Who are you?

I am the kinda gal who sees things for what they are. Most of the time. I work at it very consciously, but of course, there are times when I find it difficult to keep the third person perspective on things.

In spirituality they say, we should learn to move away from our likes and dislikes and start 'witnessing' situations, people and life as objects. This is a subtle concept. The idea behind it is basically to slowly become less attached to people and things. Again, a very misunderstood idea.

Attachment causes pain. Attachment means expectations. Expectations means disappointment, means hurt, means anger so on and so forth. They are subtle concepts, hard to practice, very easy to preach. Lifetimes are spent in this attempt to overcome attachment.

At a much simpler level, if we just observe people, or ourselves, we will see that a person who has more likes and dislikes, will experience more pain and disappointment. I guess, that is why all spiritual people, all religions talk about 'contentment'.

Freedom from likes and dislikes makes us freer. Like a vagabond living beside a lake, with the clouds as his blanket and the milkyway as his night light.

One last thought, as babies, I don't think we have any likes and dislikes as such. Remember, how experimental you were as a 2-year-old? Hey, let's play this and let's break that! And let's try putting our finger in the socket!

How much of us is conditioning?

And when they ask us to write, "About you" in those social networking websites, what do we end up writing...Name, qualification, interests...some we are born with, but most of these answers have already be given to us...

Let us try and probe further.

So tell me, "about yourself". Who are you? And I don't want to know what you do, or where you live or what you like. Let's hear it then.