The bitter taste of breaking your conditioning.

At some point in life you start to realize, your mind has been conditioned by environment, family, friends, and you can not see things clearly. Take a look around you, an egoistic person can not see his ego, an aggressive person is blind about his aggression and all their life is spent in balancing their position. All their thoughts, energy and attention is sucked into proving their existential position. I wonder what kind of blind spots I have !! This conditioning is what hold us from living life wholeheartedly.

Probably the way I was raised or educated ( I find this common across many middle class indian people ). I have conditioned in a way that I am very compliant. I am the guy who quickly change his point of view to not hurt other peoples feeling. I am the guy who blushes when somebody insulted me. I am the guy who hesitate while expressing myself.

So now you know your conditioning, just don’t do it. Oh you wish it could be that easy. Mind is a powerful and deceiving organ, even if you know and aware of your conditioning while in the situation ( which in itself is a big feat ), suggestions of mind with overwhelming feeling, intuitions, or emotion will make you do the old familiar action ( comply ) and then you will justify what you did was the right thing, to make yourself feel good.

There is only one way to change your conditioning. Only one. Acknowledge it and take the emotional pain. This emotional stinging is what the change of conditioning feel like, and let me tell you upfront, it would be one of the worst kind of feeling you can have. And this is what makes people like me to run away from the change and go back to read more books, attend more classes. The more you are attached to your ego, more intense the feeling would be. But if you take this emotional pain. The next time or after few times, when you get into the same situation, you will have a different intuition or suggestions from the mind and probably a smile on your face.