Yesterday   the world came to me in hues of Good , bad and ugly.  

 A pizza 🍕 lunch with a 90 year old Zen 🧘 master and a 18 year old die-hard-atheist-my-own-mind- way- serene- boy at the George’s gourmet and kitchen , the best pizza place in Kodai kanal,  

worrying a bit ( or more than a bit)  about money or lack of it ,

 ticking off a troublesome and irksome person,

feeling quite happy when a Sangha member told me , your son Rishi looks exactly like you , but taller , wiser and  calmer than you

and

in the evening Dokusan getting ticked off by my Zen master for being not ready with my next koan :

and  ending it all  listening to Kitaro’s wonderful music during evening music meditation (like Hakuin Zenji who relied on Music to get relief from Meditation sickness )…

After this I slept early and I slept like a deadwood in K4, Kanzeon Zendo,.

Absolutely dreamless deep sleep.

My brain seemed to have flushed  away its metabolic waste—and I woke before 4am so refreshed  and realising I  I’ve finally arrived at a place and state of   peace and joy.

My purse/pocket/wallet/bank account is still  empty, and so is my mind. 

I recollected a while on this looking at early morning sky  glittering in the hue of  full moon.  After a very long time, I had the privilege of being coached in a peer coaching session.  May be that would have worked as a wonder balm.

Dream is an emotional reorganizer.

Our brain unpacks, reframes and repacks our half-baked experiences and  sanitizes the emotional component to an extent.  Still many experiences  (especially not so good ones) need many cycles of that process. I have left my Engineering collage way back in June 1994.  Still  on tough and low days, I dream about an Engineering exam which I am attempting with no preparation.  1994 World cup football was held concurrently with our final year Engineering examination.  And my late father Sankara wrote me  very long  letter urging me to watch only Brazil matches and focus on my final year examination  ( He used to write really long letters. One from his collection was a 16 page advice to his brother in 1960s ).  He had retired during my second year of graduation and was struggling to take care of his family. My brother and sister too were students , still a number of years away from getting a job and salary.

Unfortunately the match timings in USA was not that conducive for preparing  for examinations. All matches were during our night time and one real early morning.  So  I skipped a few examinations.  I returned back to College after 6 months to clear the backlog in supplementary exams and till then stayed with my brother and cousin in Bangalore.

I did clear those examinations.  Got a job in Wipro. Life moved on. My father too moved on  from this world in 2006. May be the guilt of having to resolve a “conflict of interest” still lingers in my mind, unresolved. Hence those exam dreams , though I am semi-retired even from a normal work life.    May be a few more cycles of unpacking, reframing and repacking may be needed. 

I loved my father very dearly. I love football too. Only thing I don’t love that much being examined/judged.  Either by  system, organization  or  other people. 

Guess, yesterday afternoon coaching was wonderful. 

Like a dream , that coaching session  took care of emotional processing and memory consolidation. While dreams work unconsciously,  Coaching work on a conscious level.   Very few of us have the ability to think very focussed and with awareness on a particular issue / matter. We all suffer from having Monkey mind, which keeps latching on to the next branch in no time.  Coaching helps us on that count.  It brings back our focus and makes us reflect on the core issue.  Thus we don’t overload our brain cognitively during sleep after a coaching session.  It helps us in clearing mental debris and emotional release.  In  a way, it functions very similarly to  unpacking, reframing and repacking of dream stage.

Sleep experts and neuroscientists say while dreamful REM sleep takes care of our mind, it is the dreamless NREM sleep rebuilds our body and reset.  Your brain cannot  do both at the same time.   My brain too. In a way, Coaching and Counselling takes care of  flushing out mental debris so that our brain is not overburdened with it and take care of physical rebuilding and rejuvenation.

That is a wonderful way to bring in change in our own life.

And the element that changes us  in Coaching and counselling does not come  by making us aware of ourselves more by the Coach. Awareness of  KPIs and data itself is inert.  If data alone would have changed a human, cigarette smoking would have been vanished from earth.

Empathetic resonance, sacred witnessing and embodied presence can be there only in a compassionate  human – human connection.

No technology , what ever you name it, cannot do this as of now…

That is still  day dream .  

Leaving us, me and you to have our drop dead dreamless NREM sleep….