Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists the world
has ever known, contributed immensely to his field with the Theory of Relativity.
But his contribution was not just in the field of physics. His work opened up
the possibility of being able to understand the universe and its reality in a
multi dimensional way. By this, I mean, that his work on time and space has
reminded us that somewhere, physics, spirituality and in fact most other streams
of learning, actually merge at some point. It is no surprise that a lot of the
world’s greats were polymaths, people with multidimensional intelligences.
People whose brains knew what the universe already does…. That everything is
one and from one everything is born. Leonardo Da Vinci was a painter, engineer,
mathematician and musician all rolled into one. Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Benjamin Franklin,
Isaac Newton are some other polymaths.
We find it fascinating to read and learn about the work of greats
in the science of reality. But we have considerable trouble handling reality
when we encounter it in our individual lives.
Sumita (Name changed) , a girl I know, describes her life as
traumatic. She complains that men with severe emotional disabilities seem to
enter her life with unerring consistency. She complains that whenever she feels
things starting to go well with someone, that person starts to show signs of
emotional instability and the relationship eventually comes to an end. As a
person well into her thirties and looking to find a life partner, she feels
life is being unfair to her. Since I know Sumita reasonably well, I once took
the opportunity to dig further to find out what could be going wrong. As I kept
exploring, I came to see a pattern in her narration of her life in general and
more specifically her personal life. I came to realize that Sumita, believed
genuinely in her heart that she didn’t deserve good things. In some sense, she
WANTED life to be unfair to her because that’s what she thought she deserved.
Her view of the world was a place which treated her the way she deeply believed
she deserved. But understandably her intellectual, logical mind kept looking at
events as unfair. A person who holds this world view as ‘real’ could be perpetuating
a pattern of events. It is very possible that she feels attracted only to
people her intuition identifies as unstable and goes on to start something
which has no future; only for it to end in the manner that validates her self-image
as an undeserving person.
Another lady I know believes fervently in her heart that the
world can do no bad and everyone, including one’s apparent enemies are warm,
loving, guileless and forgiving people. Even if spite, malice and hatred stare
her in the face, she refuses to believe it. She has a blind side to the darker aspects
of human nature. While this may seem like an endearing quality on first glance,
what it does, is create a person constantly pandering to others and trying to
keep peace. A person who gives benefit of doubt to the other, even when grossly
undeserved and has no capacity to hold her own. A simplistic and highly
erroneous view of the world was the only thing tolerable for her. Her world
view was a fairytale one, with no space for reality.
These are just two examples of how people choose their reality,
and how sometimes this web of reality woven by them traps them in a regressed
state… a place from where there is no path to growth.
Reality is something we struggle with all our lives because
let’s call a spade a spade …. Facing reality is unpleasant. One would think I’m
alluding only to the painful nature of reality. But what I am referring to, is
the difficulty in seeing a reality different from one we want to believe in,
regardless of its nature or quality. This happens for a reason.
We all develop a paradigm for leading our lives. We begin
developing this paradigm right from childhood slowly and surely. And by the
time we hit our thirties, our paradigm is more or less set, like hardened clay.
We may allow some changes as life moves on but largely, patterns of response
remain the same, except of course in
cases where life has forced a jolt upon us. These responses are both emotional
and physical…. and largely become unconscious as they set more and more with
practice.
Raman (name changed), I man I’ve known for many years has a
certain pattern of response to all sales representatives who land up at his
door step. He first invites them in and offers them tea. After listening to
them flatteringly for sometime, he starts engaging them in a debate which
quickly turns into an argument. The conversation becomes unpleasant within
minutes . He ends all these meeting with hurling accusations, often alluding to
their ‘dubious’ intentions… always suspecting cheat and deceit. It may well be
true that there are many cheats out there looking to con an innocent buyer.
But, the point I’m trying to make here, is that Raman is convinced that this is going to be the case everytime. He extends this view to many other people and situations.
Raman’s world view is one that has to be, for some reason, tainted with a negative
brush. To him, no one can be trusted and
everyone is deceitful.
The realities these people have chosen for themselves,
albeit unconsciously, are so comfortably nestled in their hearts and minds that
an alternate reality, even if it is a happier one, would be unpleasant for them
to accept. Our paradigms were built because they worked for us at certain points
in time. But we continue to take that map forward into our lives and apply the
same model to most life situations. The problems with this approach are
obvious. If we were to continue to believe that our world works for us the same
way it did when we were children or even 5 years ago, or if we don’t incorporate
real changes in our life experiences into our paradigms, we are essentially
attempting to push a square plug into a round socket. The result is frustration
and a feeling of failure at things going wrong all the time, everywhere. The
sad thing though is, people whose paradigms have failed, hold on even more tenaciously
to their faulty model because they somehow twist this new reality of failure to
fit their old paradigm. The bitter man believes that the world is a bitter
place, spreads bitterness back, receives bitterness in return, which reinforces
his view of a bitter world and he turns even more bitter. The perpetuating
cycle starts all over again.
Unlike science, there may not be a fully objective reality
for our individual selves to learn and believe in. Our unique lives require us
to construct our own unique realities. But still, we must remember that we are
prone to incorporating some misplaced, unreal and therefore unstable components
when we build our life model.
For example, Raman could do well to know that while some
sales people may be deceitful, it is possible to meet an honest salesman who
sells a good product that may end up being something he needs. Sumita could try
to see how unreal it is to believe, that everyone out there is emotionally
stunted. It is a good statistical probability that there may be many well
turned out and emotionally stable men who could be consideration worthy. The
naïvely optimistic lady, who believes there is only good in the world, could do
with knowing that all human beings are a mix of light and dark. A survival
instinct and fighting spirit may actually be required sometimes to exist amid
society and peers.
Having said this, changing our internal reality is a job far
easier said than done. Sometimes, our desire and need to hold on to our
realities is so intense, that it may come in the way of this process.
Nevertheless, when we start to work at first challenging our current reality we
begin the work of healthy disillusionment. We begin to realize what is unreal
in our picture and begin to replace it with more realistic strokes. As we begin
to paint a new picture for ourselves we start to see it changing hues. It may
start to become a more complex painting, with colors ranging from the lilacs
and pinks of cheer and happiness to the dark burgundy of malice and evil with various
other shades in the middle depicting every nuance of the mind boggling reality
that life is. Yes, the painting does begin to look less simple, but it begins
to look richer.
As we keep refining our understanding of our individual
realities on our spiritual growth path, we begin to see a method of working with
our lives in a very concrete and real way…. without escaping from it or viewing
it through a broken glass. As we work with realities we would’ve been afraid to
see earlier, we begin to feel a sense of living life fully. An ability to
experience all shades of our life’s events in their unadulterated form, gives
us a complete experience. And then, somewhere in the complex painting of different
hues, we will find our color of bliss… a color born not out of delusion but out
of dipping ourselves and getting wet in the ocean of life’s palette.
