In this Weekly Wisdom, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar shares beautiful insights on how to build your skills for dealing with difficult emotions. Find out.
After seeing violence for a long time, you get numb to it. You get used to it. I hope you don’t get used to it. I hope you don’t get numb to violence. If we become numb to violence, we don’t do anything about it.
The world has to wake up to this reality. There are growing violent tendencies in almost all spheres of life. Whether domestic or societal, whether you’re violent toward someone else or toward yourself, it’s all the same.
The only remedy to counter the fear, shame, hate, and jealousy that lead to violence is meditation. Go deep within. When the difficult emotions are calm and are replaced by peace and joy, then violent tendencies will reduce and disappear.
Fear of violence
I think it’s time now for the world to wake up. When we create paranoia, fear, or too much caution, that turns into violence. Fear turns into violence, and violence brings up fear again. So a cycle of fear and violence continues in the world.
Only spiritual education will bring about that transformation. It will transform fear into love, violence into compassion.
Know that you have enormous strength within you. Meditation and spirituality will make you realize you have a lot of strength and that strength can transform violent tendencies into serenity and calm. So don’t be scared.
I read in the paper that terrorists in India had massacred several policemen and many government officials. It could shake anybody’s heart when they read about it in the paper, so I called Samir, who was working and teaching courses in Uttar Pradesh and another territory. I said, “Is anything possible? Can we meet with these terrorists? Can we change their mindset? Can we do something about it?”
Samir said, “Okay, I’ll go there.” So he went.
I was a little hesitant. I said, “Well, no, you find out from other people. Phone our centers which are close to this area.” I told Samir that we want to know because we had once initiated some dialogue with some of those people.
Many of them had given up arms and violence and come to normal life. Some of them had done the course, also. I was interested to do more with them, so I asked, “Is there anything we can do about it? Do we have any information?”
He said, “Guruji if you say so, I’ll go.”
I said, “No, just find out. Let me see.”
He said, “No, no, I’ll go.” So he canceled one of the courses he had. He went there. He walked 100 kilometers into the forest there. They had no electricity, no light. It was not like civilization. He went to their training camp and lived with them for 10 days. But he couldn’t meet their leaders. He had to sleep in the forest on his yoga mat. They were so fascinated by the yoga mat. He was doing meditation and bhastrika.
The people he was with were getting curious and they became a little bit more compassionate. But then they went to ask if he could meet the leaders, who refused. They thought that my man would dismantle all of their cadres.
So the leaders ordered the subordinates to finish him. But they felt very compassionate. When they came back, they weren’t as friendly, but they had a double mind. Luckily, the night he felt that these people were going to finish him, he left everything there in his bag and he just ran into the night and came back, without telling them.
When you have a commitment in the mind, when you know that you need to do something, the fear doesn’t come to you. You can take challenges. You know there’s protection for you because your intentions are right. You want to do something.
He walked so many miles in the night. I am so proud of our teachers who go to these places, risking their lives to create peace.
Love and hate
You can’t measure love. Let it be that way. If you quantify love or measure love, then it hasn’t remained in your heart. It has gone to your head.
Only the head can put a limit on things. It can measure. The heart has no way to measure. It is limitless. It can’t quantify or define things. A head can define and quantify. It can say you have 10 ounces of love, or 2 kilos of love, or 2 tons. But the heart doesn’t know how to measure.
To hate all that is good within you is almost impossible. If you do that, you’re not an ordinary human being. Instead, you must be a devil. But a devil also gets enlightened sometimes. If not now, in some other lifetime.
Hate simply means love upside down. Hate is a self-destructive way of annihilation and it’s not that easy.
Overcoming shyness and shame
You should keep talking about your experience on the course. Many are too shy to talk about their spiritual path, their spiritual experiences. I tell you, the world is different now. Spirituality has become the fashion.
Twenty years ago, if you said you were meditating or doing spiritual practices, it was taboo. It was like you were doing something very shameful.
But today you’ll see large companies showing people sitting in lotus pose and meditating as an advertisement. That means that meditation has become trendy in the field of advertisement. You should know that this is very trendy and popular now, and not feel shy or ashamed.
Take off that label that you’ve put on your forehead saying “I’m shy.” Who said you’re shy? Just bring up all the courage in you and go talk foolishly to somebody. Come on, in life, do something foolish!
Consciously, if you do something foolish you’ll enjoy it. Unconsciously, you’ll regret it and suffer. And then the fear of doing something foolish will eat you up. It’s better to do something foolish on purpose. You get at least some courage.
That’s why cultures in the world have carnivals once a year. Understand the purpose of the carnival. In India, we have the color festival, Holi, where we throw colors at each other. Here, you dress in all kinds of costumes, not your formal, proper dress. You just dress up as animals and clowns and walk in the streets.
That’s to break that fear that society puts in you, or that you take on from society’s norms. Shyness is a self-created barrier. That’s why these festivals are done, to help you come out of these restrictions that you’ve put on yourself.
How to handle jealousy
Just know that so many other people are jealous of you, too. At least you got this far. You’re doing so much. You’ve been on the course. You’re moving around with a big smile on your face. What do you do when people are jealous about what you have?
You can tell them, “Hey, come on, you can also do that.” Similarly, people who are around me also say the same thing to you. You take over some projects and do a good job. If you focus only on yourself and think about “me, me, me,” then you feel jealous. When your life energy has no direction, it’s stuck thinking about yourself all the time. But when you’re focusing on a project, on a job, and giving energy and direction to your life, then things will be different.
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To learn more about handling difficult emotions like fear, hate, shyness, and jealousy, check out SKY Breath Meditation, which has helped millions of people around the world.
