Body, Mind, Spirit Magazine

In Search of a Different Network

By Ryanshelton7 @LivingVipassana

Does not this society belong to us as much as we belong to it? This me, whom I know as myself, is hugely indebt to the education I got, the books that I have been reading, the music I have been listening to and the people I interact with. One learns how to react to a specific situation and that earns a certain kind of collective validation, even in the form of rejection, from the society. This shield of validation is crucial to take the next step. One is inside the chain reaction of stimulus-response. It keeps us going.

As the nascent practitioner in me  unlearning and undoing few of the very basic lessons in social-personal interface, I feel like a ‘non-happening’ person. The stimulus comes and when left unattended by the faculty of cognition, it becomes mundane. However boring it may looks, I feel lighter.

But in the microcosm of our social universe, disregarding the compass of others validation has one apparent downside, too. Most of us can’t leave our societal context behind and retire in a monastic life. Then what would motivate us to achieve the goal that has been fixed in our mind in terms of personal responsibilities?

To thrive as an altruistic communal entity I am in search of a new web weaved with different causal threads and looking for the answer through my daily practice. It’s a path with no easy side track to take. Nevertheless the very lightness that I am experiencing through this ‘asocial’ living tells me the path is worth-exploring.


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