Hi reader,

Thank you for reaching up until here, it means a lot to have your attention from your valuable time.

Before we begin, I would like to ask you if you could help me with your 100% attention before we go ahead. To do so, it’s a humble request if you could do something for me. I promise you will find it very easy and beautiful. What we need to do is, we have to take 3 long breaths, and this won’t be from the lungs, but 3 long and deep breaths from the stomach. We will take a deep long breath, and feel the stomach expanding. After inhaling, we will hold the air in the stomach, and feel the pressure on the walls of the stomach. Then exhale slowly, and let the airflow out of the mouth with a whistling voice, and feel the pressure reducing on the walls of the stomach. Ready? Let’s start.

Here’s our Chimpi to guide us:

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A post shared by Chimpers (@chimpersofficial)

Thank you for following along. How do you feel now? I would love to know, so don’t forget to share in the comments, or call/text/WhatsApp/DM me if we are connected anywhere. We should be very thankful for being able to take this breathing normally, but sometimes in our busy and hectic schedules, we often miss out on a lot of simple yet beautiful things. Thank you for taking a moment for yourself and enjoying your breathing.

Many of my old friends, if they noticed, might be thinking about my blogging break and why the blog address and blog name changed. Wasn’t it called Understanding Life -decoded? What is this Vartamanah? Why this change? All the answers I have tried to capture and posted here, so if you are interested to know what made me change, don’t forget to check it out.

While on break and figuring out things, every day I was thinking what am I going to talk about when I return? I asked this question every day, and finally, I decided to share one of my realizations at this time, and it is about Thinking and our thought process. 

Thinking and humans share an imperishable bond. It won’t be wrong to say, “To think, is to humans!” And for the millennials like me, “To overthink, is to Millennials!”

Thinking is not as simple as we might see it. At a moment, we might be thinking about one thing, and the other completely different. 

At one point (maybe Tuesday morning), we could be thinking about the work, the deadlines, and the damn PPT, or that JIRA ticket or maybe the Client Meeting, or how about that weekly meeting, maybe that bug, but something around the work. And suddenly, while commuting we see young teens heading for college, and some of us start to think of our old friends or times, then there’s another layer of thought, mostly among students or among the parents about their kids, their studies, the assignments, quiz, lectures, certifications, extracurricular courses; and then there’s another layer of thinking, about the partner, about the last night or morning quarrel related to kid’s education or manners or not getting the appliance fixed, or maybe some finance troubles, or each other’s parents, or maybe thinking about the health or health check results of their partner, or as simple as they are not able to spend time with their partner; then there’s some thinking about the parents, their health, their happiness, and the little time they aren’t aware is left to enjoy with them and take them to world tour; and from world tours, some might go into thinking about their dream vacation, the long planning, the bucketlist, or maybe thinking about an upcoming trip, and how much to save to handle the expenses; expenses – oh they are always in the mind, thinking about the EMIs, how much amount will be left in account by mid month or by 25th of the month, and some will be thinking about the jump or sink in the market and their investments, and after all this journey of thoughts, and layerings back to thinking about work, because that’s what will be driving the economic engine.

We talked about 8-10 layers of thinking and you won’t disagree to believe that there are mostly more than 8 layers continuously running, and thinking in our mind. Is it really simple thinking or the “Lasagna of Thoughts“? 

Recently I attended an EDM (Electronic Dance Music) concert by 5 time No. 1 EDM artist, Armin van Buuren, and even though I am not a big fan of EDM, especially being a music instrument player, and EDM always felt like studio recorded music on a PC and played in stadiums, but this artist’s music has always touched me and had been following him for around 12 years. What I felt at the concert is, that music, and especially EDM and our Lasagna of Thoughts is very related. 

If you listen to this, here he tried to show what if Computers (or AI) made the music, and how they would add the Beat, Claps, Base, and Hats (4 layers) together:

Try to listen to it once with your eyes closed, and focus on different layers of music, there are some hard bass kicks and beats, and some melody that sounds kind of starting and then growing and then suddenly ending where it started, and then sudden silence, and then all of it starting again creating a powerful force of music, and the beats feels like your heart is trying to sync with it. Now, start relating each of those layers with the thought layers, relate the beats with your work/studies, bass with your partner, and so on, isn’t it what happens in the mind too? The EDM of thoughts? Layer on top of another layer, and continuously circling around and mostly end where it starts? Isn’t the EDM or maybe many other music related to our thinking?

When I was at the concert, there was a sea of strangers and a lasagna of thoughts in my mind. But when the music started, the environment changed, the vibe changed, and what looked like a sea of strangers, looked like a sea of strangers forming waves and bouncing on the beats like on an equalizer. You can imagine there are 20-30 watches in front of you, and all are misaligned to different times, when the music starts, they all get aligned and match the time with each other and start ticking in unity. This is how it felt like. Everyone was there with some or other thoughts in mind, but at that moment, they all sort of forgot about it and started to live in the present, got aligned to the music and the beats, and united to dance together, jumping together, waving hands together in rhythm (I will share the videos if you can’t believe). I have seen many concerts, each of them special, and so was this.  

We will always have our minds thinking about something or the other, we can not stop it. However, we can control it. With my latest experience at the concert and realization about life, I can say that we can control our thought process, we can control it from forming into a Lasagna of thoughts, and this can only happen if we align towards one thing at a time. To be aligned to one thing, that one thing should be something that is present at that time upfront. In other words, we can only align our minds and ourselves if we focus on the present which is in front of us. Think about the last adventure sport you did or the last movie you saw at the theatre (not streamed online). You might be having some layers, but not 8-10 layers. Think about the moment when you last experienced wonderful, and what were you thinking at that time? Were you in the present or with the Lasagna of Thoughts?

A tip of advice from me, on what I do when I cook my Lasagna of thoughts, I take my notebook and pen, be away from the electronic device, and just pen down everything, every layer. I just pour out my mind in the notebook, no matter what jargon it is, I just let it flow. I understand and used to think, that humans are social animal, so shouldn’t we take care of each other and talk to each other, but over time I also realized it is very tough for anyone to make time in this competitive world and be a listener with their own Lasagna cooking. So, don’t mind if someone is not available to hear you out, you can always try to pour it on the paper. It doesn’t matter if you read it or someone else reads it, just pour it out and forget. 

I hope this helps you to handle your thought burden, and help you align. But before closing this, I want to be thankful for your time for reading this completely, it means a lot to have your precious time. Since you have given your time, I want to leave you with a question, which I don’t want you to answer me, but ask yourself,

When was the last time when you lived in the present (Vartamanah)?

– Navneet