Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Opinion

For any happening around us and anything around us we would like to have our opinion and views. If we are unable to form any opinion or our own view about the happenings or things, we feel inferior, but most of us somehow create certain opinion within us. If anybody interacting with us is not having any opinion or reluctant to express their opinion, we make them feel inferior. We and our education system continuously insist us to have opinion to anything and everything we come across. The media of present day create opinion about worthless maters and doing business out of that. As we are educated to have opinion about everything, we borrow the opinion of media and help the media to blossom their business.

What is opinion? Is it has any relation with perception? Is it has any relation with truth? If not, why are we having opinion about everything and why are we forced to have opinion about everything? Answering these questions may not be an easy task. Having opinion about everything and then doing anything and spend all our energy to substantiate our opinion has become our way of life.

Opinion is nothing but building an image about the object of interest based on what is seen, heard or read. If the opinion is exactly same as what is seen or heard or read, it is fact. It is not an opinion at all. We shape our opinion based on what is seen, heard or read plus the images we already have within our mind, which could be related to the object of interest in some way. For validating this opinion we may use any image we have with in our mind. Hence we never have facts with us. We are always having opinions and views. Even for the facts, we convert them as opinion and views.

What way this image helps us? Probably it may help us to show off that we are knowledgeable. Probably helps others to build a superior opinion about us, which in turn may earn respect from others. May be helps us to gain few more such petty things also. But to recognize these things as petty things, we may have to look into our life from another dimension. Unless we recognize these as petty things, which don’t have any value for our life and living, we keep on accumulating opinions.

If we really see into the opinions, we can clearly understand that they are diverting us from living. They are deflecting us from perception. They are preventing us from seeing/understanding truth and keep us away from truth. Unless we see the significance of living, perception and truth there is no possibility for us to see what is keeping us away from living - from possibility of complete perception and from truth or reality. We are never going to recognize the role of our opinions in keeping us away from living and truth.

Upon a clear examination of facts, we can understand that a life of ecstasy is not only gifted to very few selected beings. It is possibility is given to every one of us. The way to achieve it is also very easy. Only thing we have to do is just understand the possibility of such ecstasy in our life and create the space within our mind to capture it. Creating the space is that just understand the significance of our activities in our life and aware of our activities. Once we are capable of doing this, other dimensions of life will open for us.

Coming back to the subject of discussion, opinion keeps us away from seeing the reality. When we have opinion about something, we will not look into it any more with the longing to know. We take the opinion as the knowledge of that particular subject and move on without even looking into it. Even though we know change is a constant process, we fail to recognize the fact that the subject might have changed from its property when we looked at it last. We go on with our opinion and hence fail to capture the current reality of the subject as our opinion blocks us from seeing the subject with the urge of knowing. When we don’t have the intention of knowing, knowledge is not possible.

If we want to be anywhere close to reality, we must come out of the trap of opinion. While coming out of the trap of opinion, others around us may be building a negative opinion about us. To face this situation, we must be aware of the fact that others opinion about us are also just opinion and should be capable of ignoring those opinions also. This is possible only if we are very much clear about what we need and have a very clear perception that the opinions are not at all facts.

The opinion we need to come out may be the opinion about our parents, spouse, children, friends, other people, God, heaven, Guru, philosophies, religions and the list is limitless as we have opinion about each and every thing we encountered in our life. If we see this list with an opinion, it may looks like a mission impossible. But if we can really see the destructive role of opinion in our life, it is an easy task to leave all our opinions about anything and everything. Once we are free from opinions, we will be start seeing everything with delight, like a child. The delightedness on looking at our life entirely changes the quality of our life. Hence the real problem is not leaving the opinion behind us, but understanding the need for leaving them behind us.

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