The talks to prevent war fail miserably in this world. Thousands of people keep suffering. There have been so many saints in this world, and if their words had been properly communicated to the whole of the world, we would not have been fighting so many wars. What happens? Where are the worlds of realised souls lost? Almost every parent tells their children to stay away from addictions, and yet so many children fall into the trap of drugs and alcohol. What goes wrong?
We see so many examples of ineffective communication around us. There are misunderstandings in relationships, ego trips and battles, and even countries fight due to miscommunication. It seems so simple. Why can't we say what we want to say, and why can't the other person listen to what we want to say? I think that if we address the issue of communication, our relationships with the people around us, in particular, and society in general, will also improve significantly.
There are two fundamental elements of communication. The speaker has to say what he wants to say. However, there are two fundamental barriers to that. Inauthenticity and lack of integrity. Quite often, there is a lack of integrity in our communication. We say something else while we intend to communicate something different. We deliberately either say less or say something other than what we actually want to say. Often, this manipulation of communication is deliberate. This may happen due to fear or greed. We may not like a relative, yet praise him in public because he holds a powerful position and we feel he may be of some use in the future. In the office meetings, we may not agree with what seniors say, and yet we may not speak out because we are afraid of the consequences. We may be afraid to express our honest opinions because we want to keep relationships workable. Sometimes, we encounter aggression in a road rash, and we don't say what we actually feel because we don't want to waste time on that aggression on the road, or we are afraid of violence.
The other fundamental barrier is a lack of authenticity. We know very little about ourselves, and what we do know is just the tip of the iceberg. What lies within the unconscious accounts for more than 90% of our thought process. We have our biases, beliefs, and opinions that directly or indirectly affect our decisions and choices. For example, a person may be afraid of ragging, and that decision may impact their decision to appear for NEET or JEE. Some people may have a fear of leaving home, and that fear may affect their career decisions. Often, our unconscious mind affects our communication, while we are not aware of it.
When the speaker speaks, his inauthenticity and lack of integrity are reflected in what he says. Similarly, the listener is also having his own share of lack of integrity and inauthenticity. He, too, listens to what he wants to listen to. A person may attend a satsanga, but he will listen to what resonates well with his own philosophy of life. Often, people read the Bhagavad Gita, Kabir, and J Krishnamurty the way they want to. They make meaning of their words as per their own liking. Similarly, the listener is not aware of what lies in his unconscious, and often his unconscious gives him many different meanings of what he listens to. We see so many examples day in and day out. A very innocent conversation with an enemy may sound quite threatening. Our ears hallucinate when we are highly emotionally charged. We read between the lines and quite often read them wrong.
It would probably never be a reality in this world that everybody is authentic and full of integrity. That's why there is bound to be miscommunication in this world. Authenticity demands a lot of self-introspection, which is extremely difficult in a world generally driven by "ego". People will continue to manipulate because their "ego" wants a particular outcome. In the words of Kabira,
कबीरा खड़ा बजार में, लिए लुकाठी हाथ।
जो घर फूंके आपना, चले हमारे साथ॥
Why would somebody burn his home? Why would somebody give away his ego? That's not easy. That gives us a separate identity. Till ego continues, inauthenticities and lack of integrity will thrive. Everybody will try to protect their "self-interest" without ever knowing what this self really is. For real communication to take place, one first needs to communicate with oneself. As we communicate with ourselves, we examine the dichotomies within ourselves and why we have them. Mostly, these dichotomies are the result of a lack of "self-awareness". We make many mental stories about the world and people around us because we somehow want to feel safe. Awareness is like fire that burns all the inauthenticities, and it is also like light that illuminates everything inside, and we can see the smallest particles of dust of inauthenticity inside. However, how many of us are ready to burn our own dear home built on the foundation of "ego"? It's very difficult to hand over the reins of our chariot to Krishna because then Krishna won't follow the commands of our ego. The problem is: why would the "ego" decide to burn itself? Arjuna too had to surrender himself at the feet of Krishna; his "ego" was sure that he should run away from the battlefield. Probably, with sadhna, a space is created within us that is not contaminated by ego, and that space slowly increases with sadhna until the whole of ego melts. Till that happens, the ego will keep playing its game.
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