Probably, there are three types of motivations for human beings. Attraction, repulsion, and love. Most of our actions are driven by attraction to one or the other thing or person. As a student, we are attracted to a good life and we feel that we will get a good life if we succeed in a particular career. We get attracted to a person and that results in the formation of friendship. We get attracted to power and enter into politics. We get attracted to traveling and plan tours to different cities. Thus, different attractions drive our lives.
Similarly, we form many repulsions. For example, we may be afraid of failing in the examinations and repulsion towards failure may motivate us to study hard. We have repulsion of heights and that may be the reason that we avoid going to the hills. Somebody may have repulsion to the routine life and that may be the reason for his dislike of office. We may have repulsion to different people and may avoid those people. In fact, attraction and repulsion are just two sides of the same coin. We develop repulsion against something that is opposite to the thing we like.
Attractions and repulsions operate in the conscious as well as unconscious mind. We are conscious of some of our attractions and repulsions while some operate in the unconscious mind. For example, we become uncomfortable in the company of some people while we open up the deep secrets of our hearts in the company of certain other people. Our unconscious mind keeps evaluating so many indications from their behavior and it develops a trust or mistrust based on these indicators. Similarly, we become comfortable in some situations and at some places, while at certain other places, we become quite uncomfortable.
Whether conscious or unconscious, our attractions and repulsions have their foundation in our meaning of life. For most of the human beings, life is all about comforts and pleasure. They get attracted to the people with whom they can have fun and pleasure. They get attracted to the places and things that offer them comfort and pleasure. Similarly, they develop a certain repulsion against people and things that are uncomfortable. However, this way of living has two fundamental problems. First, comfort and pleasure are quite relative. When the body is tired, lying on the bed may be comfortable. On the other hand, lying on the bed for 12 hours at a time may be equally uncomfortable. When we are thirsty, taking water may be pleasant. When we are full, taking an extra glass of water may be painful. The same applies to food. Thus, we feel pleasure of having something, only when we are deficient.
If we get something in excess, the law of diminishing utility applies and in fact beyond a limit, things and people may be painful rather than pleasure. Meaning thereby that we can not experience pleasure unless we have a deficiency of something. In order to feel pleasure, first of all, a deficiency has to be created and that is what the entire society is busy doing. Society makes a child feel deficient if he is not able to get admission to the best of the university. It makes an adult feel deficient if it does not have a job with a fat package, spouse, or kids. Advertisements, social media, WhatsApp groups, and so many social interactions are spreading such messages almost all the time and our unconscious mind is busy creating these deficiencies. Since we do not stay aware, we take all these messages quite seriously without examination. Once a deficiency is created, we feel happy getting whatever we feel we are lacking. By the time we get some sigh of relief, we get focussed on another thing and again fall into the trap. Thus, our meaning of life revolves around pleasures and comforts, most of the time we suffer from deficiency and become happy for a few moments when we get what we want and become unhappy again.
Second, all these comforts and pleasures take us away from the real happiness. Real happiness is always there inside us. Since we become so busy looking for that in the outside world, we never get an occasion to examine reality. Almost the whole of our lives, keep running after one or the other thing that attracts us or we are busy avoiding something or the other.
Can't Love be the guiding force of our lives rather than attractions and repulsions. Is it so difficult to love ourselves? Is it so difficult to be connected to the "self" that is divine? Why don't we realize the futility of running after the attractions? Why don't we see that all the deficiencies are illusions created by social propaganda? Why can't we see that we are falling into the trap of propaganda, one after the other? Why can't we see that all these artificial deficiencies are making us unhappy? Why can't we see that the achievements have such a short life? Why can't we see that all these attractions and repulsions are taking us away from real happiness? Probably because we do not want to see it. Observation requires effort while falling into the trap of social propaganda is easy. But where is this easy choice taking us? A life wasted in running after an illusion and at the end of life crying to have wasted life. Non-examination of reality not only results in the wastage of our lives, but we also end up passing the same understanding to our offspring and make their lives equally unfulfilling.
Once we start observing reality, we soon realize that many of our attractions and repulsions are the result of social propaganda. We learn to distinguish between propaganda and reality. We become aware of what makes us fulfilled. We start loving ourselves. As we love ourselves, that "self" which is always connected to the divine starts guiding us. That divine does not stop here. It connects us to all the divine forces of the universe which consciously or unconsciously keep guiding us. We too connect to other human beings at the level of their "real self" rather than what they think or pretend to think. That gives us real joy and happiness. A happiness that is long-lasting and not temporary like the happiness of achievements of objects of pleasure.
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