Should we care so much about what others think of us? Should we compare ourselves with others all the time?

Being a conformist can sometimes be so painful. In fact the more you grow older, the more you think whether it was a waste of time doing what pleased others! To compound the things, being a conformist would soon lead to a situation where one compares and assesses oneself with all other conformists. This is a vicious cycle, and it has the potential to devour all of one's life.

For me, it was, and is, the root cause of all the anxiety, envy, and unhappiness. The problem at minimum was two-fold. First, you end up with having a very little or no time to do things for your own self. And secondly, the resistance, that comes to surface each time you did something to please, exclusively, the other, accumulates, and becomes a pain-body - a term I read in Eckhart Tolle's "The power of Now." This pain-body can do monstrous harm to the psyche. Not only it invokes envy, but it can transmute one's personality in such a way that you actually begin to enjoy misfortunes of the ones you envy.

The root cause of the problem lies in the fact that we really do not believe either in our uniqueness, or to the notion that all the human beings are essentially part of the same consciousness. Believing in any one of these premises could have solved the problem outright.

But how can we believe in such ideologies, when we clearly feel the pain of not having the big penthouse that the fat boss has? How on earth am I supposed not to lose my sleep, when the guy next door is having a live-in relationship with a babe that I fantasize about, and I am forced to share my apartment with my mother-in-law?

The trick, probably (yes probably, since I am still experimenting), is to understand the solution in whole, and not in piecemeal - as we are more inclined to do. The trouble with most of us is that we do not want to take a plunge, when it comes to spirituality, or whatever you call it - the art of making life easy and wonderful. We nod in agreement, when somebody brings our attention to the fact that all this is Maya - the illusion, and there is no end to it. But, two hours later we pray for a salary raise. Half an hour later we fret over the fact that we are still living with our mother-in-law, and the guy next door is having a great time.

The nature, broadly, can be understood in two macro theories. The one at sub-atomic level tells us that we all are made of exactly the same sub-particles, call them quarks, strings or whatever pleases you. The other theory explains that for the universe to function the way it is, there has to be a single and universal flow of knowledge, or consciousness.

So, materialistically and otherwise, we are the sum-total of these particles, and this consciousness. We are actually made of the stuff that only dreams are made of!

To elaborate more, the knowledge preserved in a seed that one day it will have a metamorphosis, and will grow into a tree, has the same source as the knowledge preserved in the earth to rotate around the sun so that we keep on having seasons at regular intervals. These pools of knowledge act in unison, and very little is left for experimentation or free will. So, its more like that the knowledge or the consciousness is manifesting itself in those two forms in order to enjoy or explore itself. The seed, the cloud, and the earth are notional, interchangeable, and ephemeral at material level. The encompassing knowledge or the consciousness within them is more real, and long-lasting.


Perhaps, in a similar sense, the babe about which you and I fantasize, is notional, but the knowledge and the corollary power given to the human reproductive system to govern a grown up man in order to continue to procreate is more underlying and essential here. The sperm will have its way, all the times. It doesn't need a work instruction to tell it what to do. It will make changes in you, and you will be the hapless victim, unless you realize that actually you and the babe is nothing but manifestation of the same whole, which is playing with itself.

Exploring it further, and associating the probabilities that are associated with quantum mechanics, we could make an attempt to take the myriad form of emotions, and forms as random manifestation of nature. Nature, which could be said to have two parts in it, the material form - made out of sub-particles, and the consciousness, or the life or knowledge within forms - made out of the single consciousness that pervades, and encapsulates the known universe, and may be beyond.

Now, going back to the original question, what is the essence of our assessment in the eyes of the other? What exactly is happening when one is comparing oneself against the other, and deriving pain or pleasure. If the above reasoning is closer to truth, then comparison, envy, and anxiety is nothing but a big cosmic joke, played by the One on the One.