? Probably because the guided chakra meditation is easy to follow, the human voice is very peaceful and soft, and then of course, the self-confirmation statements that are part of every chakra session. I have since tried to search on the internet and other chakra apps to see if self-confirmation statements are always part of chakra meditation. The answer is no. The one that I downloaded is the only one containing self-confirmation statements – sentences that I can repeat as positive messages to myself. Those statements were the first ones that hooked me into this chakra meditation. They made me realized that chakra meditation actually has a psychological aspect to it. However, after trying chakra meditation through the app over and over for several days, I realize that it is not only about self-confirmation statements. I truly feel something has changed in me, not just because of those statements, but also something else…within me, inside my body, in the way I think, how I feel about me and my body, and how I view my world. So then what is the conclusion of this? Could it be that the chakras in my body have opened up and become synchronized? I did not believe on those things in the past, but after experiencing everything that I have done, I’m starting to believe that there has been a renewal flow of energy inside my body.

What I have experienced is obviously unique and specific to me only. Others may not experience it the same way. Chakra meditation may not always work. I was a skeptic, did not complete believe fully in the concept of flow of energy within the body. I believe in the concept of prayers, in the practices according to my religion. I believe in the concept of thinking, feeling and behaving. But obviously, everything that I believed before was not enough to get me able to think as positive as I do now. Something was preventing me before. My mind could easily fall into a negative thinking, into endlessly worrying and distrusting people. A close person in my life, a special person, has been the blunt of my anger, worry, fear, and other negative thinking and feelings for these past 3 months, and even I at that time started to question myself on why did I continue to feel insecure about myself? Even after reading a book about Self-Compassion, I still could not love myself and forgive my past. I continued to be angry and fearful, and in that process, push people away. And I have tried everything too according to my faith and my background in psychology, but still to no avail. I could teach psychology, encourage other people to improve themselves, give them advice, but be pitiful in regards to my own life. I started to wonder too, and got tired of myself too. Why couldn’t I love myself? Why did I continue to doubt myself? Why couldn’t I forgive my past?

Then, something else happened too, something that I experienced a few days after I started the chakra meditation. I have been reading a book by an Indonesian back-packer traveler named Agustinus Wibowo. The book is titled Titik Nol or Zero Point. I believe the book has been translated into English and can be found on Amazon. One day as I was reading it, I came across a passage in the book.

“…hidup itu adalah sebilah cermin. Dunia di matamu sesungguhnya adalah cerminan dari hatimu sendiri. Caramu memandang dunia adalah caramu memandang diri.”

“…Life is a mirror. The world in your eyes is actually a reflection of your own heart. The way you view the world is the way you see yourself.”

When I met someone special or came across something that is powerful, such as the statement above, I always experienced this feeling as if my face had just been slapped, like I’ve just been knocked down on the ground. I knew when I read that statement that it was speaking to me because it hit me so hard. Nothing is coincidence in this world — I believe in it strongly. Therefore, I took it that my God, the God that has been my source of strength, wanted me to read that statement. However, if my mind was not ready to see that special message, I would not be able to understood it as something special. Luckily, I have been preparing myself through the self-healing journey I started months before, and God has allowed me to meet some people (or angels as I’d like to view them) that have shaped and influenced me positively along the way. Thus, when I saw that book passage, I was ready and my heart was open.

What was so interesting with that statement from the book? It actually brought me to the next questions, “How have I viewed the world all this time, throughout my life? How do I view my self?” I didn’t know the answer right away at first. It took a long afternoon walk in my neighborhood, under a beautiful sunset and with nature all around me, that I finally found the answer.

The truth is, would I be able to courageously look deeper inside me and admit my view of life and myself if it weren’t for the long self-healing journey that I have been on in the past few months? Including the chakra meditation? Well, I can’t say for sure yes or no, but I’d like to think that everything that I have encountered and experienced so far has helped me to get to the answer that has finally changed my view of this world…and more importantly, of myself. Though the self-healing process has been long and difficult because only a few people know the ups and downs that I have been through, I truly believe that every part of the journey was something that I HAD to go through in order to be able to get to this point. Without those many moments of anguish and tears and screaming, I would not be able to understand the message that God has sent me. And for all that I have been through and everyone that has helped, I thank you all, including that Chakra Meditation app.

And that is my answer to my friend’s question. A type of meditation can only be useful to you if it is meant to touch you. So find your own self-healing that fits you. It may be chakra meditation or it something else. Just start your own journey if you haven’t started it, and open your heart to those in life that are meant to be part of your healing process.

 

Featured Image: “Growth through Wisdom” – artwork through Bindu Creative Wellness (found through http://www.radiant-women.com/inspired-self-healing-program)