Why are others able to dominate me?

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

Question (Q): What to do when an external force tries to stop me?

Acharya Prashant (AP): There is one central law of existence, which is, that nothing can really stop you without your consent.

Nobody can exercise control over you, nobody can make a slave of you without your own agreement.

But we really do not see how we have agreed to the whole thing, how we are a participant in the process of slavery,

and then we complain that others are holding control over me.

The others have no power over you. It’s just that you have traded away your freedom and it's not a question just about you, it’s a question of anybody who ever feels himself under compulsion.

We trade away our freedom for a few basic privileges and luxuries.

You want to go in a particular way. Now, somebody is stopping you. What is he doing? Is he physically stopping you? Is he coming and saying that “No, you can’t go that way? Stop, you have been chained.” No, not really.

Somewhere, you have a particular greed that he satisfies. Somewhere, you are getting a few luxuries and privileges from that person. That person could be parents, a…