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Ego hiding behind the shield of Ordinary

We are ordinary human beings. What do we have to do with Veda and Vedanta? All these things are so complicated to understand. All your words went above my head. There are so many such phrases that we keep telling ourselves to justify the way we live. We continue to live the same way and continue to suffer. The "ego" tries to hide behind the shield of the ordinary. 

When we drive a car, we learn all the functions and then take the car to the roads. We can't say I am an ordinary driver and know only how to drive forward, but I do know how to drive the car in reverse gear. Anybody would laugh and say "O fool why did you take the car for driving when you did not know how to drive the car in reverse gear". We read the manual of any machine before using it or ask somebody who has used the machine before. Unless we understand the basic purpose of human life, we will keep living a very sub-standard life. It's like using the laptop like a typewriter. 

The problem is not only using the laptop like a typewriter rather the bigger problem is justifying the same hiding behind the shield of the majority. Saying that since most people are using the laptop as a typewriter, I am justified in doing the same and if you are telling me to use the other features, you are complicated and I do not want to listen to you because I am ordinary. That's how most people try to defend themselves. There is a revolt from within, whenever a person listens to truth. The inner self revolts from the slavery of the ordinary. However, ego is clever enough to crush all these revolts by using the tools of the "ordinary". We are ordinary human beings and what do we have to do with these intellectual discussions. 

It's not about intellectual discussions. Rather it is about life. Life is not ordinary. Life is rather full of all the possibilities. We have made it ordinary because of our fixation on the ego, the known. We have become fixated on what our society has told us and we do not want to explore beyond that due to our laziness. We do not understand what we are losing in the process. An easy option is not always easy. It is easy to ignore the disease and not visit the doctor, but we fail to understand that it takes the form of cancer and that too at the last stage where there is no treatment and we die with great suffering. 

Despite it being so obvious, most people conveniently ignore that they need to understand the purpose of life. I feel that it is the responsibility of the parents that they answer the most fundamental questions of their kids. Every kid asks the fundamental questions. Whenever kids look at the stars, they ask so many questions about the stars and we recite the nursery rhyme and forget our duties:

Twinkle Twinkle, Little StarHow I wonder what you areUp above the world so highLike a diamond in the sky

Our duty as a parent is not just to help the child learn this rhyme but to appreciate the "wonder" of the cosmos with the kids. Not only the cosmos but also the human body. How this body and mind works. Science of the day has already answered so many questions and at least acknowledged so many hard problems. The scientists of the day understand that the hardest problem to solve is the nature of consciousness. What life is? There is no doubt that "ordinary" people like us have to go to the office every day and earn a livelihood for our kids and we get tired by the time we get back from the office. However, curiosity is not a product of "free time" rather it is a product of our "framework of life". If living a routine life is the goal of life, then all these questions will be killed. If we live our lives with open eyes, all these questions naturally come to us. We wonder at the cosmos, different parts of the human body, the perfect coordination between the heart and the lungs, the sunshine, nature, the human psyche, and so on. When we observe them, there is a natural curiosity to know them and then in order to know more, we observe more. Not only the external but also what is there within us. That makes us aware and we no longer need the shield of the ordinary to hide from the questions thrown at our face by Life. 

प्रवाह

flow.pravah@gmail.com



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