Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Acharya Prashant: See, the answer has to be multilayered. The first thing our friend said is that we should be aware of our strengths and weaknesses, which is all quite fine with a little caveat. Which is, that the very definition of strength or weakness is often quite weak, in the sense that it is a borrowed definition. One thing is that you are mistaken about yourself, because you don’t assess yourself at all. The other situation is that you do assess yourself, but on the parameters using the criteria provided by external forces: society, education, etc. The second situation is not far better than the first situation. There is a person, who is not self-conscious at all, does not assess or measure himself and there is another one, who is very particular about knowing his progress, his standing. But, how does he assess himself? By using the benchmarks, the criteria, the yardsticks, provided by others. Do you really want to assert that the second one is way better than the first one? Maybe marginally better. Marginally better, because he at least has the intention to know where he stands but there is no great difference, there is no dimensional difference. When you say, such is my strength, and this is the extent of my strength. How do you know that the thing you are talking about is your strength at all? Similarly, when you measure your weaknesses, how do you know that a particular thing is first of all a weakness? Measurements can come later. First thing is, what is it that you are measuring? Who told you, that it is a thing important enough to be measured and it is a thing that needs to be named as a strength or a weakness, a virtue or a vice? How?
Look around yourself, different cultures, different communities, different peoples; they all have different beliefs regarding what is valuable in life. If you have that, which they think of traditionally as valuable, they will call you a strong or a rich man. In certain cultures, for example, it is quite virtuous to be brash. If you are not brash you are a weakling. So, your brashness, your roughness, or rudeness has somehow become the criteria of your strength; one of the criteria at least. Now, obviously the thing is quite amusing. But there are millions, who are taking such a thing seriously. They are actively trying to wear the persona of a rough and tough individual. That is what their culture has taught them.
Similarly, you could belong to a circle, in which being diplomatic is a virtue. Is it really a virtue? Hmm? So, we have come to an important question now, how do we know our strengths? What do we call our weaknesses? How? The question essentially is, what is valuable in life? What is important? It’s a beautiful question. It was a question I grappled with as a teenager for many long years. Very simple question, “what is important?” Because, it would annoy me to do anything without being sure that the thing is important enough to be done.
Isn’t it quite wasteful to get involved in something, without being sure that the thing deserves your involvement? So, I used to remain unsure. Infact, that was one of the reasons why my academic results suffered a bit between my class 10th and class 12th. I did manage to get a good enough percentage; 90+ and all, I did manage to secure a seat in one of the IITs. But still my verve to prepare, my zeal to compete and beat had lost its edge. I was not as ferociously competitive as I used to be a couple of years earlier. Why? Because, I was feeling unsure from within. Is this really worth doing? And because I was feeling unsure, I was obviously not giving it everything I had. Some part of my energy was struggling with this question. And I am happy it did. So, to a young man like you, this question should be tremendously important: what is worth doing? And obviously, if you engage with this question, a part of your energy will be invested into this question and therefore will not be available to compete in the regular affairs of the world. It may look like a bit of a setback. But, it is worth it. Not only a young person, everybody at every point in life must be accountable to this question: Why are you doing it?
Starting a new business. Why exactly? Tell me. And don’t come up with your regular flimsy reasons. If you are getting into something, it is a serious investment of your life. I didn’t say money, I said life.
If you are getting into something, you are investing yourself into it and you are all that you have.
Getting it? You are all that you have. Everything else that you have is to you. Principally you have only yourself. How can you waste yourself on something you are not sure of? So keep asking.
New business. But why?
Shutting down a business. Why?
What do I want?
Starting a family, extending the family, shifting houses, changing jobs. Yes? These are things we all keep doing. But why?
You know, when you will ask these questions, you will have to come to the question, whose strength? Whose weakness? We want to know, whether a decision is good? You will have to examine, for whom? Right? Because, everything in your world is with you at the centre and we just forget it. There is no standard, but the individual in question. Is it good for you? Is it helping you? If it is helping you, it’s a strength. If it’s pulling you down, it’s a weakness. And what may help a person, may not help another person and what may help you today, may not help you tomorrow. So, it’s all very dynamic, very alive. You have to be super vigilant. Who am I at this moment? And once you know that, with rigor and honesty, then you know what is good for you. And what is good for you, can be called a strength. It's fine.
Who am I at this moment?
And don’t come up with easy and borrowed answers like, I am the great True self, pure Brahm, Atma, something. No. Are you? Does the Atma ever struggle with questions? Does the Atma ever have anything to do? Does the Atma ever have to make a decision? So obviously, if you are grappling with questions, you aren’t grappling as the Atman. You are somebody else in the moment. And the moment we say, you are somebody else ‘in the moment’ it becomes amply clear you are not the Atman. Because, the Atman has nothing to do with moments. It has nothing to do with time; It’s timeless. You are the one who changes every moment. And therefore, you have to know who you are in the particular moment? Are we together on this?
So look at yourself, with your own honest eyes of observation. Don’t need to be dependent on somebody else, to tell you what is right and what is wrong. Don’t just blindly follow the social benchmarks. Are you getting it?
There are, I know a lot of people strutting around, brandishing themselves as strong. Leave them to their fate. Be an individual. You don’t need to be influenced by anybody, including yourself. You might have held a few beliefs, till this point in life, you need not become a hostage to your own beliefs.
Just as you are not obliged to follow others beliefs, you are also not obliged to follow your own beliefs. Your only obligation, really is, towards your own welfare. Is that too hard to see? You are not obliged towards your past. You are obliged towards the wellness of…
Questioner: Your own self.
Acharya Prashant: You are not obliged to honour your past. You are not obliged to justify your past. You are not obliged to say, “Whatever I did in the past was great and hence, I am a great man.” No, Your past does not make you a great man. If repudiating or rejecting your past can bring you joy in the present, why not? Tell me, please; your own past. If, acknowledging that you have been mistaken all the while, can bring you freedom from all those mistakes right now. Why not acknowledge? Are you living right now in the past? So, how are you accountable to the past? Even if it’s your own. Please understand this, because this is what we all do. I have done this so often, so I know we all do this.
You are not supposed to justify anything done ever, by anybody including yourself, no. Your only concern is this moment, in which you are alive. All the pain that you feel, even if you say it's related to the past, is being experienced right now. Therefore, you can give up everything for the sake of the present. This is all that you have. All that you have.
So, let’s say, you are 25 or 28 now and you have been lionised as a strong person by your schoolmates, by your college mates, by family members, and by those who have worked with you, colleagues, co-workers, for some quality that you have, and that quality has become now a part of your self-concept, your self-image. You cannot think of yourself without that quality. You are known in your circles by that quality. Right?
“Hey that fellow, he is the heart of the party”.
“Hey that one, He never weeps.”
“And that one, if you want help, if you want money you can go to him.”
“That one, he remains very serious about life.”
“That one, oh! He is never serious about life.”
These things become our brand statements, don’t they? We get branded like this. Correct? And that brings us a certain identity, that brings us a sense of recognition. I am known to be like this or that. And we find it difficult to give all that up. You have been known to be an upholder of a certain type of culture all this while, you have known to be religious in a particular way all these years and you discover that the kind of religion you were practicing, was all nonsense. At the same time, there is a lot of respect you are drawing from a lot of people because of the religious image that you carry, it becomes difficult now to give up that image. What do you do then? We become pretenders and Hypocrites. Because that image is benefitting us, we carry it in public. Whereas, internally we fully well know that we are not what others know us to be.
Does this touch upon the vulnerabilities part, we talked of? If I reveal who I am then I become vulnerable to others and all that. It’s a very small price to pay. Because, if you will carry a mask, a facade, then you will live the life of an imposter, that’s a far bigger price to pay. Is it not? All the time, you have to worry about what others are thinking of you. You cannot allow your inner truth to be expressed, because it won’t fetch you rewards. So, you have to be careful always to carry the right expression, the right demeanour. Isn’t that taxing upon the mind? To be alert in this kind of a false way, like a thief. A thief is supposed to keep alert, and the thief’s alertness is not the alertness of the sage. The thief’s alertness, I am sure, tires him down. The sage’s alertness keeps him energised and awake. The sage is alert, that his insides must never get polluted, that no falseness must ever permeate inside. That’s the alertness of the sage. And the thief is alert that all the falseness that he is carrying should not get shown up, should not get caught. There is a great difference between the two.
The sage is alert against the falseness; the thief is alert for the sake of falseness. Most of us are alert like the thief and therefore there is no vitality, no trueness, and no creativity, no spontaneity in our lives. How can you be spontaneous, if everything has to be the result of careful thought? Cannot afford to be spontaneous, you might get exposed. So, what do you do? You think twice before speaking. And, that is often taken as a strength. Aren’t we supposed to respect people who are considerate with their words and actions? Originally, that might have meant something, but today when you see people being ponderous and reflective and considerate, what does it usually mean? The fellow is measuring profit and loss. Before he opens up, he wants to be sure that his words would fetch him the right returns, therefore, the fellow does get nervous and jittery when he has to be spontaneous and unprepared. Ask him for an impromptu reply to anything, and he will come up with “I will get back to you.” No, why can’t you say right now, what you have to? Why will you get back to me?
“I’ll think this over.” What’s there in it to think over?
“I’ll sleep over it.”
“I’ll chew it.”
But, I’ll never be forthright. It’s not because the fellow is actually very reflective. It is because the fellow is actually very afraid. See, I am not saying, if you are presented with a mathematics problem, you must spontaneously come up with any kind of answer. That kind of a problem does require time, to be addressed by a process. But, there are certain things in life that just don’t require time. In fact, if you put time in them, then the process of diagnosis and answering gets polluted, you must be spontaneous there. What will happen if you continue to live as per others' evaluation of you? After a while, you will not even remember that you are being fake.
This fakeness, will become the person that you would be. You would start feeling annoyed, if somebody says, you are fake. You will say, “but I am not fake.” Like the thief, convincing himself every day that he is not a thief, and a point comes when he actually starts believing that he is not a thief. Now if someone confronts him, he stands up very righteously and says, “but, why must I answer your questions? Why must I investigate into myself, as you suggest? I am not a thief, and it is humiliating to be subjected to such interrogation. I am good, as I am.” It’s a very dangerous situation to come to. When you begin, you know you are being fake. Therefore, at least you carry a sense of guilt and that sense of guilt is your hope. It tells you that you are indulging in something you are not. Therefore, there is the possibility of correction. You know, you are doing something that will not help you. You know, you are doing something just out of fear, that’s all right. But soon you come to a point as we said, where you just forget you are being fake, the mask gets riveted to your face. You can no longer peel it off and if you have to peel it off, it takes a lot of effort and involves a lot of pain.
So, your memory plays a trick with you, you totally de-memorize that you wore a mask. You delete it from your mind. You start calling the mask as your face. And that saves you a lot of pain. Because, if you continue to remember that it’s a mask you are wearing, the threat of the pain associated with taking off the mask will keep haunting you. You will know it’s a mask you are wearing, therefore, you may require to peel it off one day. This kind of a threat will continuously be there. How to eradicate this threat? Just forget that you ever wore a mask.
I don’t know whether the situation is still retrievable, I don’t know whether you still remember, how the mask came upon you? Because, the mask is not one thing, the mask is not one layer. It’s a series of layers, one upon the other, one organically growing upon the other. Most of us just forget. What else is this body identification, mind identification, name identification, gender identification? What else is this? Where do all these identifications come from? We address them in core spirituality. Don’t we?
Firstly, where do they come from? They come from this. You wear something, you dawn something, you borrow something, and then you find it convenient to forget that the thing has to be returned. And it’s not a slip. As we said, we have a stake in forgetting, in de-memorizing. You borrow something from somebody, don’t you have a stake in forgetting that you borrowed something? Just as he has a stake, in continuously remembering that, the money has been lended. No? There is a lender, there is the borrower. Who is more likely to forget the transaction?
Questioner: The borrower.
Acharya Prashant: Now, why does that happen? Tell me. If memory is to be blamed, then, even the lender has memory, why doesn’t the lender ever forget? So, it’s not about memory. It’s about something hidden deep within us, it’s our deep intention that we don’t even know of. It’s a very dangerous thing, we have multiple layers of intentions. There is that intention that sits on the surface and we talk of. For example,” oh! I want good things to happen to you”, that’s my professed intention, that’s my superficial intention. But, internally I carry other intentions and they are very dark and vicious, and we don’t know of those intentions. Therefore, though we may keep saying that, “I want good things to happen to you” I’ll invariably end up doing harm to you. And it’s not a coincidence. Though I may express regret saying, “oh! You know, I just wanted to bring good to you, but coincidentally harm came”. It was not a coincidence.
