What are we so adamant about not improving? The whole atmosphere is polluted, people are dying of lung cancer, and everybody is coughing and sneezing. Yet, we are not concerned. Psychological diseases are spreading very rapidly among children, even to the extent that many of them are undergoing treatment for depression at a very young age. Roads are full of traffic, and it has become almost impossible to commute, yet we are busy celebrating marriages. The young couples line up before the IVF centres to somehow get a baby, while so many babies are waiting in the orphanages, hoping for adoption. There is a crisis in almost every relation. Why has the world become like that?
Why do we pollute the atmosphere? After doing some ritual, we want the bio-waste of flowers and ash not to be dumped with the regular garbage. We pack all these things in a polybag and go to the Yamuna and throw that into the river from the little opening in the net. Why do we do that? Since childhood, we have been taught that those flowers and ashes need to be thrown into the river. We have never ever examined these things and accepted them as they are told. We have not asked questions about the existence of God. We have never asked questions about life and death. Since we have never asked questions about these things, we have never sought answers. We have never read the Upanishads, Bhagwad Geeta and the other scriptures of our religion. Even if we have read a few, we have interpreted them the way we want to interpret them. We have never applied our minds. Authority takes over logic and reason, and whatever some priest or elder tells us is accepted without questioning. There is a very fine difference between faith and belief. Belief is just a mental story about something that we don't know, be it God or supernatural powers. On the other hand, faith is awareness of the fact that we know very little, and if we make efforts with sincerity, we will get to know the truth.
Why are psychological diseases on the rise? There is so much fixation on "I". We get little exposure, get to know a very few things and become sure and certain of ourselves. Confidence is good, but fixation works against growth. There is again a very fine difference between confidence and fixation. A confident person says that I know and I am not pretending. He is ready to answer or discuss anything he has explored. On the other hand, a fixated person says that I know everything and there is nothing more left to be known. These are two very different attributes. While confidence improves our self-expression and makes us creative, fixation dooms us. It prevents our growth.
Fixation comes either because of the lack of awareness of the unknown or due to resignation. Sometimes we find it so difficult to explore the domain of the unknown because that requires a lot of efforts and we resign and tell a mental story to ourselves that we know whatever is worth knowing. Fixation appears to be very good in the beginning. We reject whatever we don't like and try to make an island for ourselves. It looks very comforting in the beginning, but slowly we get trapped on that island and become isolated. That gives rise to many psychological diseases. In today's world, most individuals are islands in themselves, highly disconnected, blaming each other for their miseries, failing to realise that it is their own fixation on that island of self that is the primary reason for this distress.
There is a huge rush in the IVF centres, and people somehow want to have their biological kids. The sense of separation is so strong that they can go through any amount of pain and deformity of the body to get that biological child. That means "I" identifies so strongly with the genes. On the other hand, almost every day, we listen to stories where parents did not agree to the inter-caste or inter-religion marriages of their biological children, and they broke their relationships with their children. It takes years to reconcile the situation. The same parents who were dying to have their own kids discard them if they do something against their wishes.
Can we see the play of ego? The ego wants everything on its own terms. This ego is the primary reason for the crises in relationships across the globe. We know very little about ourselves, and since we resign to that, we become fixated. We do not want to question the meaning and significance of beliefs, religion, caste, social norms, and the significance of materialistic pursuits. We just keep living blindly, driven by our instincts, depending upon our childhood conditioning. We never challenge them. It's easy to just follow the herd. It's difficult to stand alone. It's easy to say yes to what the priest says or what the elders say, however illogical that may sound. The more evolved souls just listen to their logic, however ill-informed that may be. They will keep believing that the Earth is flat because it appears flat until some Galelio tells them it's not so. Then, too, they will first torture Galelio and then, after a lapse of years, they will start thinking.
The ego and awareness do not go together. If a person is on the journey of awareness, he will challenge their ego every moment. He will not accept anything on the face of it. His mind will always be flexible and keep growing. That's why he will have faith, not beliefs; confidence, not fixation; love, not attachment. He will keep challenging his own ideas and thought process. The search for the truth will be at the centre of his existence. I feel that the root cause of most of the problems of the present-day world is fixation on the domain of the known. We know very little about existence, but it suits us to dismiss what we don't know and be sure of whatever little we know. That looks very attractive in the beginning, but that is the primary reason behind all the disasters in this world, be it the filthy atmosphere, crises in relationships, or the rapid rise of psychological disorders. The problem is that once we are trapped in that fixated self, whoever tries to show us a mirror becomes our enemy. Slowly, the aware souls leave us, and we become permanently trapped in our fixated self, either with a feeling of being a victim, hurt, jealous, or seeking revenge.
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