Last week, while I was driving, taking my family to a nearby garden, a biker appeared out of nowhere. He wasn’t wearing his safety helmet, and neither was he mindful of the oncoming traffic. This young fellow must be in his early 20s, mindlessly barged his way through. I immediately applied breaks to avert the disaster, and then came the reaction, “What an Idiot?” I didn’t say that to him. It was only a thought.
That surge of anger came spontaneously and disappeared within a couple of seconds. He gave me a confused look, and I gave him a stern, angry look, but nothing escalated, and we moved our respective ways. I enjoyed with my family in the beautiful Lodhi Garden, which is in the heart of Lutyens Delhi.
In the evening, I was reflecting on the whole incident, and this thought came up, why did I call him an idiot? Is he really an idiot? He could be, I don’t know, but during that moment, I assumed many things about him based on his appearance. It is fascinating to see how fast the conditioning brings up the past contents.
I called him an idiot because I was not looking at him but a superimposed image that was my own creation. In a way, I called myself an idiot. The superimposed image came from past conditioning, where I was repeatedly told how horrible these people were, that we should never mingle with the likes of these, and how they are the scums of the earth not deserving to be amongst the so-called well-cultured and well-manicured elite society.
All of our relationships are nothing but images. In fact, our notion of the personal self is also an image. We have images of people of color, people belonging to LGBTQI, people belonging to different communities or faiths, people with different or same beliefs as ours, and so on. We never interact with another but only ourselves. We interact with the content of the past. These images, whether pleasant or unpleasant, play a significant role in our relationship with the world.
The reason for our turbulent relationships is that we see the other through filters of our own conditioned perception. In that, the other has to conform to my ideas and beliefs. Not only that, but I also base my interactions on what the other has to offer “me.” For “me,” the mere presence of another human being is not enough. However, we never look at our own image. We never question what is this entity that I call “me.”
Did that biker deliberately choose to drive his bike in front of my car? The conditioning at that moment immediately created a caricature as a part of a defense mechanism. What if I knew that man? What if I knew how hard he has to work to support his family? What if I knew that he had faced discrimination based on his economic status, color, and caste? What if he never received a good education because of his socioeconomic condition? What if his entire life’s movie had flashed before my eyes? Would I be able to hate him or hold a grudge for what I presume he did?
Does it imply that my reaction in the moment was unwarranted? I don’t think so. The reaction came from the shock that no one has any control over in the moment. No matter how well you train your mind not to react to shocks or what happens in the moment, you can’t train your brain to be permanently shockproof. Life’s design does not allow for that. Therefore, what happened, happened in the moment. The images came up in that moment, and they were dropped in the next.
When the unreality of one’s own image or “me” is seen, even the unreality of images in others becomes apparent. The images still remain. Without images, communication cannot happen, but there’s no solidness to the images. It is recognized that there is something beyond that remains untouched and is pristine. That all images and their expressions come from the same indivisible Wholeness that is ever-present.
It’s common for people in India to blow horns while driving. Westerners have a hard time coming to terms with this, but an average Indian on the road blows horn mindlessly. It’s like informing, “Hey, I’m here! Be careful!” It comes from the conditioning of driving in chaotic and mixed traffic, ranging from bicycles to trucks on the same road.
While it is a bad habit, and at times, irritating; it is just another expression of the same Wholeness. There is an order to this chaos. Therefore, when the images are diluted, the knee-jerk reaction that comes in the moment does not translate into anger, hate, and resentment in horizontal time. So, with the dilution of images, one can have a more fulfilling relationship with the world. Not perfect, but it makes life’s navigation relatively comfortable. What happens is witnessed and released. It does not become my story.
If you’re not getting my emails, check your spam or promotion folders. Additionally, I recommend you check this article HERE. You can safe-list my posts by adding my email to your contact list. The article in the link above will guide you step by step.
Thank you for being here and offering continued support.