To know what is good for you, you must first know yourself || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant (AP): How can anybody prioritize anything over the other? To know whether one thing is more important than the other, you have to know whether one thing is more important for you than the other. Are you getting it? If I am feeling cold then the hot beverage becomes important whereas if it is all hot and humid and I am sweating, then I will want to sip something cold.
What is good or important for me at any moment depends on my need, my requirement. But what if I am totally out of touch with myself. What if I do not know at all what my inner condition is. Then how will I prioritize? How will I be able to make any decision at all? That’s the situation of most people.
We have very little self-awareness. Fearlessly and honestly, we rarely observe ourselves we rarely spend time with ourselves and ask ourselves pointed questions. Therefore, we do not know what the inner situation is like. And the inner situation is definitely not good. Inwardly we all require healing, treatment, completion, a lot of stuff is needed in the inward sense.
So, there is a yelling demand within for something specific. But we are totally deaf to that demand, why? Because the ears are all tuned to the external world. Therefore, they are unable to hear anything of the inside. So, we do not know what we need. Therefore when it comes to deciding between work and leisure, work and family, saving vs spending, we have no clue what to do. Then how do we decide? We decide either randomly or just follow the footsteps of the mob or we let the vagaries of the situation decide for us.
Decision making is such a problem with most people. Whereas decision making should not be needed at all. One should not be required to make a choice at all. Clarity makes the entire process of making a choice very redundant. If you know who you are and what you want, if you have that clarity why will you require to spend time thinking about the choice to make?
If you are someone who remains confused in the hour of the choice, then you should know that the confusion is not about that choice in particular, the confusion is arising due to an inner darkness. You say you do not know how to prioritize between the work and your family. But what is it that you want in life? What’s your situation like? What’s your inner incompleteness all about? What is the direction you must proceed in, if proceeding in that direction requires you to work and work hard, then obviously you will work.
Whereas if your chief inner angst pertains to relationships or love, then it should be clear to you that you have to rather spend time with a few related persons, at least for a certain period.
