Enemies of freedom

 Everyday life

Life is full of confusion, chaos, and struggles. We have to study hard to get admission to a good college. After completing the course, we have to give interviews to get the job. After getting the job, we have to work hard to make a place for ourselves in the organization. Then we have to work hard for the promotions. We also need to find a fine balance between the workplace and family. We have to work on the relationship with the spouse and meet her expectations. We also have to take care of the kids and ensure that they do good in their studies. We alongside have to take care of the expectation of the relatives. In the meanwhile, we try to find a little time out of our busy schedule packed with hard work to have fun. We go to restaurants to have tasty food. Sometimes we plan short trips with friends and family. We soon realize that our body is fast getting old. We start having different kinds of diseases such as blood pressure and diabetes and now another struggle starts to take care of the body. We start visiting doctors and hospitals regularly. This is the life story of most of us.

Choice: a myth or reality

We seem to have no choice in the hustle and bustle of life. Yes, we do not have a choice, if we continue to live life like this. On the other hand, we have a choice each moment to decide the center of our life. We may take each decision of our life just following our habit patterns blindly or we may choose to be aware. Aware of the reality of the cosmos and the reality of ourselves. This choice does not exist in theory only. It exists in each of our activities.

While getting up from the bed, we have a choice to make. Whether to get up early or to get up late. Due to habit patterns, we may continue to get up late. Or we may just make a choice to get up early. We may keep eating unhealthy and heavy meals out of habit patterns or may make a choice to eat healthy. On the way to the office, we may continue to look at the traffic and other irritants and get irritated by the time we reach the office or we may exercise the choice to practice equanimity during that time and observe the activities of different people on the way to understand their psyche and fixations. At the workplace, we may get irritated by the behavior of our colleagues, bad HR policies of the organization, or unfair systems; or we may focus on our role in the organization.

What stops us from being free?

We have choices to exercise each moment. However, generally, we exercise the choices in a state of unawareness out of habit patterns and then start blaming destiny for our bad luck. These choices can be exercised only when we understand our habit patterns and how they influence our decision-making. We need to understand different parts of our being where these habit patterns are stored which keep us fixated on them.

Rational mind

The rational mind works on logic. However, logic also works on right and wrong. Depending upon the society, we are born and brought up, we develop a set of rights and wrongs that keep deciding the direction of our logic. We may call these our "biases". These biases are themselves very relative but our rational mind considers them to be absolute while taking decisions.

 A person born and brought up in one society may consider nonvegetarian food and liquor to be strictly prohibited. While in some other societies, it may be quite all right to have both. Despite being relative, as we grow old, we start getting more and more fixated on these rights and wrongs since we keep repeating these patterns without ever examining their contextual relevance. Even if the context does not support our logic, we start supporting them with a selective perception of the facts. This is the reason why it's very difficult to break into any person's rational mind.

People on this earth itself kept believing that the earth is flat and all the planets and the Sun revolve around the earth till a few hundred years ago. Where an entire community believes certain logic to be correct, it's almost impossible to show the mirror to them. Most of the people who form their logic based on distorted logic, do not keep any critics near them to show them the reality. That is how dictators like Hitler grow so strong in their logic.

Emotional Mind:

The emotional mind is a very powerful defense mechanism of our brain. It works on a like-dislike mechanism. It likes us to do the things we like again and again and makes us run away from the things we dislike. It acts very fast 🏃🏃🏃🏃and once the emotional mind is active, it does not allow reason to intervene. This quickness is required to survive. Suppose we see an enemy approaching us. We can not waste time in finding out his intentions. We have to quickly act to defend ourselves. That is the role of the emotional mind. 

The emotional mind works instinctively without much logic, the time when we are forming these likes and dislikes is very crucial. If we are not aware while forming these likes and dislikes, it's very difficult for the rational mind to intervene at a later stage, because of the very nature of the emotional mind. Each time the emotional mind reacts to these likes or dislikes, the underlying neural connections become stronger. 

Most of our likes and dislikes are formed when we are not aware of our true nature. In that state of unawareness, we just end up mirroring the likes and dislikes of our parents, friends, and colleagues. Whatever food we eat during childhood becomes our favorite food. The places that we have heard highly of are the most favorite places. We form similar likes and dislikes about people and behavior patterns. These likes and dislikes drive the whole of our life. They decide our career choices, the choice of our friends, and the organizations we work with. 

Unconscious mind

The most crucial part of our brain is the unconscious mind. It acts like a storehouse of the memory for the emotional mind. Each experience of liking by the emotional mind creates a pleasant sensation (Samvedana) in the body and each experience of dislike creates an unpleasant sensation. The memories of these pleasant and unpleasant sensations are stored in the unconscious mind. 

The unconscious mind wants more and more pleasant sensations and less unpleasant sensations. Even the slightest repetition of these sensations triggers the entire cycle. For example, if somebody experienced trauma due to an earthquake, the slightest of the shaking sensation may trigger the memories of the trauma again and activate the emotional mind. 

Storehouse of our habit patterns

The rational mind, the emotional mind, and the unconscious mind are all storehouses of our habit patterns. Generally, we keep taking decisions with any one or more of these brains. Since we are not aware, we keep making decisions based on the likes and dislikes of the emotional mind, biases of the rational mind, and the memories of pleasant or unpleasant sensations in the unconscious mind.