|
Pearls of Wisdom : Seek Help |
You cannot manage a situation unless you know exactly what is happening. The inner response are just allowed to happen for want of a proper insight and knowledge. We want to have the capacity to manage every happening properly so that we do not deliver ourselves to the hands of likes and dislikes, to the hands of anger, frustration etc. If anger happens we should be able to see it, recognise its pattern, its roots. That is the capacity we are working for now.
Presently I am absolutely helpless in the event of a reaction. I seem to have no power over thing anger. Please understand that it takes a lot of courage to accept helplessness. Unless I have the courage to accept helplessness I can never grow out of it. I will not seek help even if it is available. It is like this man who was an alcoholic. When someone would ask him, "Why do you take alcohol every day? He would reply, "I am not al alcoholic. I can give up alcohol any day." This response is more from the alcohol than from the person. A man who wants to give up alcohol has to first accept the fact that he has no control over alocohol. Similarly, I must intimately know that I have no power over my anger, my sorrow, depression, frustration.
Some people advise, "Don't get depressed". Very often religious teachers become advises. Nobody seems to really understand what is going on. A person does not get depressed by choice, it just happens and therefore that person has no choice not to get depressed. And so there is no point in advising someone not to get depressed. When we advise someone not to get angry, he gets more angry because it is not that a person wants to be angry. Anger happens. So realise this: you have no power over anger, over sorrow, over mechanical thinking. Why? Because they are mechanical. If you had control over them, you would not have them in the first place. If this is understood, there is something open for you.
When I am helpless in controlling my reactions, I can approach the Lord for help because everybody else is in the same situation as I am in. I am sad and another person is also sad and two sad persons coming together do not make a happy lot! If a drowning person gets hold of another drowning one, both get drowned in the process. Therefore I should approach the Lord and seek help: "O Lord, I am helpless. Please give me the maturity to accept gracefully what I cannot change, and the will and effort to change what I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
All of your problems are because of refusal of acceptance of facts and very often we worry about things we cannot change. We do not know what can be changed and what cannot be. If we knew that, we could spare our efforts and divert our energy. Our efforts can gain a direction.