Staying Calm

Image credit: Janesdead

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Mumbai, the financial capital of India, we learn of the heroic deeds of the staff at Victoria Terminus, the main railway station, and the luxury hotels that were under siege for more than forty-eight hours. These staff members performed acts of heroism that, without their quick thinking and common sense, the death toll might have been greater than the almost two hundred reported dead. These brave employees at great personal risks, went above and beyond the call of duty.
An article in the New York Times recounted how one man singlehandedly saved many lives by getting on the microphone and calmly directed the panicking crowd to exit safely away from the area where the gunmen were focused. From his glassed in office, he spoke in two Indian languages repeating the order until the terminus was cleared.  The gunmen finally found his office and sprayed it with bullets but he was luckily unharmed.

The article related that the employees of the restaurant at one of the hotels, young people between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, calmly ushered over two hundred restaurant guests to rooms where they could be safe. The young people continued to remain calm, made snacks and kept the restaurant guests as comfortable as possible, during the ordeal that lasted several hours. When it was safe  to leave, the employees formed human chains to escort the guests outside and some of them were shot and gravely injured in the process.

How does one remain calm, grounded, and continue to function in such a terrifying and chaotic situation? I believe that in such unusual circumstances where we undergo extremes of emotion, the mind ceases to behave in its normal manner of recycling useless thoughts and becomes still. In stillness, our Awareness, the greater part of ourselves, takes over and we are able to perform  acts of heroism that we would not think we are capable of ordinarily. When the mind becomes quiet, we can access this great reservoir of inner courage, strength and clarity, which is the domain of the Self or Awareness.

The spiritual teachers of the East tell us that the Self or Awareness is our true nature. The Self is described as the one consciousness which manifests as us and everything around us. One of the analogies for maintaining stillness and living life from the witness state of Awareness is to see the mind as a mirror. A mirror reflects everything in it without being changed by the comings and goings of all the images that come before it. So too in our daily lives, we navigate  the ups and downs by recognizing that the truth of who we really are is not affected by the activities around us. Just like the mirror that reflects everything that comes before it and yet remains unchanged, we are not reacting to the changing phenomena of the world. The events that manifest in life are not taken personally.

When we identify with the ego, we feel separate and are affected by the cycles of change and impermanence of life. When we identify with Awareness, we can witness and respond appropriately to all the scenarios that unfold in our lives, without reacting and being affected like a mirror. Our minds become very stable and clear without relating things to ourselves. We are just all things as they are,  not vacillating between likes and dislikes and their attending moods. Our only reference point is the task at hand and we act with clarity and detachment. We are the great Self that encompasses all phenomena. With this perspective we are one with our environment, not separate from it. We are life, life is not happening to us. We then live from a place of inner peace and calm.

Those  employees were acting in a manner in which they were living from their highest truths. They had a clarity that allowed them to do what was needed without holding back, giving of themselves without personal concerns for their own safety. What heroism, what a testament of true spiritual mettle!