Questioner: I am at a stage in my life, where I lack passion in everything. Be it my intimate relationships with my loved ones, or be it my career, I feel numb. It is like life has become a movie or a moving painting, and I am a detached viewer. I want to get my sensitivity back. What can be done about it?
Acharya Prashant: You have already done a lot. That is why you probably feel a little numb. And this numbness, you are also calling as detachment.
Detachment is not numbness, detachment is not aloofness, and detachment is not insensitivity.
Have you seen that if there is a cut, a wound on the skin, soon the new skin there comes a little hard? And the deeper the cut or the wound, the harder is the scar. Have you seen it?
That is one effect of having been engaged in battle. It doesn’t matter whether you emerge victorious or defeated. What is certain is that you will emerge with a lot of scars – mental scars. The body and the mind are alike in this sense. Once they get wounded somewhere, there, they develop a certain hardness. Hardness as a defense, as an armor. So that they are not hurt again at the same spot.
Are you getting this?
That is the defense, the survival mechanism of the body-mind apparatus. That is what the body-mind does. But you understand the body-mind, you know how they function. When you know how they function, you drop out of their need for self-preservation. Then you say that 'I do not need the defense, the support of an armor.'
Yes, I was embattled. Yes, I got wounds, I got hurt. But far worse than those wounds, would be these scars. The wounds, mind you, get healed. The scars never get healed. The wounds go away, but they leave behind almost permanent scars. One must know, that the scars are worse than the wounds. And the scars exist in defense against the wounds.
You must say, “I am prepared to take more wounds, but far worse are these scars. I do not want them. Kindly take this defense away. I do not need them. I got hurt ten times, I am prepared to get hurt the eleventh time. But I am not prepared to now become numb, to now lack in love, lack in sensitivity, lack in trust.” And it often happens that if you have been betrayed ten times, you find it extremely difficult to trust the eleventh time.
Once I had said that getting betrayed ten times is no big deal, but the eleventh time when you decide that you cannot trust – that is bad and big. Now, the ones who were hurting you, have actually dominated you. Because they have changed something very deep in you. You have become incapable of loving and trusting. Your armor has become a part of your being. You have become heavy. You have become protected. You have given up your vulnerability.
But the scars will come. If a person has cheated you, you will feel like avoiding. Respect those feelings. Respect those feelings and don’t mind them. The feelings are there for a definite bodily purpose. If somebody has betrayed you, cheated you, then he may become a fatal enemy also. The body does not want that to happen. The body is interested in its own continuation. So, the body will say, “No, don’t go near him. He may harm you.” Listen to the body, for sure, listen to the body. The body is not an idiot. When the mind suggests you something on the basis of its past, experiences, expectations, knowledge, all that, listen to the mind.
But do know how the mind operates. Do know that the mind knows only patterns. That whatever the mind is suggesting for the future is indeed coming from the past. And the future, need not be a mere continuation of the past. There can be a discontinuity in between. It is not necessary that the pattern that has been continuing keeps continuing. That if you have been cheated ten times, you will be cheated eleventh time also. In between, there is something else possible. That something else, we have discussed a little earlier this day, that is called?
Q: Chamatkaar. (Magic)
AP: That is called Magic. Or Grace. Call it whatever you want to. Do not totally discount that. It happens, it actually happens. And it is prepared to happen, the moment you say, 'I am not discounting it', it happens. And it is not a rarity. If you are open to it, it happens unexpectedly. Almost always.
You have not lost anything if you have been bleeding. But you have lost much if you can no longer bleed.
Do you know what it means to be no longer be able to bleed?
You are gone.
Pray that you continue to bleed. We become so afraid of bleeding that we prefer to die. Why bleed so much?
