Some myths and perceptions

Listen to your inner voice while making decisions

It is often said and written in many books that if you are confused in making decision, listen to your inner voice or heart to make right decisions.  Now one has to analyze that what is actually an inner voice means. While we are growing up, we are normally conditioned by parents, teachers, gurus or by culture or even by genes about the morality of decisions. It is a constant conditioning which creates  belief system in our brains. These beliefs are normally morally good. Now these belief system keep haunting us when we do opposite things.  If we stop and try to think what to do, normally we try to go back to our old beliefs and treat them as inner voices.   We think that we are taking decisions from our heart but actually we are still taking decisions from our mind based on some old conditioned belief system.

I have a free will

freedom is the quite misunderstood word. We think that we are acting freely but mostly we are  influenced by other people.   Even if it is possible to think freely, still one can never escape from its own thoughts or cannot think beyond his thoughts. So, In a way we are bind by our own thoughts. A suicide bomber thinks that he is acting on his own will, but for others his thoughts are controlled by some group leader.  It is difficult not to stick to any idea firmly and to be totally flexible. But in real sense that may be a  free will. In this case, you are even free from your own belief systems.

I am a self made and independent man

Some people claim that they are self made. They have achieved on their own. This cannot be true as normally our achievements are based on connections or may be out of chance or luck. In modern times, when we pay for bottle of water,   we think that we are buying water. Actually we are only paying for packaging and transportation cost.  We depend on nature to produce water and hence cannot create it at any cost.  It is not possible to live on our own for few seconds without air.  A person might have done lots of hard work  to achieve something. But still to be successful, he must have been helped by lots of people.

You are responsible for your actions

It is a good idea to be responsible for our own actions otherwise we keep blaming others for our failures. But before blaming others about their actions, it is important to analyze first. Why some people are lazy and some are active ? Why one person believes in doing right thing and other enjoys doing wrong ?  why one gets motivated and others don’t find any motivation from same things ? who is responsible for these thoughts ? Is it a nature or nurture ?  In any case, it looks like that a person himself does not have control on himself. So how he can be responsible for his attitude.

Only Good or enlightened person will be saved by God

In some religions, it is believed that on a dooms day only good people will be saved and others will die or go to hell. But there are no absolute good or bad person. people only have degrees of goodness. Now what will happen to person who has done some goodness in his life. Whether he will be saved or left in between somewhere ? Enlightenment is a process and takes years to achieve. If a person is  in a process and very near to enlightenment but dies (may be accident or natural death), what he will be considered as ? What if Buddha died few days earlier before achieving enlightenment. Religion or spirituality tends to think in black and white whereas life is full of shades.

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