Liberation from comparison - like just waking up
by Kelly T. Haysley
Author and Founder of Lift With Your Soul
Copyright 2015
Physician
and author, Deepak Chopra wrote:
“When we wake up in the morning
there is a second of pure awareness before the old conditioning automatically
falls into place; at that moment you are just yourself, not happy or sad, not
important or humble, not old or young ….. All other reference points are bound
by change, decay, and loss; every other sense of “me” is identified with pain
or pleasure, poverty or wealth, happiness or sadness, youth or old age – every
time-bound condition that the relative world imposes.”
Wow. Just
think about this for a moment. It is very true. We are not born loving or
hating ourselves. We are not born approving or disapproving of others. Basically, every emotion we feel, opinion we
form, interpretation of events and judgment of ourselves or others has been
learned by the conditioning of just living among other people; mostly through
comparisons. Not much that happens in our
minds is from just pure self-awareness
but rather from our awareness of how we compare to others or how they compare to
us.
If you can, close
your eyes and imagine you live on this planet alone. You’ve always been alone, without any other
person to look at or to look back at you.
Would you worry about being rich or poor, tall or short, over-weight or
thin, brown skinned or beige skinned, olive skinned, or pale skinned? Would you worry about which religion you
practice? No. None of it would matter because there is no
one there to form an opinion on it – any of it – and there has never been
anyone to share their opinions with you – to teach and influence you.
We covet all
the things we want whether they be attributes, talents, relationships or
material things, mostly for the purpose of satisfying others or what others
have taught us to be important. This influence is perhaps the strongest, coming
from our close groups and family. You can argue that you live based on your own
free will, and you are not influenced by others. You may be telling the truth
to yourself in some instances, but admit it, it’s not 100% the truth. You have been influenced by the world around
you in your ideas of what “it” is that you need, therefore desire, or what “it”
is that is correct or incorrect in others and their lives.
Negative
thinking stems from all of this. We are
always comparing ourselves to others and others to ourselves. We either approve or disapprove, based on
numerous categories, then we either accept or decline them as a person we’d
like to engage with. It always starts
with how we view ourselves – what we view to be correct, incorrect or what
needs improvement.
Theodore
Roosevelt is credited with saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy”. We humans are the culprit of our own
dissatisfaction and anger towards ourselves and others. We become discontented with ourselves, when
we begin to compare ourselves to others, whether it be their physique, their
relationships, their family, their home, their income, their job or their
lifestyle. Is he in better shape than me?
Does she make more money than me?
I wish I could travel like he does.
They seem to have a perfect relationship. Why can’t I be happy like that? Why did he get promoted and not me?
We become
hateful at heart when we begin to compare others to ourselves – how are the
like us or how are they not like us. Do
we think they dress properly? Are they
practicing the correct religion? Do they
work hard enough? Are they lazy? Should he or she put down that burger and go
to the gym? Have they know each other
long enough to be getting married? Is he
just an educated yuppie who doesn’t know what it means to struggle in life? These examples could go on for pages. You get the point. EVERYTHING
we observe or hear about another person is put under our socialized microscope
for examination – then placed before the judge in our mind.
Comparison
is not only the thief of joy but the mother of discontent and the father of
judgement. It is the catalyst for
anxiety and depression. Would you feel like a failure if there was no one to
compare yourself to?
I think of
those first moments that Dr.Chopra described, when we awake each day as the
moment of “pure awareness”, to be when our minds are most likely to resemble
that of a child. Before we are fully awake, still drifting from sleep into
alertness, we are not thinking of responsibilities, schedules, politics,
religion, income, bills, weight loss, fashion, the haves or the have-nots, we are just us –
you are just you – and that’s all you know in that brief moment – before the
expectations of the world reboot in your mind.
Remember, we
are not born knowing how to compare ourselves to others or how to measure
others by our own ideals. We are taught
to see others as either like us or not like us, and therefore they are right or
wrong. Much of the time – we are all
wrong. We are wrong in our harsh
judgment of ourselves, and our quick judgments of others. We judge because we are judged; we’ve learned
it without even trying to learn it. We
often try to head off judgment from others by beating them to the gavel. It does no good for anyone.
The insecurity
we have that drives us to impress others, is the same condemnatory attitude we
use to look at others. We hate it and
feed on it all at once. Quite a waste of
good mental energy, don’t you think? We should, live life to be content for
ourselves and our families – not for
“fitting the mold” of what we think others expect.
Look at
others with this same expectation: allow them to be them, whatever that is, and
not what you think they should be. Break
that habit of judging yourself by others and others to yourself. It is a habit; a learned, nasty habit. It can
be broken with daily work and by being mindful, forgiving, and tolerant -all starting with accepting yourself – in your
purest form, like when you just wake up.
Lift With
Your Soul
Copyright
2015, by Kelly T.Haysley
Visit www.facebook.com/LiftWithYourSoul to join our positive community.
Reference:
Chopra,
Deepak. Ageless Body,
Timeless Mind. New
York: Harmony Books, 1993. Print.
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