Mechanical Living & Awakening
by Atman Nityananda / blog gr
The majority of people live their lives identified with the programmed, stereotypical reactions of the lower mind. Over the years, there is no room left for anything new.
They endlessly repeat the same psychological states (emotions, thoughts, ideas, beliefs) and the same or similar external events and behaviors.
Human beings of habit, impulses, and programmed mechanical reactions.
To every stimulus, there is a predetermined mechanical response based on the mind’s programming from past experiences.
Emotions, thoughts, words, and behaviors arise and unfold with the press of a button. The button could be an image, a person, a sound, a word, a smell, a situation, a place, etc.
It never occurs to them that they are dreaming while awake, that what they consider to be themselves is nothing more than a set of habits with which they are fully identified.
“Who are you?” they ask. “John/Maria,” you reply. “
Where are you from?” “From Piraeus.”
You fully identify with the body that was born at some point and was given the name John—or whatever else the priest of the parish decided to call it.
Gradually, you identify with everything recorded in your subconscious from the day you were born. Even though all these are conditioned behaviors and learned patterns, you consider them your own.
Thus, you become a Piraeus native, a Greek, a Christian, an Olympiacos fan. You acquire various habits, mechanical reactions, likes, dislikes, beliefs, and ideas about yourself, all based on what your parents, relatives, friends, and teachers told you, as well as the automated reactions of the mind that you never examined to see if they were true.
This is, more or less, the life of the majority. Yet they firmly believe that what they feel, think, and do are genuinely their own perceptions and that their choices are truly theirs. It never crosses their mind that their so-called free choices are simply expressions of the mind’s programming.
As long as there is identification with the lower (rajasic-tamasic) mind and ego, there is no freedom of choice in what we feel, think, do, or decide. The mind reacts based on its programming, and we mistakenly believe that these reactions were our own choices.
We need to disidentify from the lower mind, its impulses, and its mechanical emotional and mental reactions to stop being machines. We need to develop conscious attention, detachment, and discernment, and connect with the truth within us (Consciousness, Atman, Spirit).
Only when we become aware that what we think, believe, and feel is not who we are—that they operate out of habit within us—will we have taken the first essential step toward freeing ourselves from the illusion of ego, ownership, and mechanical living.
The ‘secret’ to a plentiful life, a life of harmony, happiness and contentment is to have a sattvic mind free from desires and ego and to live in every moment in conscious contact with our true Self (Consciousness).
🌺 Peace, Love, Harmony
atmannityanada 