GAP BETWEEN THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS

We do not spare others if we find much difference between their words and actions, but have we ever noticed how the gap between our thoughts and actions goes on widening? When we are young we act the way we think, but when we find that the world we live in does not accept our ways we modify our actions. While it is true that we learn to modify our conduct so as not the harm the world around, it is also true that we modify our actions to serve our selfish interests. The process goes on and on and we become more and more experienced with the ‘worldly ways’.

We hardly notice as to when exactly our natural human concerns and activities become stereotyped conditioned defensive responses comprising of actions that serve us individually with the least concern for others who also live just as we do. We start acting differently from what could have naturally occurred in our minds so often that our actions thoroughly influence our thoughts, and we gradually become a different man from what we could have naturally become.  Some say, we become conditioned; some say, we evolve our personal philosophy to live by; but, we hardly accept that unwillingly and unknowingly, we become men with stunted human growth, ever redefining virtues according to our compulsions and conveniences. We formulate and religiously practice rituals to convince us that we are human beings with our intellect aligned to a virtuous life.

We believe in a God whose only job is to grant us something or the other, and, ‘restore’ our humanity from time to time, by pardoning us, considering it as His sacred duty, whenever we deviate from the path of virtue as defined and practiced by us. We cleverly keep ourselves distanced from the question, whether our God is the God? We also do not question us if our thoughts are the thoughts that maintain and sustain this universe.

If we have no idea as to the extent of the gap that exists between our thoughts and actions, how could we know the extent of the gap between ‘the thoughts’ that are founded on truth and our actions? The scriptures talk about the illusory world and the truth. To understand what the scriptures say, we have to first work on the illusions we have created with the help of our unbridled intellect about the ‘illusory world’ as envisaged by the scriptures. The gap between ‘the thoughts’ and our actions are widening at an exponential rate and we are not even reasonably aware of the problem we face.

PROMOD KUMAR SHARMA

[The writer of this blog is also the author of “Mahatma A Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious” and “In Search of Our Wonderful Words”.]