Bondage & Freedom-4

Now let us try to understand the child to parent relationship. Analyzing this relationship may give an additional benefit of understanding the need for security is the prime reason for attachment and possessiveness. This is one of the very complicated relationships in our culture.

Until we reach an age of independent survival, we were in the closest care and affection of our parents. At the young age, we were not building as much as images as we are doing as adults. This is the reason that children are said to be very close to the nature of God. At that stage, our survival depends on our parents and we need to have only the security and assurance of having our parents always with us. We did not need (in general) any other security as everything else were taken care by parents. Due to this dependency, we needed our parents always with us. At later stage, as we were started building psychological images and started constructing ourselves (the constructed qualities which are responsible for “ego” or “I centeredness”), we build the image of our parents and project about the comfort we would like to receive from our parents. At this age, our projection of mind will be very close to reality due to fewer images in our memory. Hence the possibility of our parents satisfying our ego is very high and this in turn builds newer images. At certain stage, we will be deeply attached to these images of our parents and the constructed quality of attachment with parents already started within us.

Due to the deep attachment with the image we projected about our parents, this is one of the most fragile relationships. Another reason for the fragility of this relationship is that at certain stage the role play of the parents interchanges. When the parents become old, for their survival, they need to depend on somebody else and naturally children will be the choice. At this stage, the there is a possibility that this relationship may break away due to two reasons.

The children had the image of parents supporting them and not the other way around. Once the children are independent, they are busy in building many more images and as there was no more need for their parents for their survival or any other need, there was no need to build further image about parents. Usually people still project the image of their aging parents and if they do so, they will be having the mind set to reverse the role play. Whenever the parents act as per their nature, which in general deviate much from the image we have about them in our mind (The image we have in our memory is just projection of our mind about parents and not the fact about parents), there is a conflict. Basically this conflict is only within us, but due to projection of mind we perceive it as the conflict in behavior of our parents. Once we start seeing the conflict in our relationships, which are mere projection of mind rather than the actual relationship, the image of our relationship start breaking. Once the image of relationship (we never had real relationship) starts breaking, we no more care about the parents. Those who are capable of seeing the conflict is due to the nature of their (image about) parents and able to cope with that difference, will still hang on with the relationships.

The parents have the image of their children, who still depend on them to fulfill their need. But the children are now grown up adults and they are actually not depending on their parents any more. Unfortunately, most of the parents are unable to leave behind the image of their children, which is an innocent, cute image. Where as the fact is entirely different and hence there is a conflict. Since the parents are still holding the image of innocent children, their ego will not allow them to listen to their children (Even though the situation forced them to listen to their children, the image deep in their mind resist it and hence become the source of conflict). Only a few parents in our culture can come out of this trap and listen to their children with out the ego clash.

The image we have about our children and parents creates the bondages and become the source of conflict with our parents and children. Freedom from this image will resolve the conflicts in parentsßàchildren relationship.

The Basic point of this discussion is that we need to realize truth to come out of various images we have built in our mind and recorded in our memory and leave our life based on this image. When we leave our life based on some image, we are far away from reality and conflict is inevitable in our life. If we live in a life of images, we can not resolve the conflicts but try to escape from the conflicts, which in turn create more conflicts. When our neighbors and we are living with conflicts (with in), conflict between us and our neighbors inevitable. Hence there is conflict with in society and which is the source of all our problems. Hence, if we want to change the world around us, first we need to ralize the truth. This realization brings in necessary changes within us so that all our conflicts within us will get resolved. When there is no conflict within us, there is no conflict with our neighbors and with society.