Competition

Competition comes from environmental pressure to get ahead and succeed.  At birth you are just a bundle of feelings just being yourself with no expectations.  Your parents teach you to compete in order to accomplish things.  You are taught how to achieve instead of just doing things for the joy of it.  Society places an emphasis on winning the game, having the highest grades and being the most popular.  This gives you a false sense of superiority, pride, complacency and loyalty, which creates separation and greed.

If you are here on earth to experience just being yourself, to whom do you owe your first loyalty?  When someone stimulates competition in you, your loyalties end up being outside of yourself.  When you are motivated from within you do not have to compete.  Competition affects your solar plexus, which is your area of identification.  Think of a time when you were flustered, was it because you were trying to convince someone of something that you were unsure of?  If you were so sure of yourself, you would not have to prove anything to anyone.

You may use other people as an excuse to keep yourself from success.  Even after you realise what you are doing, you may still hesitate to change because it has become a habit.  You are probably not aware of all the expectations your loved ones put on you to succeed and get ahead.  Competition is one of the biggest challenges in our society because of our basic instinct for survival.  In spiritual things there is no competition.  Ignorant is the man who wants to put competition into the area of spiritual wisdom.  The more you grow the more secure you will become and the less you will feel the need to compete.