Comparison

We are living a life of comparison. We ourselves are the result of comparison – our identification or the ego or the self is the outcome of comparison. Also the fear, desire, suffering, and problems are result of comparison. From the time we started perceiving the world in this life, we were taught to compare one and everything. Our education systems make us to compare ourselves and everything else in all aspects, but never taught us how to be untouched by the act of comparison. It is up to us to learn, to be free from comparison and even if we need to compare certain things, untouched by the act of comparison. We explore this possibility, if and only if, we are aware of the richness of the life which is without comparison and see the absurdness of the act of comparison.

The life we know is a life of fulfilling our ego or the self. The ego is nothing but the psychological identification we built about ourselves. How the act of identification performed for anything? Identification of anything is relative to something else. To identify any thing, we need certain other thing with this the first one will be related and identified. On the other hand identification is nothing but the result of comparison. Same is the case of identification of us. There may be certain physical qualities which we identify by means of certain established measurement, which we may consider as not relative to anything else in general and of course we need such identifications. But they have nothing to do with our psychology in lay man terms or with the “Stamps” we are collecting in modern psychologist (Transactional analyst) terms or with the “Karma” in philosophical terms. Hence we are not concerned with such physical identification based on established measurements.

We are concerned with the identification which generates turbulence in our mind or transacting stamps or imprinting Karmas. Let as try to analyze how the ego is built on us from certain angle of view. Very often children are referred as the reflection of GOD. This is because the children (probably) don’t have any ego, even if they have ego, they have no means to express it. But the first thing we teach them is how to build the ego of their own. As soon as the child get the capability to listen us, we teach them the concept of good and bad, and we start honoring the so called good. The child is already having an ego of its own and the ‘GODness’ is already gone.

The child seeks security for its survival. When we honor so called ‘good’ and discount so called ‘bad’, the child learns it has to be good to have security. The question of such discriminating power of child is not valid because any living organism, whatever it may be, has certain intelligence of its own. The child also has that intelligence. Once the child knows it has to be good, to have security, it starts projecting so called good and start identifying itself with that good. The psychological identification is already there and the child cannot be considered anymore as reflection of GOD. The child which starts identifying itself with majority of so called good qualities are not much threat for the society in general terms, where as the child growing with the identification of so called bad qualities become a huge threat to the society as a whole.

As soon as the psychological identification with certain good or bad quality is formed, the “I” or “me” or “ego” is created within the child. Once the ego is created, the child starts to look everything around it with reference to this ego, the ego grows stronger, and finally we are here as we are now. We do not know how to see anything as it is. We know seeing, anything and everything, only with respect to our ego. That is why the world is termed as Maya or Illusion by certain philosophies.

How the child knows it as good or bad? The child performs certain action and observes the reaction of environment. This action and reaction goes into its memory. It does another action and that also goes into its memory. Now it compares at which action it felt more secured and labels that action as good. Now for extending the feeling of security, the child identifies itself with the so called good action. Hence, even if we are not there to teach the child about good or bad, it has inbuilt mechanism to learn about good and bad, which is the result of conditioning by generation after generation, even before the formation of human species.

As we have seen, the direct effect of comparison is build up of ego and the side effects are fear, insecurity, desire, and all such qualities. We have also already seen that the qualities which are the side effects of comparison are absolute unnecessary for living a joyful life. Hence we don’t need to do comparison at all, at psychological level. How to be free from the act of comparison? If we take a vow like our New Year resolutions, we can never stop comparison. The only way out is understands the mechanism of comparison from its root until the end of all side effects. This does not mean take an imaginary case and analyze it by means of mental projection. We have more than enough live examples within our mind to track from its root to the end. If we can understand by this way, then we are completely aware of the process of comparison and the uselessness of comparison. If we really know something is not at all useful for us in any manner, will we pursue such thing in our life? Same principle applies for psychological process also and if we really understand that comparison will do any good for us, we will not pursue it at all and the desire for comparison will dissolve from us. The key point is complete understanding of the process of comparison. Nobody else can give that understanding to us. It is up to us to understand the effect of comparison ourselves by tracking ourselves and decide whether we need to pursue or give up the habit of comparison. We will be able decide upon this only if we are aware of the quality of life in which the comparison does not have any space. This awareness is possible only if we look deep enough in to our way of life.