Thirsty sea running after a mirage

Life is simple but we make it complicated by falling into the trap of “aggressive marketing” of the material and mental products. So many advertisements for material products and services are available on the television and the internet. If we look at them carefully, they all are selling material products and services with certain psychological tricks. First, they make us hungry and then offer food for a huge price. We are caught unaware. Due to lack of awareness, we first feel hungry without any appetite to take food, then make efforts to earn to pay the price for the food, then eat the food and then fall ill. That’s the irony.

These advertisements make us feel hungry by using a simple psychological trick. They make strong correlations in our brains between their products and feelings of pleasure. They first hire popular models having a huge fan following. Then these models act as if a particular product or service has given them immense joy. This joy is amplified on their face and the rest of the things are hidden. Our brain develops a correlation between the product or service and the happiness on the face of the model. It develops a desire to buy the same product or service in anticipation of the projected pleasure.

It is summertime in India. Social media and television are all full of advertisements for tour packages. We just see the models with huge satisfaction on their faces. With a desire to have the same satisfaction, we make efforts to earn money to buy these packages. Then take time out of our busy schedule and spend a good amount of money to buy these packages. The real experience is completely different from what is advertised. We see traffic jams at all the places. The destination is also full of crowds. We get exhausted and come back dissatisfied.

Do we take lessons from such experiences? No, not at all. We again get ready to fall into another trap. This time, it may be some restaurant or foreign assignment or visit to a relative or a pilgrimage. We keep creating hunger and make efforts to earn food and fall ill by taking the food. This process keeps going on all our lives, till our body says no to any further efforts due to old age. We feel that life is meaningless and purposeless.

Not only are the material products and services being sold by these corporations, but the entire society also sells psychological products all the time. A prestigious career is a product sold to each student by the parents. You do XYZ and your life will be good. If you fail to get admission to the college of your choice, you have wasted your life. As if life is too narrow to be confined to a career. Marriage is another product being sold often by society. Society is selling many such psychological products: power, positions, prestige, name, fame, and whatnot. We get dissatisfied with the one and start running after the other.

The body is the latest obsession of the day. Yoga is being sold as a fitness technique. Most of the teachers teaching yoga do not know even the real meaning of yoga: the merger of the unit with the whole. They just take one part of it, called “asana” and sell it as “yoga”. Society is selling a lot of products such as protein shakes and diet plans to become fit. Slightest of the discomfort in the body and take the painkillers. Slightest of the fever and take the medicines.

The more products we buy under the influence of these advertisements the more dissatisfied we feel. We keep chasing mirage after the mirage to reach nowhere and the life ends in dissatisfaction and hopelessness. Most of us are not willing to enquire about the real issue. Are we really hungry? If not, why do we start feeling hungry because some corporate family, or society wants to make us feel hungry? We have to stick to the fulcrum of our life. There are two choices available to us each time we make the decision:

1.       The hungry blackhole: We may choose to act like a hungry blackhole gulping one or the other thing. We may keep seeking the products and services, one after the other including so-called “enlightenment”. However, this hunger is never going to be satiated. The more we get the more we desire.

2.       The contended Sun: The second choice is to stay contended like the Sun. To realize our potential. To know the internal strength and give light to others by using this strength. The sun shines and gives energy to all the planets in the solar system.

Both the Sun and the black hole are made of the same matter. One is perpetually hungry and dissatisfied and the other is always contended and is giving light to the entire solar system.

We feel hungry and dissatisfied, not because we don’t have the advertised products and services, but because we have lost awareness of what we have. What we have is far richer and more fulfilling than what we are running after. The sea does not toil to get the water of a lake. All the rivers naturally merge into the sea. We set up a factory for the main products and not for the by-products which come naturally. Similarly, we have come to this world to explore. Pleasures are natural by-products. We are already full of happiness as the sea is full of water. We don’t need the water of any lake to quench our thirst.

The moment we regain that awareness of our true nature, the direction of our life changes significantly. Our motivations turn towards exploration rather than the achievement of certain outcomes. We mind meaning in each of our activities. Life