If we keep curbing most of our impulses aren’t we living a fake life?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so if so many thoughts and desires come in our mind and we don’t act according to them because because of external considerations based on our intelligence say for example we may feel I want to beat this person but then we don’t beat so essentially aren’t we faking am i audible or it’s gone so did you hear the question all of you okay so are we mostly fake most of the time are we faking that we don’t act on the kind of feelings that we get and therefore who is the real me most of the time i am faking see faking is not the best word for disciplining because in any activity that we do the first me is not the best me what i mean by that is the first me say if there is if as author i have to write an article you know i can just sit down and i can write a 50,000 word book in two days i can just meet a deadline of 50,000 words but the first me is not the best me i just put something over there but then i need to edit it i need to refine it and no serious author will ever publish their first draft the serious author they say the essence of writing is rewriting the essence of writing is rewriting so you know what i can write in 15 minutes sometimes i need maybe one two hours to edit it so that it comes to final form so that is how we work in any field there’s a famous public speaker who said that you know if you want me to speak if you want me to speak for two minutes i will need one month to prepare if you want me to speak for 10 minutes i’ll require one day to prepare if you want me to speak half an hour i need one hour to prepare if you want me to speak for one hour i’m ready right now but because if i just if i one hour even if i speak something which is not so adequate some rambling it’s all right i can speak something something will come out in that something will but you have to speak only two minutes then i have to churn and distill so that whatever the essential thing i want to convey i’ll convey in two minutes there’s another author i mean samuel butler who wrote a letter to his friend and he at the start he says i apologize that the letter is so long i didn’t have the time to make it short so the first me is never the best me so even in music you know if a child if somebody says oh i like to perform music so without any rehearsal without any practice we just go on a stage and they start performing and it will be a performance which would be a nightmare for everybody so the first me is never the best and this is the principle which we understand in everything so is uh it is said the best public speeches are those which are prepared thoroughly and delivered extemporary that means is it you prepare thoroughly but when you’re speaking it appears as if you’re just speaking spontaneously now is that hypocrisy is that faking no now there is a particular way in which things have to be done in an effective way and to come to that level one needs to practice in the past one needs to rehearse one needs to prepare so i don’t think it’s faking it’s more of preparing so now with respect to our not acting on our impulses that is just a part of being human if you see nature itself has arranged to protect us from our lower side sometimes you know we may feel if we are in a close relationship with someone you know i would like to know what this person is thinking actually it’s a very dangerous desire because you know if we could all see each other’s thoughts not a single relationship would be sustained you know you think like this about me how dare you think i will show you see we all get nasty thoughts we all get bad thoughts and it is nature which is arranged to protect us by not letting our thoughts be visible to each other so of course if we continuously dwell on those thoughts then they will eventually come out as emotions words and actions but nature has given us that buffer some thoughts come in the mind it’s not that we have to act so it would be faking if we had no intention to change so for example you know i have an impulse to beat someone and internally i’m planning when i’ll be able to beat this person and get away without getting any consequences but till then in the front i smile oh you’re such a nice person so that means when not just having a mismatch between the emotion and action that is not faking that is just natural because our emotions are uncontrolled our impulses are wild and we can’t act on those impulses in any area in life we will not be able to do anything constructive but when not only is there a mismatch between our impulses and our actions but rather there is no attempt to bring them in harmony and we have the actions as a means to conceal our impulses till we act on them later then that could go in the zone of faking or hypocrisy but quite often the action often helps in bringing the right emotion so for example now if say i’m sitting here if i just lean back you know and i put my foot on top of this and i have my head over here and i say no i am feeling very humble now now that gesture itself is very bossy so that now it could be possible that somebody might stay humble even in that situation but it’s very unlikely so the certain actions are conducive for certain emotions sometimes by doing those actions we facilitate the generation the stimulation of those emotions also so human culture itself is about about having practices which help us to structure and guide our emotions so for example when we meet someone every culture there is some way of greeting now some people shake hands some people fold hands some people rub noses you know what is this rubbing nose but you know there are different ways basically people express some courtesy some greeting so the point is now we may shake hands with someone and we may not want to shake and we want to shake them we may have that feeling internally but what happens is we we are the culture involves giving us certain civilized way of expressing ourselves so that the wild emotions within it us can be curved so it’s not faking it’s actually a part of prepare it’s a part of preparing now who is the real me if there is so so much of my life is about just restraining my impulses then actually discovering the real me takes time if an author if an author just writes whatever comes in the mind if a musical artist just sings whatever comes sings or practices according to whatever way they are practicing or a painter just takes a canvas and puts whatever on the comes on the canvas is that the real real author the real painter or the real musician no it is by diligent practice for years where after that the real me comes out as an author you know so every day i write a small article in the Gita that is 300 words but to write the 300 words usually i write 500 to 1000 words and then the 500 words i can write in 15 minutes but to get down to 300 words it takes me almost one and a half hours more so so now the first what i wrote in the 15 minutes is that the author yeah that is also you could say one layer of the author but the real person emerges not necessarily through spontaneous expression the real person often emerges through systematic churning so sometimes we think of real person means just whatever they bring it out no the real person means to bring out what is the best within and in that sense it’s like digging gold and digging for gold actually involves 99% of the time the gold digger is dealing with dirt they’re dealing with dirt to remove the dirt similarly to find the real me we have to deal with the dirt of all the superficial impulses short-sighted desires the wild passions that are there inside us but they are like the dirt which we dig out dig out dig out and then gradually after that the real me comes out is the answer your question great so how much time do we have