We are all controlled by our past conditioning. We have lived in a certain style and in certain conditions. We were taught and we practiced a certain way of life and religion. We carry the burden of these conditioning with us all our lives. Our past crises, our decisions and actions affect us in a negative way in the present now. The more negative mental conditioning we carry, the more negative circumstances we create in our lives, and more we suffer from lack of abundance which is our birthright. Our past mental conditioning remains with us consciously or subconsciously. Sometimes, our mind shuts down our past and we bury our past conditioning for sake of survival.
We grow up with strange beliefs: Worship of God must be done on Fridays/Sundays/Saturdays only; Germans are cruel; all Easterners are very pious; all Westerners are materialistic; all Jews are stingy; all Arabs are rich due to oil money etc. We have other peculiar conditionings which come from the circumstances of our lives – men are good/not good; women suffer and must overcome/ fight for their rights; meat is the best food and all vegetarians are rabbits who eat carrot, etc. We become easily programmed to believe in all sorts of rubbish. We do not investigate and see the truth for ourselves. We simply accept that the fault is with others and not us. Our conditioning helps us to survive in the situations that we are placed in life. But when we wish to rise higher or change ourselves, they are a stumbling block in our progress. We are unable to understand why we do not progress as we generally think what we do is right and that we are perfect. We tend to overlook our own faults and the ghosts of our past in order to survive and cope up with life. The only way we can overcome our mental conditioning is to face and examine them and see them for what they are. We must face the truth about ourselves- that we hid behind the ghosts of our past and we face and overcome them. This story of a man who remarried and was harassed by the ghost of his wife, gives us the secrets of freedom of overcoming our mental conditionings:
A man lost his wife. He loved her very much. As she lay dying, he promised her that he would remain true to her memory and never marry again. He remained true to his word but after some years met another woman with whom he fell in love with and married her. On his wedding night, the ghost of his dead wife appeared and stood next to him. He was shocked but kept quiet. The ghost was unable to take the man’s betrayal and used to visit him daily and recount the happenings between the man and his new wife. Unable to take it anymore, the man went to a Sage. The Sage remarked that the Ghost was very intelligent and when she appeared before him the next time, he should pick a handful of grains from a sack of rice and ask her to count the grains in his hand. When the ghost came that night, the man followed the Sage’s advice. He held out his hand full of grains and asked the ghost to tell how many were there. The ghost disappeared immediately and never returned again.
Our mental conditioning projects issues and problems and we are caught in them. The mind projects from the past and we see only what we are already aware of. For that loving husband, the ghost was a creation of the mind. Most of our problems in life are also a creation of our mind. Let us face our own ghosts of past and stop projecting them. Then our problems disappear. SitaRam Mantra Japa and meditation and following the teachings of the ParamGuru help us to break through the past mental conditioning. The divine vibrations of the mantra give energy and the will power to face our own past and ghosts and help us to let them go. The past memories are washed off and we are empowered by mantra to face the present and future with a new perspective, knowledge and wisdom.
