Familiarity breeds contempt is an adage quite common to all of us. We take too many things for granted in a relationship. Expectations and desires are the root cause of discomfort and distress in everybody’s life.
The wife expects the husband to tell her where he went and what he did there. She wants him to give a detailed description of activities conducted and account for every minute spent. Likewise, the man expects her to perform her wifely duties or tasks diligently. Even if she is a working woman, he expects her to do many chores at home too. He offers her limited freedom and any act of so called unwritten rules of conduct, she has to face his ire.
When any man/woman gets into a relationship with another person, they slowly acquire control over the being of that person. Directing every action of their lives. The freedom to act or perform even mundane tasks becomes a rigorous regime. Let me give you an example here. Let’s say a young man gets into a relationship with a girl. Initially she will be very acceptable to whatever he does but later she would want to impose herself in every activity he performs. Even if he has to meet his friends, she wants to plonk herself in the midst. The me-time of that individual gets obliterated soon. Similarly, she would get into big trouble if she were to go with her other pals for a movie. The jealousy and anger is driven by the feeling of inadequacy and incompetence.
Sexual incompetence also contributes towards these impositions. Looks are another aspect and so is social standing. Man feels terribly short of qualities and skills so he tries to protect his possessions. Relationships becomes possessions very soon.
In spiritual world, we teach detachment and dispassion but these same things are difficult to attain. Extremely possessive people or those filled with terrible anger cannot succeed sooner in spiritual. The sadhaka or spiritual aspirant has to forgo his extreme behavior and become pliable in the hands of the Guru.
Surrender is the key word towards spiritual growth. Man has to give up his ego and every other negative quality to win in spiritual. Listening to the words of the Guru and following them to the T is the only way. The difference between material worldly beings and the Guru are incomparable. The material worldly man has desires and needs whereas the Guru has absolutely none. He doesn’t expect anything out of his disciples or devotees. Being dispassionate and detached, the Guru hasn’t an iota of greed or expectations.
So to succeed in spiritual a man has to give up all desires and expectations. There is no familiarity or contempt in spiritual and the only one we care for and love to be familiar with is God alone. We desire only Him and come what may don’t want to be away from Him. We are possessive and passionate about Him. We are only attached to God. In sum total, since we don’t understand God, we do all those things to our Guru. We love and devote our life to our Guru. We get attached to Him and we desire Him only.
Familiarity and contempt is only for the material minded. They live with desires and expectations. The spiritually perfect are free from every contamination and are pure minded. Become that.
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