Life is subjective. We bring to the situation our interpretation based on our perception. The same situation is seen by different observers differently. So what is reality then? What is the objective truth of a matter when we are all interpreting it according to our genetic background and nurturing?
Nature and nurture seem to be determining how we read a situation. Usually it is instinctive and may well be mirroring our parents and the way they reacted emotionally to life and situations on the ground.
Training and education also shapes our response, as does experience. Age also changes us and our hormonal responses shift with the passing decades. So everything is in a state of change and flux and initially it feels as if the best we can do is go with it.
Ideally we are able to cultivate a degree of self-reflection. This is the ability to become an observer of ourselves. By taking the position of the observer, we can dis-identify with the emotion or response when it arises in our minds. We can see it for what it is and realize that it is not us, but that we are experiencing it in the moment and it can and will pass.
Sometimes our bodies are overdoing it on the fight-or-flight level of response. The trigger does not have to be big, and still we over-react, as the body instinctively releases adrenaline or cortisol, the fight-or-flight hormone. There are no more tigers chasing us yet still we react to situations as if they are life-or-death.
With remedies like Magnesium and Vitamin B complex, one can strengthen the nervous system and find great improvement in mood and perception of reality, again requiring us to ask just what is reality. It appears as if life unfolds in a neutral way and we add the emotional interpretation to it. We color it according to our perspective.
Not everyone is capable of an equal degree of self-reflection or introspection but we all have it to some degree. We learn from the responses we attract from others, and we learn from our own reactions, most of which are from the ego, based on survival.
This ego is called “ahankara” in Sanskrit, or “false ego” in the sense that there is real ego. We may label our identity as superficial, but that does not mean that there is no personality at all. There is personality. We are always a person, even when peeling away the layers of temporary body, and mind with its false ego.
Within is the self, called “atma” in Sanskrit and that is the eternal self that existed before this face or body, and will continue after we leave this body. Curiously the eternal self has nothing in common with the current body and mind, so we are not the strong males or pretty females that our bodies and minds identify with. We are someone else.
Years of yoga and meditation are meant to facilitate the peeling away of the layers and meant to awaken our remembrance of our original identity and personality. So we can keep the mind and body in good shape by using healthy input, and we can also reveal the original pure eternal state of consciousness in times of stillness, with years of endeavor in mindfulness.
And that reality is apparently the real one, not the current external body and mind as it appears. The reality is an internal one, and the externals are just a temporary frill or adornment, which we carry around for some time and then discard when it wears out.
Therefore, we would do well to balance out the subjective external interpretation of the material world and the body that we inhabit, with a receptive space for the original self to shine through. That original self is the same one that journeys through numerous lifetimes and via numerous bodies, male and female, some say even animal and human.
All of this is forgotten by the mind, though does remain in the subtle body. We are a product of our past, so that is one indicator of where we’re coming from just recently, though nothing we have to show externally has anything to do with our original selves.
As this sinks in, it becomes easy to dis-identify with Tribe, nation, and any other superficial identification based on body and mind. That is just the shell. With real insight nationalism and all of that falls away. Even attachment to “name and fame”, status, compliment and criticism, it all becomes insignificant, and makes little difference. Those are ego references after all. With this realization, one no longer feels emotionally burdened by the slights of others, or overly elated by the compliments. This is clearly described in the Vedic Sanskrit texts:
यसम: शत्रौ च मित्रे च तथा मानापमानयो: ।
शीतोष्णसुखदु:खेषु सम: सङ्गविवर्जित: ॥ १८ ॥
तुल्यनिन्दास्तुतिर्मौनी सन्तुष्टो येन केनचित् ।
अनिकेत: स्थिरमतिर्भक्तिमान्मे प्रियो नर: ॥ १९ ॥
samaḥ śatrau ca mitre ca
tathā mānāpamānayoḥ
śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu
samaḥ saṅga-vivarjitaḥ
tulya-nindā-stutir maunī
santuṣṭo yena kenacit
aniketaḥ sthira-matir
bhaktimān me priyo naraḥ
“One who is equal to friends and enemies, who is equipoised in honor and dishonor, heat and cold, happiness and distress, fame and infamy, who is always free from contaminating association, always silent and satisfied with anything, who doesn’t care for any residence, who is fixed in knowledge and who is engaged in devotional service – such a person is very dear to Me.”
Bhagavad Gita as it is ch 12: 18-19 translated by Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta
When most of our problems are mental ones, based on subjective interpretations of reality, the wisdom of the yoga texts give us guidelines on what the symptoms are of one making progress on the path of enlightenment. Most of our problems are based on our over-identification with the body/mind and false ego. All of that becomes secondary and problems can evaporate as we dis-identify with the temporary and external persona.
Nationalism, tribalism, even religious or political or familial attachments are something we are born into and so naturally resonate with them or feel a sense of belonging, yet that very same attachment is what often brings us unnecessary distress. And the solution is knowledge, as this text mentions. We need to be fixed in knowledge of who we really are, what is the bigger picture and what is the objective reality of my situation.
Even if we do nothing else, our lives will be purified of so much unnecessary distress if we begin by dropping the mask, the illusory attachment to outer props of identity, and allow the real ego, the self, to be. Curiously it is then by letting go of the illusion that we find peace, “centeredness” and the real self that is there observing it all. Be yourself, and you will not be disappointed.