Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) today we look at one of the aspects of our personalities commanding self, highlighted through yet another tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also as we begin today \u2018let us remember this about \u2018Attention\u2019.<\/strong> <\/em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Commanding Self” here points to the “mixture of primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since I have been emphasizing the need for people to discern their own emotional ebb and flow, and to come to an understanding of it, so that they operate it, and not in them, there has been a great deal of comment. People say, of course, that because emotions move them this is the only way in which it can work. Those who idolize it even imagine that it would be \u201cspoiled\u201d if it did not come upon them unawares. This, of course, does not stop them using emotion if they can\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there is a very ancient allegory connected with this belief that things are set in a certain way in the world and that nobody can change them. It is the<\/p>\n\n\n\n THE TALE OF THE WEEPING PUPPY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was once a man who wanted to deceive a woman into believing that a certain dog was her former husband reincarnated, so that he could sell it to her and make a large profit from what was a worthless mongrel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, every day for some weeks, he fed the puppy with bread covered in mustard whenever it was hungry. Naturally, this brought tears to its eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then he went to see the woman, and said that he simply had to sell her the animal, since he had had a vision that it was her dead husband in another guise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she looked doubtful, he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet us put it to test, for you need not believe me without seeing something with your own eyes. You remember that you used to feed your dear husband, and that he liked your food? Let us remind him. Bring out a piece of bread, offer it to the dog, and if he shows unusual interest, you will know that what I say is true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The woman produced a scrap of bread and offered it to the puppy who, instead of gobbling it up, looked at her with reproachful eyes, which filled with tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So she bought the dog and cherished it, and nothing would ever convince her that it was not her husband: had she not had proof? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Commanding Self \u2013 Idries Shah<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n