19 November 2010

Thoughts on "I" and My "Conditioning"

This post is self reflection (and not an advice or suggestion or an opinion on something)

A child before he was born is totally free and he continues to be free until he starts to understand this world. For very shorter period of his life, the child is allowed to be free. Later, he is being conditioned by fellow beings and himself. As he grows up, for a brief period of time, he retaliates against the conditioning by questioning and if he sustains, most of the times he gets lost in questioning by getting carried away by his intellectual or probing ability. If you look, the questions mostly are half baked (btw, asking questions of that type is not a sin) and he assumes that he is deeply probing (which may or may not be true). His interactions with his world is physical, intellectual (if intellectual is different from physical) and sometimes through mind. His intellect demands proofs and he argues for proofs.

If you ask this question to a child that is just born, "what do you want to become?" he won't answer anything but just wonder what you are asking. He wonders not because he can't understand your language but because he is too pure to understand the question. Later if you ask a ten year old, fifteen year old, thirty year old and forty year old, you will get an answer that pleases both you and him and that is directly proportional to the level of conditioning. He is not answering because he understands your language but because he is conditioned to understand your question. He is acting as if his purpose of life is to become engineer, singer and Bill Gates.

After becoming something (due to conditioning), we feel that something is not a thing that we are destined for - either we move forward or move backwards in life meaning that we become more materialistic or less materialistic. Even if you try to live without materials, it is materialistic living because still there exist the conditioning. Before you renounce life, it was material. Now it is your ego. Both money and ego can be termed as materials.

The exact opposite of conditioning is not trying to uncondition. There can't be any opposite to conditioning. Because conditioning is fake or shadow. Can you call human being as opposite to his shadow? The only thing that we can do is stop being in the state of conditioned and be in the state of reality. By reality, i dont mean the real world. By reality, i mean the conscious state which you, i and every being is trying to find.

I tend to believe that there is a possibility of being conditioned when you try not to be conditioned if we think that what we are doing is opposite of conditioned. I believe that this is going to be the premise based on which the journey of self realization should start. Or in short, trying to live based on what is given to oneself.