Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) today we look at yet another aspect of our personalities commanding self, highlighted through this Q & A.
Also as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’. Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.
“The Commanding Self” here points to the “mixture of primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding”.
Written in response to requests for “clarification, interviews, question-and-answer sessions, lectures”, the following section of the book present study theme intended to enable the student to observe the functioning of their own emotional and conditioned responses.
Q: I do not get any satisfaction from my life as a whole, but I do enjoy many things which I do, which makes my life worth living. Can there be anything wrong with that, so long as I do not harm anyone else?
A: It does depend upon what the consequences of what you are doing ultimately are. If you know this, you are already wise, and would, I fancy, not be asking the question.
So I cannot comment, except to remind you of the mouse which was asked why it was chewing the insulation off a high-voltage electric cable. It said: “I enjoy doing this, and besides, I am doing nobody any harm, am I?”
The Commanding Self – Idries Shah
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