The ego hates light and truth

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

Question (Q): Sir, there is a person who is enjoying his conditioning. What if he gets satisfaction in doing conditioned jobs? Why will he ever consider to leave that conditioning? What is the need of leaving that conditioning, if he is enjoying it? Is it not so that people want to remove conditioning from their lives because they are not able to enjoy it?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Simple. Joy is at the center. Conditioning is away from the center. Joy by definition is the absence of conditioning. In this absence there is a simple purity.

Joy is your inner nature. Conditioning is an outer insertion that hides the inner nature. Enjoyment is not at all a ‘motive’. The moment there is a motive, there can be no enjoyment. Motive means discontentment.

Joy is the simple space which is available to all of us effortlessly. Without doing anything. Joy is like silence. It is there always. But when you run after it(conditioning, motives), the noise of your own footsteps destroys the silence.

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Q: Is there anything called as ‘healthy competition’?