Choose To Respond

I heard a life awakening speech by Brahmakumaris which happened with a flick of my figure on my T.V. remote conveying me that I have a "Right to choose my response".

On the surface of it, it looks no more than "Any way you cannot change your circumstances so better get used to the filth by changing your attitude so that it will not pain you any more"

"You have right to remain silent" says the cop while arresting a suspect which can be interpreted in two ways that you are not required to speak under coercion or polite "shut up". That is what many in the world do,and it can manifest into counterproductive maladjustment.

After pondering over the phrase, it began to look very precious. The words of wisdom certainly mean more than what they simply appear to be. The words of wisdom which were passed on through generations stayed in vogue for quite few centuries by virtue of their deep insight into the essence of human nature. After some deliberations I could interpret these far reaching words of unique sense in my own humble way and concluded that they should certainly be labelled as the words of discovery and renaissance.

Forgiveness has been considered as a virtue by great teachers since time immemorial. No other than Gandhi asked us to show another cheek for retribution. But forgiveness as a whole in practice is a very very hard and difficult thing to go down the throat when we are extremely hurt or other person is mean by all means. We fume with anger, and some times hanker for retaliation. A step further revenge is conceived depending upon the mindset of the victim. As far as I am concerned I find it very hard to conceive or sustain it. So I reflected into milder responses.

Responding with passivity I presume could not have been the idea of our sages . Responding to a situation or provocation taking the situation in totality should have been the concept. Look at the person who is trying to hurl abuses or blame you. He is doing it for his own reasons. He might have truly believed that you are not a person of his liking. Or may be he is trying to mask his lapses by blaming you.It is also possible that he is envious of you. He might have genuinely believed that you need a rebuke . The very image of "you" in his perspective is based on many factors. His relation with you, his expectations, his belief system, his background, his motives, his past experiences, his fear, his impulses.. any of the above could be a reason for his behaviour. Our simple task is to figure out what is working in his mind at the moment. Rather than going into the root cause we prefer to meddle with our toppled expectations. We expect certain behavioural obligations whom ever we encounter as a practice. Our failed expectations make us fret and fume . We try to fix the problem either with a fight or resistance and often meet with failures.

Why we fail in our attempts to correct a person? The chances of correcting a person in most cases are .01 percent since the other man is equally vehement in resisting your efforts. He believes that he is right and needs no correction. While in the process of making corrections we conveniently forget factors that we have no right to correct any body. And our corrections are not necessarily corrections. These failures throw us into deep despair and frustrations. So rip all the expectations from your mind and try to see a thing in it's pristine form. The object which you are targeting may look harmless, may look naive,or it may look even ugly. It's harmless and naive looks may not bother you and rather they may evoke sympathy. But how to deal with ugliness? The ugliness is to be dealt with seriousness. The "ugly" is ugly because you prefer to call it ugly. Ugly is like a duckling which in true nature might be beautiful. The beauty lies in your eyes and in you mind. An inward look into the core could redefine the concept of ugliness. How I was looking to him? By any chance am I too aggressive? Am I too selfish ? I might be too loud, might be too peevish , maybe I am too lazy, or too possessive. We turn a blind eye to our own pitfalls.Any or all of the above factors might be making him ugly. The ugliness has other side too. It is pushing you harder towards self evaluation.

At the other angle of inspection we find our expectations too unrealistic too impracticable. Even if they are practicable he has no inclination to practise them. He might be having thousand reasons for doing so. Why can't we have thousand reasons for insisting when others have thousand reasons to skip them?

In the new light of reasoning one can give his own elucidation to a wise saying. With the backdrop of all the behavioural sciences , and self management sciences crashing down either for being too shallow or too narrow the ancient wisdom could be revisited with a new born lantern.

His thousand reasons to skip or blatant rejection can be attributed to his weakness. Our concern is whether that weakness could be understood in the right sense or to be frowned upon? Am I rightly judging the failure on his part as weakness. Is it aptly named as weakness? If you understand his failure as weakness it is most certain that you stand on the higher plane. You are giver and he is taker. With no ego complexities involved here, you enjoy the satisfaction of giving a thing at your will. You are not going be rejoiced for the acceptance or frustrated with the rejection. First make your treasure available.Watch when it is being used . How it is being used is not your concern. If he is failing to do that consider he has not made himself worthy of it.

If you still are zealous about going into the higher plane the weakness which you comprehend is not weakness at all. Your hypothesis do not change it's attributes. In it's purest form it is vicissitude of being. I has no vein of it's own.

Practiced tolerance in mundane world can have rebound effect. Tolerance with the modified form of understanding never rebounds. Do not compare yourself with someone who responds differently. Divergence should be accepted with natural understanding. Why I am not unhappy for being tall? Why I am not unhappy for having long hair? Why am I not unhappy for loathing curds? Why am I not unhappy for loving roses instead of jasmines? Because we accept natural variations as constitution. One of our subjects responds to stimuli according to the intensity of chemicals surging through his veins. He is acting with his marred recollections. He is acting with his rattled suppositions. For some reason he is failing to analyze them or trying with a wrong elucidation. Why should I disrupt my composure by reacting to his improperly ciphered codes? My fortitude is precious. Let this be used for my development. Let me reap more and more from this universe. It needs enormous sagacity, gusto and cognizance. Let me learn some thing from these people who tend to be hostile with me. I could not have learnt this much without them.

This is what I could interpret from a small phrase of enormous wisdom. This wisdom is to be applied in extraordinary ciscumstances. If we fail to react in most appropriate way in the normal circumstances we cease to reverberate indeed.Then we become a dingy who strives for personal salvation rather than being a ship carrying several.