Man the Creator!
Have we ever ever imagined that man could actually be a creator?
When one is born,one comes to this Earth as a pristine,absolutely innocent human being without any feelings of hate,jealousy,malice,fear or discontent and the only manifest emotions are those of happiness(seen as a beautiful smile)or sense of a need(manifested as crying,which subsides when the need has been fulfilled).Gradually and very subtly,thanks to the people surrounding one,be it parents,siblings,friends, so on and so forth negative emotions of fear,jealousy,discontent etc start getting imbibed,laying the foundation for future problems.The once “pure”new born……infant……child... starts developing more ‘worldly”feelings, the core ‘purity”becomes dormant as it gets overshadowed by the conditioned responses. When the mother tries to stop the child from going against her wish she tries to instill fear in his mind and a new negative feeling of fear is born.Similarly so many other negative emotions develop with increasing age depending on the type of exposure the child/young adult faces.The core beauty and purity gets pushed deeper and deeper.
Have we ever tried to wonder what is the result of the seeds sown in such a fashion?The child who has imbibed fear as the dominant emotion grows up to be a very inhibited one, afraid of almost any and everything,scared of taking any chances in life.This results in his taking fear based decisions as he grows.Whenever one is confronted with a problem,one always has two choices,one, based on a positive outlook and the other negative,ie based on a feeling of failure.If one takes a fear based decision,the chances are that one is doomed to failure while the positive based decision will, in all likelihood, lead to a successful result.Hence someone with a negative outlook is “creating”a negative result for himself.As an example,if one is going to appear for an interview and approaches it with a feeling of dread and imagines failure to be the result,his very ‘thought”of failure is likely to attract failure as the likely outcome.
If on the other hand,one were to approach the same interview with the thought of a successful outcome then the mere “thought’of success is likely to attract the same positive response from the universe and the result is most likely going to be positive.His confident and friendly demeanour is likely to get reciprocated by the interviewers.”Thoughts”can be so very powerful tools indeed!
In case the dominant feeling which the child imbibes as a conditioned response is anger or jealousy,his world revolves around these emotions and he views the world either with anger or with jealousy.He is likely to approach every thing with a feeling of superiority or would be given to throwing his weight around,resulting in his rubbing people the wrong way and in all likelihood eliciting a similar response leading to a “creation“of a feeling of frustration or a further need for a reprisal,laying down seeds for future conflicts.
If the child imbibes a sense or feeling of hate in early childhood or even later,owing to the company he keeps,he will be fanning the flames for hate in others as well,ultimately “creating”intolerance,crimes or worse…. killings.
It is now a universally accepted fact that our feelings or thoughts ‘vibrate”and elicit similar responses from people around us.Our vibrations precede the spoken word and I am sure that all of us have faced situations where a person we meet seems to echo our sentiments without a word having been spoken!Again, we are actually “creating”a similar response from the person concerned.Therefore,if we are looking for a response of joy/goodwill/affection from the other person then we need to feel the same way about him.There is so much of truth in the saying ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
Once a lady entered a train compartment and found it full to capacity with no place to sit and no one got up for her.She just kept standing and smiled at the few people who noticed her.Her friendly smile conveyed a feeling of understanding and an unspoken request,which was answered by the people around her squeezing themselves and making place for her to sit!See what humility and courtesy can do!
A warm smile and a body language indicating concern,compassion and affection,is,I think of paramount importance in a doctor-patient relationship as it goes such a long way in instilling a feeling of hope,confidence and faith in the patient.Half the battle for the patient’s recovery is won by the “creation”of such a feeling.Sadly,most often the reverse is seen most of the time.Instead of hope and confidence most doctors manage to instill a sense of fear in the patient.Why does a doctor forget that he could one day be a patient himself…..what would he be looking for in his doctor when that happened?
In the same vein,I think it is important to understand that our ego plays a very important role in “creating’problems for ourselves.There are umpteen examples of arguments,quarrels,disagreements etc getting out of hand,often leading to aggravation of the problem often culminating into physical abuse.If only one of the concerned parties could swallow his false pride or ego and just refrain from reacting or actually apologizing, an explosive situation could possibly be avoided.We see this every day.”Road rage’ is a typical example and is entirely man made…..we fight for every inch of space on the road and imagine that it belongs to us!
We are all aware that false pride and so called “ego’can actually ‘create’situations culminating in blood shed.As responsible people can we not create a sense of harmony?
If,however,the child,based on his good “karmas”is born into a family which is God-fearing,given to good deeds,compassion,forgiveness,love,affection,contentment,tolerance and a sense “feeling”for fellow beings,the child develops similar positive conditioned responses and as he grows into an adult,his actions are predominantly based on a positive outlook and trust.His actions are generally not fear based.Every eventuality or outcome is taken as the will of God,and the belief that it is for his good.He ‘creates”a feeling of good will and spreads a sense of happiness and bonhomie all around.He believes in the goodness of people.
So very often we find people to be unhappy,in fact this seems to be a universal malady.Have we ever stopped to think why this is so?In all probability this is likely to be rooted in unfulfilled desires or our minds being cluttered with so many negative emotions of comparison with others,gossip,discontent,bad feelings about others,reaction to what people say about us,expectations etc.Practically all of these one can do without.We are,therefore,again creating unhappiness for ourselves.If we stop comparing ourselves with others(since there is no end to it),stop indulging in gossip,not think or say bad things to or about others,reduce our expectations from others we would be much better off.In short,our unhappiness is totally created by ourselves.We can choose to be happy by changing our thought process.Every action starts with a thought,if we allow a negative thought to “seat”itself in our mind it will only propagate further and lead to negative actions in us followed by similar reactions from others.To “create”happiness,we should not permit a negative emotion or thought to settle in.
So many times one comes across people who are perpetually ‘sick”,be it headaches,pains here and there,hyperacidity,coronary artery disease,backaches,depression,strokes…..so on and so forth.There is a very big list.We blame circumstances for these and play the victim,while the reality is that we have brought most of these on ourselves.Many medical problems we suffer from are related to ‘stress’.With the ‘hurry,worry and curry”of life,we have forgotten to take care of ourselves,our bodies,our food,nutrition etc.Most of us do not exercise,do not eat a balanced diet,either sleep too much or too little,succumb to the pressures of life,and are actually running away from nature.Most of us have lost even the flimsiest of connections with God.Our spiritual leaders have reduced our religions to mere rituals which actually lead to nothing except giving us false feelings of being religious.(True religion seems to be virtually non existent these days but I shall refrain from discussing the reasons for this).It is not surprising,then, why most people are so sick(physically and mentally).Have we not actually created all these problems for ourselves?
Are we not creating conflicts among ourselves and other nations?If we introspect we would probably realize that it all starts with the little ‘me’,because the real me ie my soul has been trampelled on so often that it has forgotten its connection with Him(the Atma has lost its connection with the parent,Parmatma).If we want to be really happy or to achieve true Bliss we need to reestablish our lost connection with Him.Only when that happens can we achieve what has been eluding us all along and we progress towards achieving genuine happiness and perhaps……bliss!’God helps those who help themselves”…..He has given us the gift of choice,but it is up to us to use this gift judiciously and to gradually peel off the negativity surrounding our soul till that pristine core of ‘me’,lying dormant surfaces again!
