Habit

We like to adapt certain habits, but struggle to leave certain other habits. We suffer on either case. We are not suffering due to the habit in all cases, but due to our desire and struggle to either adapt or forgo certain habits. Definitely certain habits have advantages to carry on our day-to-day life. This advantage is there only when we are at certain fixed plane of life. If we want to elevate ourselves to another plane, habits are hindering for that progress. Habits take away our awareness on our doing.

Habits are genetically transferred to us as well as we ourselves are developing our own habits and for the future generations. Whatever habits genetically transferred to us are within unconscious level of our mind and hence we are not at all aware of it, unless we identify them with great effort. Neither have we recognized that we are having such habits. Such habits, usually almost everyone in the society are having hence we start believing that they are our natural way of being. For example, the way we are eating is a habit inherited from our parents. The survival instincts may be the habits inherited from the long history of life.

Need not specify the habits we develop ourselves, we are aware of that. Habits are the activities we do very frequently. Due to its application it just goes into our mind over and over and hence pushed deep into our mind – our sub conscious level of mind. Our conscious part of mind is a very thin layer usually – which we are aware of. We may be aware of certain part of our subconscious, but it does not require our awareness to bring forth its action. This is the reason habits makes us dull, even though they helps us to carry on our lives very easily in certain cases.

If habits take over our life, we will not be having any conscious control over our life. This is due to the fact that habitual activities are carried out by our subconscious, rather than our conscious mind. Due to the technologies, now days our life is so easy, some habitual activities are sufficient to carry on most part of our lives. When this happens, without understand the real need for activities, due to the subconscious urge, we tend to carry on certain activities. Moreover the subconscious follow a pattern. If the situation deviates a little bit from the pattern, we cannot identify that difference, but the subconscious execute the activity as usual pattern. On the other hand, we are losing control over our activities and hence life.

On one side habits makes our life easy, while on the other side it takes away our control over our own life. This does not mean we should not develop any habits. On the contrary we should develop another habit of doing even the habitual activities within the field of our consciousness. If we can do this, it may be a great achievement in the path of spirituality or self-knowledge.

It may be explained in this way also. Spirituality is all about expanding our awareness. This means, it is about expanding our consciousness. On the other hand it is about penetrating subconscious and converts it to consciousness and then penetrates further within our mind and then converts that also into our consciousness, until reaching the core of our mind.

Once we can reach that level – reach the core of our mind, there is nothing we can do in this world. At the same time there is nothing we can’t do in this world. Both seem to be logical on considering the depth of our mind.