Why to waste life with the mental stories?

Today, while watching a movie, a thought came to my mind. Which of our needs are real and which are just creations of the mind? Is the need to have a decent home real or a creation of mind? Is the need to have money for the organ transplant a creation of the mind or a real need? Is the need to have a happy married life a real need or a creation of the mind? It's all quite relative.

For a poor person, getting a hut to stay safely may be quite a big thing. For a middle-class husband and wife, not having separate rooms in the home may be a big deficiency. I see my own life. I used to travel by the local buses and on the local train which had no air-conditioning. Now, we travel with AC cars and metros. Traveling by local buses appears to be quite difficult. 

Probably the difference between need and greed exists in the mind itself. Till we are deprived of the basic necessities, basic necessities are the need and others are greed. The moment we get the basic necessities, greed becomes the need. AC cars, domestic help, and summer vacations, powerful positions, social networks, which were considered greed earlier, become needs now. I have not yet come across any single person acknowledging that his needs are fulfilled and he is now working for greed. Each and every person caught in the loop of material or worldly pursuit has this strong sense of unfulfilled need. I have seen big industrialists running after the business and justifying these desires saying that they need to retain their No.1 position in the business.

The question arises: can we see this cobweb that the emotional mind weaves to trap us? It's quite difficult. Because of a simple reason. This emotional mind is very clever. It is a master author of fiction. It can write an entire book around almost nothing. It looks at the rich and the powerful and presumes that their life is wonderful by just looking at only one aspect of their life. It glamorizes that aspect and creates aspirations to acquire the same wealth and powers, without doing any cost-benefit analysis. It overlooks the efforts they have to put in to get all these things and the cost in terms of time. It draws a lot of presumptions about the pleasure of possession of such things without having any empirical evidence or data. These presumptions are fanned by colleagues and friends because they too do not have any real experience. Like two blind persons, making some guesses about the appearance of an animal after hearing its sound. They both fan each other's guesses and slowly develop a belief in such appearance that grows stronger with time. Slowly the belief grows to the extent that it looks more real than the reality and they make the entire story around that. 

That's what we do each day in our life. Writing a fiction book in our mind each day and believing that to be the reality. That happens with our motivations as well as relationships. If we look carefully, most of our motivations are built around these stories that we created in our minds during childhood and keep carrying the same throughout our lives. In relationships also we presume many things about the other person and then start living with that.

Can't we be just aware while writing these stories? Is it too difficult a task? Yes, it is. Because we all have strong habit patterns. While feeling hungry, it is quite easy to take a chocolate. It gives quick energy and we feel good. Similarly, when we face uncertainty, our brain tries to make sense. It wants a conclusion. It does not want to spend energy on observation and draws quick conclusions by just looking at partial facts. We mentally repeat these conclusions while gossiping and discussing with our friends and colleagues and that is how these stories become more and more real with the passage of time.

The advertisements and media also create these stories and make us believe in them. I have not seen any advertisement so far which is not selling the stories. Chocolate advertisements to the advertisement of branded clothes, all full of beautiful and handsome models who sell the stories. The advertisements of the hospitals are so full of comfort and care that a patient soon believes in that story and ignores the pain he has to go through. 

At some stage, we have to learn to see the reality as it is. The moment we see the reality, we immediately start seeing what has been hidden from us. We start thinking out of the box. We focus on being healthy by doing yoga, rather than thinking of a hospital. We focus on the purification of the thoughts rather than cursing the relationships. We focus on internal happiness rather than the pleasures of the outside world. All these things are provided to us by nature without any cost. The moment we observe, we realize that we are unnecessarily wasting our lives living with these mental stories.