Love has great power. It can make us do so many seemingly impossible things. I have experiences in my life that on many occasions love made me do certain things which were seemingly beyond my capacity. Love for parents made us stay awake the whole night with sick parents, while we could not have stayed awake all night otherwise. Love for the kids, makes a mother bear the unbearable pain of delivery. Love for trekking makes people climb the most difficult peaks in this world like Mount Everest. Love for the discovery of the truth makes the Scientist spend all of his life on a particular project.
Despite such powerful love, we spend almost the whole of our lives driven by fear or pleasure. In fact, if we examine, it appears that fear and pleasure are just two sides of the same coin. We experience pleasure in this body, and that is the reason why we are so afraid of death. In fact, death is one of the most fundamental fears of all human beings. we feel pleasure in relationships, and that is why we are afraid of losing our near and dear ones. We feel pleasure in the wealth due to the things we can buy from this wealth, and that is the reason that we are afraid of losing our wealth. We feel pleasure with the power we carry since that makes us feel special. at times, it makes us comfortable because we don’t have to undergo the pain of standing in queues and being mistreated. That is the reason we are afraid of losing power.
Thus pleasure and fear appear to be just two sides of the same coin and the coin is so popular as currency in the economy of the human psyche because the entire human psyche is disconnected from reality and driven by ignorance. Since childhood, we learned to mirror unintelligently whatever is taught to us by society without ever applying our own wisdom to it. We are so busy, copying that we hardly ever notice the truth or falsity behind the social narrative. Whatever the majority feels correct, becomes right. Such non-application of the mind makes us mirror many ideas and opinions, which may not be contextually relevant to us in the time and space we live and the ecosystem we have. However, such mirroring enters deep into our unconscious mind. Not only it enters deep but it also forms many correlations. There are layers and layers. Such correlations make it almost impossible to go to the root and correct the same.
That is how ignorance seems to be the main culprit behind the widely popular fake currency of pleasure and fear in the economy of the human psyche. Since we are brought up in a society that encourages blindly following the social conventions and rules and discourages challenges to these conventions and rules, most of us feel safe and secure accumulating the currency of ignorance. We try to buy more and more pleasure using this fake currency and avoid more and more fears and pains by using the same. The more we become dependent on this currency of ignorance, the more we move away from reality and the more difficult, it becomes to stay connected to our souls and live life with love. Pleasure and fear become the driving force of our lives. Initially, they give us very strong motivation that makes us feel driven in life. However, as we move along our lives, these motives start turning into stressors. The reason is very simple. The more we become used to pleasures, the stronger the fear of losing these pleasures. It’s a simple logic that is not understood by most.
Layers and layers of ignorance in both the conscious as well as the unconscious mind make it almost impossible for one to understand where he is stuck and to find a solution thereto. We end up wasting our precious lives in very shallow things. Rather than loving our bodies, we end up with the stress of ill health and death. Rather than loving our near and dear ones, we end up being continuously, afraid of losing them. Rather than loving our Jobs, we end up having perpetual stress to lose our jobs. We keep accumulating infinite fears due to the desire for infinite pleasure in our lives. We fail to realize that all these pleasures are just like the clouds in the sky, changing their shapes and forms so quickly that by the time we are about to reach the target, we set, the target has already disappeared. One may choose a target of clearing civil service exams, without realizing the fact that by the time he becomes successful in the civil services, the service has undergone a huge change.
I feel that the only solution to this problem is to observe with awareness. The moment we stay aware of the present moment and observe whatever is happening to us, it gives us great relief. Awareness simply means being aware of reality and the difference between perception and reality. If I am confined to a closed room, with no doors or windows for the light to come in, and with no internal source of light, it may appear to me that there is darkness all around. However, if I am aware of being confined in a room, with no windows and doors, I will also be aware of the fact that it may be dark from my perspective, while for somebody sitting outside that room, it may be full of light. That awareness does something magical. It makes one realize the difference between perspective and reality. That helps one challenge one’s own perspective to bring that closer to reality.
As we challenge more and more of our perspectives and align them to reality, we come closer to truth. Closeness to truth removes our dependency on the fake currency of ignorance. We are less and less driven by pleasure and therefore feel less and less fear. Truth becomes the guiding force in our lives. Truth removes the falsity we are trapped in and connects us with our true selves. As we drop fears, love becomes the guiding force of our lives rather than fears and pleasures. That makes us flow with love, rather than struggling to achieve the targets set by the pleasure of fear in whatever task we undertake, whatever relationship we live with, and whatever way we live life.
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