As a Pakistani, I know one thing for sure, advice on how to live comes for free here. If you are crossing the street, you hear from behind, "abay dheek kar", you go to a gathering and somebody shakes their head at your choice of clothing till you wanna drown yourself in that glass of Pepsi you are holding or the most common you hear from everone, "you don't know how to live, here I'll tell you..". Its funny because up till that point, I seemed to be breathing alright and was very happy, thank you.
The storylines we tell each other or even ourselves are simply self-created. It's an illusion that gives us an identity and protection. It allows the defenses that we created to protect ourselves so that our minds know, yes we are alive and in control. So when something comes along that does not serve us, our egos struggle against all odds to maintain the mighty "I". We have been insulted. How dare you. The stronger our egos, the more we perpetutate the dramas and the harder it is for us to short-circuit our learnt patterns. He said, she said.. *after several hours*.. he said, she said..*after several years*.. he said, she said . Nothing changes, except the fact, we separated ourselves further and are now wallowing with that cake in our mouth, thinking how cruel and unfair the world is.. tsk tsk. For you cynics out there, yes this too is a story.
The Buddha often talked about the roots of human suffering in his scriptures and the biggest of the "Dhukkas" was attachment. And what bigger attachment than the word "I". I did this and I did that. I am right. I know. The list is endless. No matter how much we pretend we possess the most compassionate of hearts, we never really move beyond our sense of "I" until we move beyond it. Therefore we pull all energy towards ourselves rather than giving it to others. We are selfish.
We talk about battling other people's demons while we live in the shadows of our own darkness. Our egos putting us in constant fear and anxiety, limiting us to the boundary of what we believe to be true of ourselves and others. The world exist only as we see it. Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, said if we are to finish the darkness within the world, we must battle out our own darkness first.
In reality, there are only myths that we refuse to change, even when the person has years ago. Its like snapping an ugly picture and carrying it in your pocket. The minute something triggers your ego, you pull out that picture and say, yup, that's the one. So how do we move beyond that? Ofcourse, letting go. Life doesn't need to look like how we want it to. And it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with us, if it doesn't.
We all are delusional and living a lie in one way or another, but thats precisely what gives this Earth so much beauty. What was the point of living, if there was only black and white? Movement and flexibility are the very essense of life, rigidity and stiffness are the qualities of the dead.
The truth about our existence is, that if we become still enough to hear the sounds of our souls, we would know that there is no self and there is no other. We all arrived from the same pool of beingness and were given these different forms and faces. How do you ever expect to become one with Your Creator, when you can not transcend yourself, and become one with your fellow human? You and I are no different if we give up our minds and connect with our souls. We simply just are.
