Why do we get into conflicts?

Our intellect and our mind, our mind here means our emotions, don’t match. Though intellectually we find there is compatibility in a relationship, emotions don’t match, then everything falls apart. Sometimes emotionally we are very much attracted to people but then the intellect says this is not OK then also there is always a conflict. So, while intellect creates conflicts and emotions end up in conflicts, it is the ego that is suffering. We are emotionally attached to somebody but intellectually we are not getting the same thinking.

Innocent people express it very naturally because they do not have any barriers. But in an intellectual person the mind comes up, says this or that, puts forth judgments, starts doubting one’s own experience. A simpleton does not doubt his or her own experience, but an intellectual does.

A mature intellect brings forth devotion and the link for that is awe. A mature intellect always is in awe of creation. When there is something unfathomable, something so vast, something that is incomprehensible, there the intellect gives up, saying wow! And at that moment something happens and that something is what everyone is looking for all their life and that is devotion, that is bhakti.

There was a saying in the Gurukuls in ancient times on how we have to be with a Guru. Chayavath vase gurusanidav. It said, be like a shadow in Guru’s presence. We don’t have to ascertain ourselves. I am somebody, we please notice me, give me attention, no. Chayavath, like a shadow. When the light is behind, the shadow is in the front. When there is light ahead, the shadow can never be in the front. If we are turning away from the light only then the shadow looks big and it’s in front of us. If we are facing the light, the shadow is always behind. So, on the path be like a shadow.

Why do we have to be like a shadow of the Masters? So that we can tune ourselves with what the Master wants, what the teacher wants. This was training in ancient days and that’s how we move into knowledge. We become that what we aspire. What obstructs love to manifest is the limited constrained intellect !!!!!

By Col. Prakash Tewari

Photography by: Bibhor Mohapatra, Cuttack