Yesterday, I had quite intense discussions around the concept of self-respect with 3 good friends. In fact, one of my friends is a surgeon and that's why I was keenly interested to understand the physiology of pain. All of us undergo pain, both physical and psychological. We fall down, have a cut, undergo surgeries, have malfunctioning of some internal or external organs, have stones, give birth to a child, and there are many more occasions when we undergo physical pain. I asked her what happens in such situations. She explained that the neurons carry the message to the brain and the brain perceives the same as pain. We further discussed as to whether there is a "choice" to take cognizance of the pain. Do different patients have different reactions to the pain? The answer was "yes", as I understood. When the neurons carry the signals, the brain will definitely recognize that as pain, however, the brain has the "Choice" to or not to react. It may react or be in a witness mode. In fact, we discussed that there have been some saints who have had their surgeries done without any anesthesia.
We experience many emotional pains as well. For example, when we are cheated by someone close to us, when there is a conspiracy against us, when we lose somebody close, or when we experience anxiety or uncertainty about our survival, and there are many more situations when we feel emotional pain. Is emotional pain different from physical pain? Probably no. If we read about the latest research in neurology, most neurologists agree that "the body keeps the score" meaning that the memories of the emotions are stored in the body just like the physical pain. Neurologists like Gabor Mate have explained this phenomenon in his TED talks and a book on the topic titled "The Body Keeps The Score". He has carried out his research on the trauma patients from World War II and the Vietnam War and discussed how the memories of trauma are stored in the body and how triggers activate the old memories and patients feel the same body pain as they experienced at the time of trauma.
Now, what does it have to do with the concept of self-respect? Probably we just need to discuss the concept of self first to understand the meaning of self-respect. What I understood from the discussions yesterday on the concept of "self-respect" was that it is all about equality of treatment. Every "self" should be treated as equal and none of the "selfs" should either exploit or be exploited. But, what is most important in this discussion is the meaning of "self". Is this "self" our body or the mind? When the body is hurt, we feel pain. We have seen that when the emotional self is hurt, we feel a similar pain. That means when we talk of self-respect, the "self" should include both the physical self as well as the emotional self.
When it comes to the emotional self, all of us associate the emotional self with different things. Some of us may associate our "self" with our family, kids, spouse, organization, wealth, nation, religion, traditions, and many more things. Some of us in fact associate the self with an image of "self" that we ourselves create or to our beliefs and ideas. When we live in a society, there will always be conflicts among many "selves". For example, in a family, somebody might have associated "self" with spiritual pursuit, while the other person might have associated "self" with worldly pleasures. There would be conflicts for sure because different members of the family want to move in different directions. Does "self-respect" mean that each one of the family members should respect the concept of "self" of the other person in the family? But there is a lot of inter-dependency. If the spiritual seeker wants to move freely, the other members of the family may claim that he is running away from his responsibilities and therefore being selfish. Similarly, suppose the person whose "self" is anchored on worldly pleasures, follows his interests. In that case, the spiritual partner may feel that his partner is running away from the responsibilities and acting selfishly. If a person denies marriage for the sake of pursuing his spiritual interest, even in that case, his parents may say that he is running away from his responsibilities. How can a person respect the "self" of others and his own "self" when different persons in the family have built their concept of "self" so differently?
I feel that this entire concept of "self" is so shallow that it is almost impossible to have any consensus on concepts like "self-respect". We have a physical body that makes us feel pleasures and pains, probably due to the bundle of memories experienced by humans, in the course of evolution, which are passed on through genes. We develop different emotional memories, some conscious, and more unconscious, during our lifetime (and we don't know that these may also get carried over from our earlier lives). All these memories are put together to form the concept of "self". But, even if all these memories are erased, life goes on as so happens in the case of many syndromes and coma patients. Probably, we have a choice, in each moment, to live in auto mode, where all these memories put together are driving our lives, and we claim to have made decisions, while in reality these memories are taking the decision and we just pretend to have taken decisions just like pretending to drive a flight in auto-pilot mode. Or, we may switch on the witness mode to witness all these memories as "past" and switch over to the "present" moment to experience the interplay of different forces of nature, in every living and non-living creation of nature, to participate in the flow, dropping the "self" or expanding the "self" to embrace every other "self".
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