You don’t have to silence the mind. Just see what it really is... and what you never were. What if the mind is not a thing to fix… but a costume to remove?
The Hum After the High
You reached the top of the mountain, and the voice inside said, "What now?"
You hit the revenue goal. You healed the trauma. You finally rested. And still… the hum.
That low, restless current. Not loud. Just enough to pull you back into the chase.
We don't talk about this part. Because it doesn’t fit the story. The story of growth. Of becoming. Of earning your way into freedom.
But what if that’s a vital clue… that the story itself is the trap? What if the one chasing is the very thing that keeps peace away?
What if the mind can’t be satisfied because its job was never to be still, but to seek?
⸻
The Reload
One morning, years ago, I sat on the floor in a home I could finally afford. A stillness surrounded me. Sunlight. Silence. No debt. No deadlines. No fire to put out.
And yet, my breath was shallow. My jaw was tight. My thoughts were already scripting the next hill to climb.
That's when I heard it: the reload.
The quiet panic of a person that doesn’t know how to just be.
⸻
Trained Out of Wonder
In the 1960s, NASA hired Dr. George Land to identify creative genius in young children.
The results were stunning:
- 98% of 5-year-olds scored at the "genius level" of divergent thinking.
- By age 10, that dropped to 30%.
- By adulthood? Just 2%.
They didn’t lose their creativity. They were trained out of it. Trained to think "correctly." To judge before imagining. To believe that safety lives in answers, not curiosity.
And so were we.
The mind becomes the ruler. The narrator in the head becomes the self. And the scripted seeking begins.
First survival. Then success. Then self-worth. Then meaning.
Each achieved, but never complete. Because the mind doesn’t rest. It survives by resisting what is.
⸻
The Pyramid Breaks
Maslow gave us a pyramid. A ladder of needs: food, safety, love, esteem, self-actualization.
It looks right. It feels true. Until it breaks. Until you stand at the peak… and the emptiness remains. Or rest at the bottom… and realize its fullness.
What if it’s not a pyramid at all? What if that’s just the view from the outside? Sideways.
Flip it. Turn it. Step inside.
From within, it’s not a ladder. It’s a spiral. A remembering.
At the centre is the self. Not the top. And the self echoes all the way down… and all the way up.
Freedom isn't the final step. It’s the starting point.
The hunger we feel was never a lack of having. It was a loss of knowing.
⸻
The Mind Was Never Real
You don’t have to silence the mind. You just have to see it clearly. And what you see is this:
There is no mind. No entity. No thing.
Just thoughts. Appearing and disappearing. No thinker. No container. No control tower.
We gave it a name: "mind" and then bow to the idea. But the mind is not a thing.
It is a Trojan horse. It looks like a gift: intelligence, protection, agency. But inside, it carries every program you didn’t install. Fear. Identity. Time.
It is a ghost. It haunts you with memories, regrets, projections. But when you try to find it, to touch it… it isn’t there.
It is a shadow. It feels heavy. Solid. Familiar. It reflects substance. But only because you've carried it so long, your body adjusted to the weight.
What is the mind, really?
Just movement. Just weather. The mind is just the costume consciousness wears when it forgets it’s already free.
You are not in the mind. You are what sees it arise. And in that seeing, everything softens.
Because there is nothing left to chase. No self to satisfy. No structure to maintain.
⸻
What Now, Without a Seeker?
So what now? If there is no "I" and no "you" to satisfy...
Then maybe this isn't about individual purpose at all. Maybe it's about collective participation.
Not in becoming. But in being.
Not in arriving. But in responding.
Not in building a self that matters, but in dissolving the need to matter.
Let the pyramid fall. Let the story collapse. Let the seeker dissolve into seeing.
And notice: Without chasing, nothing is missing.
⸻
A Gentle Mirror
- Where in your life have you achieved what you wanted, and still felt the hum?
- What if that hum isn’t asking you to do more… but to see the one who never needed more?
- What if freedom isn’t at the end of the path… but right here, where you stopped walking?
Sit with it. Not to answer. Just to see.
The mind that seeks doesn't exist.
And the one who sees… has never needed a mind to exist.
© 2025 Zaheer Merali.
Shared under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Learn More →
Contact Me →