While suffering is the result of breaking the natural law, it is also an important clue to align with it. Suffering has a dual characteristic that way. The painful effect of transgression as well as a tool for alignment.
The identity principle is another major source of human suffering. “I am better than them”. “I am not as competent as her”.” I am a liberal”. ” I am the underdog”. It is our entire personality, both its dormant and active aspects. The stronger the individuality, the more embellished, more fortified, more powerful the person. More famous, more sought after, more emulated.
We have now sufficiently understood how the psyche-mind self-organizes and self-builds, bottom-up, from the raw material of samskaras. Samskaras are the fuel, the impetus for this cyclical feedback loop. Catching the slippery samskaras by their tail, deep inside the waters of the psyche and quashing them is the only way to dismantle the beast.
In its true essence, meditation is the process by which you can reach the substratum of your mind. The hotbed of your often troubled existence; your samskaras.
We have picked many of our ideas and concepts, perceptions and worldviews from our environment. From our families and our cultures. These are our samskaras, our impressions we have collected and are still collecting in our current lifetimes. Many of our other ideas and conceptions arise from our old samskaras, whose origins we are unaware of.
Renovating your mind is not a matter of thinking positive thoughts alone because your samskaras have an emotional stake in the game. That is why positive thinking never works, at least not in the long term. Our current world focuses too much on positive thinking; neurolinguistic programming and affirmations and what not. The thing is that positive thinking alone, in isolation will do nothing much.
As we remodel the cognitive occupants of our mind, we realize some were incorrect and faulty. Out of alignment with the real, true ones. Now, replacing them is not a simple matter of pushing bad ones out to bring in the good ones. Our bad, hurtful concepts of life have an emotional stake in our psyche-minds too.
“One’s own dharma, even devoid of merit, is preferable to the dharma of another though well performed. Even death in the performance of your dharma brings blessedness, another’s dharma is fraught with anxiety” – Bhagwad Gita
Natural affinity for evolution: Educator to Warrior
The educator evolves to become a warrior-educator who is wise as well as disciplined and self determined. He is a potent force for impacting society now, by leading with his knowledge and wisdom.
