09 Feb Beyond likes and dislikes
In the last blog we looked at the three stages we pass through when meditating. The first of these was that we start to identify less with our body. We see our body as being like a horse we ride around on. If the horse is not trained it goes where it wants and takes us with it. We try to go left but the horse wants to go right so we end up going right. We want to lose weight but our body loves cakes and biscuits. We want to be fit and energetic but our body wants to lie around. At times all of us feel restrained by our rigid likes and dislikes. They determine the food we eat, the people we spend our time with, the books, films and television programs we read and watch.
Many of our likes and dislikes date back to our origins as hunter-gatherers. At that time our likes and dislikes were well suited to the environment we lived in. Today for many of us the environment we live in is vastly different from that of a hunter-gatherer. We like high calorie food which would in the past be hard to come by but now is all around us and in concentrated processed forms. Many of us dislike moving around or physical exertion and in our high-tech world most of us hardly need to move. There are all kinds of machines that do our work for us, washing machines, blenders, electric saws, lifts, escalators, cars, motorbikes and hundreds more. Our likes and dislikes now often work against us. We start to find that what we want and what our body wants are often at odds with each other. We then need ways to train our body and bring it under our control in the same way we would try to tame and train a horse we intended to ride on.
The Gita calls on us to free ourselves from this conditioning and for us to learn to change our likes and dislikes freely both for our own benefit and for the benefit of those around us. The Gita states “The senses have been conditioned by attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant. Do not be ruled by them; they are obstacles in your path.”
Meditation helps to give us insight into who we are and how we work as well as a method to change ourselves along with the mental strength to do it. We can then say no when our bodies are urging us to indulge in something that is not good for our body or mind. Once a day we can all take the insights and mental strength we gain from meditation and use them to do something we dislike or fear. We can put our prejudices to one side and try food we think we don’t like or we can try fasting. We can spend time with people with find difficult, listen to opinions and read books that disagree with our cherished beliefs. We can practice maintaining our concentration and focus while doing tasks we consider boring.
In time more of the world will open up to us. Our comfort zones will grow along with our confidence. We will be able to get on with most people and by being freed from our own aversions we will be more kind, caring and empathic. Ultimately in the words of the Gita “…when you can move amidst the world of sense, free from both attachment and aversion, there comes the peace in which all sorrows end..”
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