Self-awareness is not self-stalking

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): I seem to be moving from the so-called liberal, open, to a highly moralistic type of woman. It is a movement from one end to the other. But nothing has changed actually. I may just be repressing myself and keeping more watch on myself. What is happening to me?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Do you want to ‘know’ what is going on, or you want to change what is going on? What is the intention?

Q: Both.

AP: If there is no intention to change, there cannot really be a desire to collect knowledge. Unless I have problems with something, why would I want to bring it into the purview of knowledge?

Please understand this, why does man collect knowledge? Man collects knowledge because of his restlessness. You want to bring something into your mental domain as ‘knowledge’, only because you are not comfortable with it. What you are comfortable with, is alright ‘as it is’. You cannot have a desire to put it in a mental framework.

When you are with a beautiful flower, do you really feel like counting its various biological parts? Have you done that? When you are with a beautiful flower, do you feel like estimating the wavelength of its color? Do you do that? But if you have…