Thoughts are like 'Delusions'
This is a scene from an Indian movie called ‘Namak Haram’. The actors Amit and Raj drink a hallucinating brew, on a festive occasion being celebrated outdoors. Amit’s had too many glasses and his mind is disoriented, but Raj is in his senses. Amit sits down on a boulder and fiddles with his fingers, inserting the fingers of one hand into another and taking them apart, like a child. Suddenly, he feels that his interlinked fingers are stuck to each other. He tries to pull them apart with all his power but fails repeatedly. He is scared that something terrible happened to his fingers and cries loudly like a small child, shouting “My fingers are stuck! my fingers are stuck! please help”.
His friend Raj who was dancing with a group at a distance, hears his friend Amit crying and comes running. He had seen Amit having too many glasses of the brew before that. On seeing his condition, Raj quickly understands his friend’s Amit’s delusion. To rid him of the delusion, Raj holds both the wrists of his friend with his own hands and quickly pulls them apart. Amit repeatedly plays with his fingers, inserting and taking them apart, just to make sure they are really free. He is overjoyed that his fingers are now free and shouts happily “My fingers are free! My fingers are free!”. He once again continues to play with his fingers, as though there was never a problem with them.
Some of our thoughts are delusions caused by the influence of our genetics, family, education and life experiences. These delusions make us feel we can’t do this and we can’t do that. Our lives are stuck to our imaginary limitations. When we defy such limiting thoughts just for a moment and act as we wish, we find that they were only delusions, not real! Once the spell of a delusion is broken, it becomes easier to ignore that thought and similar ones, again and again. After a few acts of defiance, a delusion may totally disappear. We are now able to act with more freedom, in our best interest. When we attack our delusions one at a time, in this fashion, even the general tendency of feeling stuck may be weakened.
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