The Struggle for Psyche
Note: This article reveals a sensitive and pertinent point regarding your life. Please read it in a quiet environment with no background music or sound.
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Since the time of your birth, you have learnt a great number of things regarding life. You learnt spiritually through religion or elders. The knowledge or wisdom you have may be from experience or books you have read, or through self-reflection on the world. You are always discovering new ideas and knowledge. However, today, we will attempt to discover by Allah's will, a fundamental fact about you.
"The Struggle for Psyche" summarises a great facet of the mind. It encompasses a major part of your living moments on earth. There are two words in that title, "Struggle" and "Psyche". To commence, we briefly explain the word "psyche".
Psyche in our discussion are anything that releases the pleasure-giving chemicals in the brain. Primarily, they are Endorphins, Seretonin, Dopamine and Epinephrine.
A baby is a great example of the 'Struggle for Psyche' in man. Even with age, it never ceases - but merely finds different ways of fulfilling it. A baby does not hold still without its need for psyche being fulfilled. He even shows great distress and cries if we remove the stimuli that gives him psyche. The only reason he finds enough chemical reaction of the mind to fulfil his need "merely" by seeing something waving in front of him is because he is seeing it newly. People see this as quiet pathetic. However, when you see something new, it is always the same - it is merely something else you have not yet seen. Hence we can say that your need for psyche is no less pathetic than a baby's and the need is one and same.
While psyche is the chemical reaction in your brain, the word 'struggle' in "Struggle for Psyche", is used to mean that every person is desperately weak and a victim from birth, and is in a feeble struggle to find ways to attain psyche. Watching TV, listening to music, going to the cinema, playing games, reading a book, sewing are all a struggle for psyche to release those chemicals of the brain. Man's acts of psyche are also not durable. That is, it never permanently satisfies the mind.
Adult pursuits for psyche are essentially no more meaningful than a baby's, despite it being fulfilled in more mature forms. From the perspective of you, with the universe centered around you, these are highly meaningful activities. However, your perspective is very shallow. There is nothing special about the chemical reactions in your own brain. Because the self is inherently selfish, it is unable to see from a 'third eye' or an impartial view. You can't help but take your own chemical reactions as something valuable and meaningful and ultimately make the experiencing of those chemicals an absolute objective and a meaningful way to pass your time.
Fiddling or tapping when there is nothing to do is also an example of Struggle for Psyche.
From the time you were a baby, you have always been subject to the struggle for psyche and it continues today. You simply flowed in the pathetic struggle for psyche. As a baby, your mind was focused on psyche-hunting and you have remained in that deception, with only the form of the psyche varying. As soon as one psyche episode ends, you are on the hunt for another. For example, coming home after a fun day out, you cannot sit still on the sofa but must watch television. Human beings' approval complete the seal of deception as they are the eyes of the inanimate universe. They are also in the same loop and their deception on how meaningful it is reaffirms your own feelings in the unquestionably meaningful nature of psyche. During a telephone conversation with a friend, your friend expects you to describe the activities you accomplished during the day in your struggle for psyche. Surely, if you explained that you sat in one place all day and made no attempts at psyche, you would sound crazy to him or her.
Adult struggle for psyche is as pathetic as a child's. As soon as one ends, it continues to the next. The chemical reactions are not important when viewed from a non-selfish 'all-seeing' perspective.
Death and the Pathetic Nature of Psyche
Death is the sure end of every man. When death occurs, memories of all the psyche chemicals you thought were meaningful are lost. You will not see, touch, smell or hear anything. Time and matter will cease to exist altogether. Your brain which you struggled to fill with psyche will be consumed by the worms and bacteria of the soil it is buried in. If the brain is gone, and the chemical reactions such as endorphins and seretonin rendered useless, what meaning did your actions of psyche have? Did these chemicals make any difference to now non-existant brain? The answer is ofcourse 'no'. In fact, the effects of all these chemicals have disintegrated into the soil with the brain. It is very obvious that man only deceives himself in his Struggle for Psyche with nothing ultimately gained.
Death is more certain than the coming of tomorrow, and the worms and bacteria of the soil will ensure your brain is decomposed. The chemical reactions for psyche are useless.
Just because you are the seer, does not mean the chemical reactions are important. It will only be so to a person who has fallen in with the majority.
Your psyche is not important. Nothing is gained or lost in the universe by your psyche, except for your subjective self's interpretation of the experience as
pleasing. The struggle for which lasts until death, and which has already been repeated billions of times. The sense of 'I' and the 'I's fulfilment is an obstruction
to achieving
universal realisations and behaviour.
The Only Meaning & Purpose to Life is to Obey the Quranic Commandments
The believers are aware of Allah's existence and have been commanded to make the only purpose to their lives to follow the Quranic commands. All acts of psyche are pointless, as it comes to nothing. Those who believe and realised that it is Allah who made them feeble, who glorified Allah and turned stronger to the Qur'an, will find the best reward on the Day they will be resurrected.
"Then, you shall be questioned on that Day about the joys you indulged in!" (Qur'an 102:8).
Almost all people try to achieve happiness only and see suffering and pain as negative - something to be suppressed. This mode of thinking result in individuals we see in the majority. Personalities with low level mental functioning. While enjoyment is pointless, pain is necessary for mental development - resulting in more fully developed human beings for those individuals with appropriate developmental potential.
"Without passing through very difficult experiences and even something like psychoneurosis (a relatively mild mental condition that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress - depression, anxiety etc.) and neurosis we cannot understand human beings and we cannot realize our multidimensional and multilevel development toward higher and higher levels.”.
Dr. Kazimierz Dabrowski (Psychologist)
From the documentary, "Be Greeted Psychoneurotics" by Filmwest.
Summary
Man in his narrow-minded perspective thinks his chemical reactions (enjoyments) are valuable because they are his own. But that is a very unwise perception. He may be stuck in his body, but it does not make his enjoyments worthwhile from an outside perspective. Since everyone around him are also on a selfish pursuit for psyche and admire others' struggle, he grows up in a world of deception. He even gains the envy of others by boasting about what he did for fun.
"We let them enjoy themselves for a while, but then drive them to a severe punishment." (Qur'an 31:24)
The true believer has great priorities over his or her life. Realising that he is driven from birth by the struggle for psyche, and that it is pathetic and pointless from an all-seeing perspective, he gives the commands of the Qur'an utmost priority over his life. For example, he shows no hesitation in hosting a traveller, or entertaining a distant neighbour, despite it hampering his personal plans for psyche. He is implementing the verse "...and do good...to the nearby neighbour and the distant neighbour... and to the traveller." (Qur'an 4:36). The true believer is under full realisation that he is a mere slave to his Creator's purpose in creation detailed in the Qur'an. To be the kind of believer Allah approves and loves, one must therefore have excellent knowledge of the Qur'an and show immense faith in Allah and the Hereafter.
The Struggle for Psyche. Highly pathetic, yet absolute in the minds of people.
Conclusion
There is no order in the Qur'an to enjoy one's self and strive for these pointless chemical reactions of the brain. That is why they are the lowest priority for the true believer whose life is completely governed by thoughts, actions and deeds defined by the Qur'an. When a believer does enjoy something, he or she praises Allah for creating the enjoyment for him or her, and is reminded of the Gardens of Paradise, his final resting place. Psyche is pointless, it is this glorification of Allah that lives on into the Hereafter. Believers do not chase after psyche, despite their minds telling them to. Rather they chase the actions and deeds praised in the Qur'an. Those who show inadequate knowledge of the Qur'an yet fill their lives with high-psyche activities, being deceived completely in the struggle for psyche, will not fair well in the Hereafter.
"That is because you wrongfully enjoyed and rejoiced on earth. Enter the gates of Hell, there to remain - an evil home for the arrogant." (Qur'an 40:75-76)
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