Day 17 – Zero setting

I could not find my wallet, yesterday. I generally don’t lose things, so this already was signally something to me. I must not be fully present.  I traced my steps back several times mentally of course but I just couldn’t find. I searched the house. There was a little search party that happened. Nothing. But I still didn’t feel as if it was lost. Yet I couldn’t find it.

There was a difference in I can’t find it and  I lost it. One is describing a present continuous tense the other, a past tense. One leaves you with hope the other does not.

I said it to people at home, and the reaction to I can’t find my wallet was – Have you lost it. Yes. I changed my statement, version two, I think I have lost my wallet– Where did you lose it. Where is it or where did you leave it. – after the first two times, it got comical. And despite myself I was laughing in my head. They meant well.

If I knew the answers to that- I would not have the first problem. I found it quite funny and intriguing.

What happens when something is lost, yours or someone else does not matter ? – It just brings out a gasp followed by worried frantic search. There is also a sudden elevation of its value, in a way that was not previously seen. Sometimes I have a sneaky suspicion that things and people pretend to get lost just so their value is remembered.

I also got into the frantic search, and felt the anxiety, inspite of a little voice telling me I had not lost it – I just could not find it.  Panic is contagious. No doubt the irksome process of blocking some cards and applying for new one was tiring to even to think of. And that certainly created anxiety. It was an unnecessary stochastic disturbance.

In order to atleast contain this anxiety, I decided to block my cards and then go to the bank, take some action, feel some sense of control. The bank turned out was closed.

This sense of jumpy panic does not go well with me, my stomach starts to churn and burn, my breath shortens. I sound confused and distant,  I invariable make more mistakes, hit my toe or drop things. In this mode I lose my tuning with the universe. I am literally out of tune.

From past experiences I know, in this mode, if the message that may be wanting to come, would not find anyone home.  So, after the bank closed as a sign . I figured I needed to calm down first. After a moment’s thought I realized, there was no “urgency” nothing to really hit the panic button practically speaking. Just some arbitrary sense of control lost.

Very close to the bank, is one of my favourite rain tree. It is huge and beautiful. I decided to sit beneath it. To ground myself and wait out the anxiety. With so much noise in my system the signal was getting lost. The tree just seemed to act like earthing. I could feel the mental tremble beginning to soften. And my skin beginning to take its regular shape. The noisy traffic  honks bother less as well.

In ten minutes, I got a call from an unknown number, It was the Ola cab driver. He told me I had left my wallet in his car the previous day, phew and he requested me to get it picked from his house. He even apologized for not being able to come in-person to give it back. Such amazingly graceful people the world has, I thought and thanked him and the universe profusely.

I was smiling.

He didn’t feel like he was ready to hang up, and I was indebted anyway, so he continued. He then told me that he had been trying to get in touch with me for over three hours but somehow, “…connection hi nahi ho raha tha mam”, he said (the phone connection just wasn’t going through).

Wow!! I thought, ofcourse, the connection was not going through,  I was “disconnected” from the system, in my anxiety and panic.

This was such a quick pulse check on connection and disconnection. And what happens when we are out of tune due to anxiety. And the need therefore for Attunement.

Attunement is an alert connected active waking up

I wonder if that is all that is really going on, with the constant feeling of Being Lost, are we saying our Being is lost? It would make sense, if my being is lost I would lose things and people (atleast they would appear so we see the world not as it is, but as we are.)

If the instrument is out of tune, it does not matter if the process is correct, the result will be skewed.

During my engineering days, the first thing that I remember is the importance of doing a “Zero setting” on the vernier callipers. I found this Zero setting really amazing. Before we could Jump into action we had to calibrate.  While learning to do this , my physics teacher would say, be quite in your hands,

“Engineering is just beautifully disguised poetry”

In this web of the ‘connected universe’ – nothing is really lost – we just cannot find it sometimes, yes. And perhaps things or people, just “appear lost” because we are out of tune?. And not finding it, or losing it can be a signal. nudge to tell us of our ‘disconnection” and then the need to return to our own bodies and tune in, and reconnect.

 Do a Zero setting Ritual.

We do this often unconsciously, we tune to the “Sa” before starting the music class, adjust the keys of a guitar, touch the tip of the brush before starting to painting, run a finger over the knife before starting to use it.

I remember a few years ago, with the phone kept next to my computer and if I was to receive a message or mail, there would be this “disturbance” a fluctuation of the computer screen, and a few seconds later the phone would actually beep – Message delivered.