If you scour the pages of most of the social networking websites, you will see your friends, family, and acquaintances all doing something great, looking their best, going somewhere exciting.The plethora of everything fantastic is all you see. If you examine this idea with any of the hot selling magazines ( for men and women) you will note the same. Models looking fabulous, with an unrealistic image of what their employers are portraying with photoshopped make up and modified bodies. It leaves the readers in awe but at some level wanting for more, craving for a better life in comparison, and a feeling of a life unfulfilled. Why can I not goto those places? Why can I not look like that person? Why can I not do that? Will I be able to afford those items? All these questions torment us at the subconscious level. What is this obsession with perfection? Vanity.
There are multiple different kinds of “sins” in various religious texts leading to a hierarchy of bad consequences for the soul. Some are classified as the cardinal sins, some as the 7 deadly sins, but regardless of the categories, I think they all stem from some aspect of us. From the deepest recesses of our subconscious, where the true You is hidden under layers of shadows, disappointments, rejections, and failures comes our reaction to the outside world. The only part that we allow the world to see, is the part that is not even us. It is our image of us, that is a fake and encased in pride it comes out, vanity, our favorite sin.
This vanity keeps us from progressing forward as it slithers from person to person making us remain in fear, and in envy of others. You do not see something ugly in a fashion magazine, or some bad posting on a social network website, as why would we want any one to have a different image of who we are. Why would we want anyone, let alone ourselves get to know our true selves? So we disguise it in clothing, make up, and tell glamorous stories of our exploits to make others like us, and the bragging continues burning furiously like the sun until its own fuel runs out, and the truth is known. This truth is usually known by you, when you get dejected, unmotivated, and realize that your life you are living is not what you had intended, and at the high school reunion you awaken to the fact that many of your dreams and aspirations you had in school are far from being accomplished. But instead your life has taken twists and turns to penultimately lead you to your present day. Few are those who live their life in true freedom and do what they set out to do, probably because they have seen who they are and accept themselves for who they are and then are not bogged down with spending their lives to gloss up their self image, but spend their time acting out their chosen realities.
Comparing yourself constantly with another only sets you back from your true purpose. It generates inferiority, jealousy and envy that then is outbalanced by a surge of vanity to over compensate, or it simply demoralizes you to the point of no hope of reprieve. My personal view on social networking is more along the lines of keeping in touch with friends, and being pleased that they are happy or happy that they feel pleased to share something about their lives with everyone, pretense or not. Everyone has a dark corner where they keep what they do not want known hidden, behind the curtain of vanity. But if you draw back that curtain you might just find a gem of a being waiting to shine with effulgence of greatness. Letting go of vanity is hard, since we live in a world that revolves round the supporting the vanity of others. We are pressured to be someone we are not. Do you dare to look yourself in the mirror, and stare in to your own eyes, your own window to your soul, and ask yourself ” Who are you? and What do you want to do with this life?”
Vanity, it is yours to do with as you please. Keep it up and it will shroud your world in darkness. Shed it, and reveal your true magic to the world.
