Have you ever wondered why you have preferences? Or let’s just put it the crude way – why do you dislike someone or something? What inside you is causing this bias?

a. Is it your unrelenting necessity to lead a socially acceptable life? Some of you won’t understand the previous sentence, so let me explain – a socially acceptable life is a life run inside rules which were created thousands of years ago by people who –
1. Refused their connection to their soul
2. Were put into power by people who refused to introspect and self learn
3. Preferred binding people into rules/laws so they can be easily monitored, ruled and subsequently punished for transgressions

b. Or is it your conditioning? For those who don’t understand conditioning, let me explain. Conditioning is how you’ve been brought up as a child – parents, schools, friends – and how you’ve absorbed values and created practices when you were young and naive and didn’t even know if you should question the values and practices that you were imbibing. Now that you are adults, probably with your own families and kids, do you question your conditioning? Have you found your own values?

c. Or has your past experience with that someone/something built a boundary that you refuse to look past. We are often influenced by the hindi proverb – “Doodh ka jala chhaach bhi foonk ke peeta hai”. I once had a nail pierce through my rubber slipper, right into my foot while I was playing one afternoon – about 2.5 inches deep. I remember how when I pulled the rusted nail out, it was shining like a brand new nail which meant all that rust was inside my body. It was horrifying with blood everywhere on the floor inside my house, my mother panicking, rushing me to hospital. But did that stop me from ever playing again? No. I was a child and I had to play. But as I grew, I remembered the experience and learnt from it and watched my step from then on.

Experience makes you wise. Experience everything. If the voice inside your head rejects something at the first instance, never forget to question why you’re rejecting it. Ask yourself if it is coming from your past experience or some silly YouTube video that makes you cringe or your conditioning or your inability to look past the societal veil of safety? I know I’m learning to hear that voice inside my head and recognize it for what it is – my ego or my soul.

P. S. – And you get the drift when I say all this about experiencing that I’m not asking people to sit on a beehive or put their hands inside a hole where snakes live or anything that makes them put their life on the line. These are dangerous and shouldn’t be done without supervision even if worse comes to worst. Be careful but try and experience all the things that you can. That’s why we are here – to learn and grow and that can only be done via experiencing.