I was in a plane with no wifi yesterday and so instead of sleeping, I decided to try to invoke a state of “nothingness.” What I narrate next is the rollercoaster that led to some clarity. It started with a heel turn: panic.

I’ve never felt panic the way I felt it at that moment.

Everything felt like it was folding in on itself as I saw some people in the back starting to boo. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my friends, where I knew I’d find some small semblance of support.

I turned around to look at my fellow performers. They seemed to be lost in their own worlds. I couldn’t tell if they were fighting their own insecurities, lost in their own craft, or tuning out the world in a healthier way.

My sweaty palms gripped the microphone desperately as I continued to sing the next verse:

“And nothing else matters…”

My life is at a fork, yet again.

We were supposed to list the home this year and buy ourselves some independence. Now that plan is hitting walls I did not see coming.

It seems like I want something that cannot be achieved. Or at least, something that cannot be achieved in the way I imagined it.

And my mind is having a hard time accepting that.

You’d think that once you’ve gone through a moment of clarity, once you’ve come out of that kind of panic, it won’t happen again.

The truth seems to be that clarity is not a permanent state. It is a practice. And when enough unresolved things remain in tension, it’s easy for the mind to lose the discipline and peace it needs to see reality.

And yet, reality matters.

There are two kinds of reality: mental phenomena (nama) and physical phenomena (rupa). Nama experiences something; rupa does not experience anything. Seeing is, for example, a type of nama; it experiences visible object. Visible object itself is rupa; it does not experience anything. What we take for self are only nama and rupa which arise and fall away. The ‘Visuddhimagga’ (‘Path of Purity’, a commentary) explains (Ch. XVIII, 25):

Source: The Four Paramattha Dhammas [Chapter 1]

Buddhism gave me one language for this: mentality and materiality. Yoga points to a neighboring pattern: the mind’s modifications, the colors - klishta - some painful, some not.

Vrittayah Pancatayyah Klishta Aklishta “The modifications of the mind are fivefold; some are painful (kliṣṭa), others are not (akliṣṭa).”

Source: Yoga Sutra 1.5: Vrittayah Pancatayyah Klishta Aklishta

Those links are great follow-on reads, but the key takeaway for me is simpler:

There is reality.

And then there is perception.

In my own experience, panic sets in when perception takes over. The mind starts spiraling into an infinite loop of overwhelm. It turns a solvable problem into an imagined one. The problem grows teeth. It becomes vast, surreal. Mythic.

And once something feels unattainable, anxiety and fear kick in. Then I flail. Or freeze. Or get stuck. And that stuckness hardens into darker emotions.

So, on the flight, I slowed my breath down.

I told myself to start feeling again. Not the spiral I was going down, but my actual senses. The literal ones.

Feel the seat.

Where does it hurt?

What feels comfortable?

What feels uncomfortable?

Feel the breath.

Where does it feel easy?

Where does it feel forced?

Wiggle the toes.

Which ones move easily?

Which ones feel stuck?

This is my practice for coming back to reality. For becoming present again.

Not to distract myself.

To observe.

Observe reality, not the virtual world colored by my emotions, feelings, insecurities, wants, and needs.

Observe what is material: the cool temperature, the warm seat, the dry air.

Loosen the grip of what is mental: the anxiety of the unknown, the fear that we will not get what we want, the feeling of failure.

In my wise old age, I can confidently say that it’s all about the reps.

And still, I go through periods of self-doubt, where the terror of uncertainty is paralyzing. The seeds of doubt cloud clarity as I desperately try to clear the fog that envelopes me.

I went looking for nothingness and found the opposite:

The body.

The seat.

The breath.

The dry air.

Reality, stubborn and small, waiting for me to come back.

So I’ve developed a practice to center myself. To focus on what is real before my mind turns fear into prophecy.

Because the only path is through.