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Pearls of Wisdom : Hurt and Guilt |
All psychological, emotional problems are centred on `I', the Self. When you say, "I am frustrated", is that frustration possible without `I' being involved? Will there be frustration if `I' is removed from frustration? I am frustrated, the mind is not frustrated. In fact, it should get frustrated because of you! It is wrong to say, "My mind is giving me trouble". Mind does not give you trouble, you are the trouble. `I' is involved in frustration, `I' is involved in despair, it is not the mind that is sad, I am sad. In fact, all your problems are centered on `I'. By educating yourself `I' becomes more enlightened, mature. The problems are under control to a certain extent for a mature person, but not totally.
All your problems viz., frustration, despair, sadness etc., can be reduced to two: "I am hurt" and "I am guilty". When we think abut it, we find there is no third problem.
I am guilty. Of what? Of what I did or did not do. "I should not have done that. Why did I do it? "I should have done that. Why did I not do it?" Certain incidents are so well rooted in our memory that they keep coming back. More you to try to avoid them, more they come back. You cannot avoid thought, for, you cannot avoid memory. A thought will be forgotten if you forgot to remember, but that does not happen. The more you to try to avoid a thought, the more it comes back. It is silly to try to avoid anything in the memory. Memory is memory. The more you try to avoid, the more reality you are giving to it. You are giving a new lease of life to the dead past. What is past, is past anyway. All that remains, is just a memory. But the problem is that `I' is involved. `I' is involved in every guilt.
`I' is involved in every hut; Why did he do this to me? How can he do it to me? Why me, of all the people? Remember that it is you who allows the world to hurt you. And `world' included your family, relatives, friends, even gods. All of them can hurt you only to the extent you permit yourself to be hurt. I can hurt you only to the extent you allow me to hurt you. It is like hypnotising; you can get hypnotised by me only if you allow yourself to be hypnotised.
Vedanta goes a step further. It says: No one can hurt you. Nayam hanti na hanyate. Atma, I neither hurts nor gets hurt. If you listen to the teaching, you will discover the Self to be akarta, actionless. Atma is free from action. It never performs any action to have a guilt complex. Whatever there is, is just in your memory, just impressions. God has given us memory not for self-judgement. It is just given to remember the necessary things in life, so that you will not fail to recognise your wife and child when you return home or that you would not be asking for another lunch the same day!
Memory is not you. You have picked up impressions in life, some of them pleasant, some of them unpleasant. It is only maturity to recognise the fact that all events cannot be pleasant. Life is a mixture of the pleasant and the unpleasant. A nature person is one who accepts in one's stride, both the pleasant and the unpleasant in the journey of life. Memories are just memories, whereas the `I' in you is simple awareness.