In this Weekly Wisdom, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar shares how to make your subtle body strong and robust, free of hurtful impressions.
It's interesting how your relationships happen in families. It's all in the subtle realm first.
What appears in the gross realm is only a pre-recorded play. The film has been shot already. Here, it's being projected, and behind that, it’s called karma.
How karma works
Karma is what? Impressions. You fought with someone in a past life, and now that person shows up as your mother-in-law, wife, husband, or something else. They give back to you what you gave them.
Whether good or bad, they've come to clear what was due to you. You have to take it. There's no other way. If you avoid it now, it’ll come later, in another lifetime.
An intelligent one will say, “Better get it done and get through it rather than postpone it until the next time with higher interest rates.”
Why do bad things happen to you?
Suppose nobody ever says anything bad to you in your life. You're always happy, 24 hours a day. Do you know what? You remain weak.
When you're happy, you experience expansion. When someone praises you, you feel something in you is expanding.
When someone insults you, you shrink. You have to salute all those who help your consciousness to shrink. Why? Because your consciousness needs to be more elastic, not brittle.
If it only expands, it’ll be like glass and shatter if someone throws a stone.
In this life, we carry our subtle body to make it strong, not weak. To make your subtle body strong, challenges come, and how you handle them is important.
How to be free of karma
Our sorrow and misery come from our expectations. Despite how you want people to behave, they'll behave how they need to! Kick them out of your mind!
Feel free. Say, “I'll not let anyone hurt my spirit.” In fact, your spirit cannot be hurt. Can you cut a flame? Take a scissors and try to cut a flame. Impossible! Like that, you're a flame, and nobody can cut you.
If someone behaves angrily and hits you, just watch. If you can't watch it anymore, keep your distance. Sometimes, you say it's not possible. Then remind yourself, “My spirit is strong. I won’t get bogged down or be vulnerable.”
You have this much strength. The moment you take this step, believing that no one can hurt your spirit, you won't be miserable.
Don't say, “Oh, you've hurt me.” Why would anyone do something to you if you haven't done the same to them? And if you've not done that to them, they'll get it back. In either case, you simply have to be centered.
Either they're giving back what was due to you or building their own new karma, which you can be compassionate about. Taking only these two positions is better to keep your subtle body robust and strong.
But one more step is to look deep into the other person who doesn't want to hurt you at all. They love you a lot. Love brings in anger.
You see hurt or anger there, and that's why they're sharing that. What you have is what you'll give. If you go to a shoe store, they can only give you shoes. A grocery store can only sell groceries. People only give what they have.
Is everything predestined?
If you ask me, “Gurudev, is everything fate?” No. You have no control over what happens. But how you take it in, you have control over it. This is where wisdom, knowledge, and meditation help.
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Editor’s note:
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