Conditionings or Crutches

During my piano class this week, I had an interesting discussion with my teacher. A brief history of my piano skills: I started a couple of years back and I find it reeeeeal hard to coordinate my left and right hand when it comes to some complicated compositions :)

Anyway, this week, I was trying one such composition. I was struggling hard to sustain certain notes on my left hand using one finger and then using the other fingers on the same hand, I had to play different notes. And then I had to play another set of notes with my right hand simultaneously. Don't bother if you did not understand it. All I can say is it was really difficult. I spent some 10 ten minutes trying to figure out how to move my hands and fingers to play just one bar; one bar basically has a set of notes, in this case just 8 notes :)

On seeing my struggle, my teacher told me, 'I can understand the problem you are facing. As adults we cannot play both hands together. Children can do that very easily. Our right brain and left brain find it real hard to coordinate with each other. The same is the case with reading notes in a increasing order and decreasing order. We can play increasing notes fluently but decreasing notes, our pace is reduced because our mind takes longer time to process the next note. Same is the case with telling the alphabet in the reverse order. For children this coordination is not a problem at all."

This sounds familiar, isn't it? Very scientifically, she applied the concept of conditioning to music. This is so true. We are conditioned so much from childhood that we cannot do many things which we were able to do before. I have seen some people who cannot hold a tumbler of water using their left hand because they are conditioned to be right handed.

Every little thing, we have been conditioned in one way or the other by parents, teachers, elders and society. Paramahamsa Nithyananda says 'these conditionings are the major obstacles in the path to realize your true potential.'

Many a time, we do not do things because we are conditioned to believe we are not capable of doing them. Volunteers from Nithyananda mission take up variety of jobs like transcriptions, editing, program management, website development, teaching etc. etc. Each one is loaded with different things, sometimes one needs skills that are diametrically opposite the other. But still we do; sometimes we make mistakes but we learn and move on.

This is possible because we all follow Paramahamsa Nithyananda's message, "Not to sit cozily in the comforts of our conditioning." We do not explode and explore our potential because we like to hold on to our conditionings. We do not want to break open from them. That is the reason why we keep on doing the same things again and again.

Our very belief that we are good at one or some specific things is a conditioning in itself. When the Master sees that we are holding on to something and sitting and relaxing in our comfort zones, He blasts us with a new challenge to break our conditioning and get us out of our crutches. That is the job of the Master and Paramahamsa Nithyananda is tooooo good at it :)