Vipul Agarwal, Delhi, 19th August 2023
Our brain has a very unique feature. It tries to draw quick conclusions. That is necessary for its survival. It has to ensure its survival in a very complicated world and, therefore, needs to take quick decisions and move on. While driving on the road, we have to take quick decisions to drive. While dealing with different people in office, we have to draw certain presumptions quickly to enable us to take decisions. Else, we will not be able to take any decisions. There is a huge cost of gathering information and, therefore, the brain tries to optimize the need for information to take a decision and draws some general conclusions.
These conclusions are generally based on our belief systems and life experiences. Since each one has different life experiences and belief systems, these are not absolute and, therefore, differ from person to person. As we use them more and more, we start becoming blind to the other possibilities and they turn into biases. These blind spots start doing more harm to us than good.
For example, we form certain presumptions about our subordinates and bosses based on the feedback we receive from friends. This initially facilitates our interactions with them. But if we do not improvise our presumptions based on our interactions, soon they convert into blind spots and we move quite far away from reality and start living in mental hallucinations, a world that we create in our mind and which does not exist at all.
It is critical that we remain aware in our daily life. Aware of different possibilities. If our observation of different people is biased towards our presumptions, we will see different people with our coloured glasses and they will appear so. We all have mirror neurons in our brain that make us mirror what we see. If we see the people we are dealing with, with colored glasses, they also tend to mirror the colours. Hatred breeds hatred, jealousy breeds jealousy, doubt breeds doubt and anger breeds anger.
Being aware simply means that we are aware of the potential of the consciousness that operates within all of us. We continuously observe whether the person we are interacting with is aware of that consciousness or has got trapped in some mental belief or bias, or hallucination, and if so, we still remain aware of the great possibilities of consciousness and make efforts to re-establish the lost connection. If that does not work, we understand that ignorance has a strong grip on consciousness. In that case, too, there remains compassion. The connection between the consciousness operating in us and that person does not go anywhere. However, we also remain aware of the force of ignorance. Rama tries to convince Ravana to an extent by sending Hanumana and Angad and after that he realized that there is no option left other than fighting the battle. We may take the decision to fight or stay away, or minimize our interaction, depending upon the circumstances. We are attentive while taking these decisions and not reactive because we stay aware of the play of ignorance.
