Every day we wake up hoping it is going to be a perfect day. And, when someone says an angry word or says something that disturbs you, or someone will scold, or humiliate or point out some deficiency in your work. And, that will in turn upset you. It’s a normal reaction. You and I will get sad and it will make you forlorn and disturb you. The Gurbani says whatever is placed in the beings ( vessels) that’s what comes out. What can the poor beings do? It’s not their fault.
The Taoists have a famous saying about an empty boat that rams into your boat in the middle of the river. While you aren’t angry at an empty boat, you will become enraged if someone was at its helm. In fact, the boss who got angry at you, the driver that aggressively drove behind you, honked at you, the kids who bullied you when you were growing up, they were all empty rudderless boats.
Just as an empty boat that rams into us isn’t targeting us. , people who act unkindly are also driven by an unconscious force of their own wounding and pain. They were compulsively driven to act as they did by their unexamined wounds, therefore they did not know what they were doing and had little control over it.
We need to rise above this. Until we realise this, we will remain, prisoners of our grievance, our past, we will hold ourselves a victim of our identity which would hold us prisoner and not let us realise and be open to receiving the more powerful currents of love and life.
So instead of getting angry and disappointed and venting out more anger in turn at them, see them as helpless vessels who can’t but help act in accordance with the qualities they have inside. And pray one day they may have better than what they do now.
In fact, give them gratitude back that they have helped you become what you are today. However, there is a thin line that divides this gratitude and ego. Be wary of that and do not let Every God Out aka EGO.
