Freedom from reactions becomes more of a priority when it is seen how often reactions imprison us. Everybody wants to be happy but most people don’t give the proper attention to what makes them miserable. So much unhappiness comes from reflex-like reactions to circumstances.
Sometimes we react to what people say. Sometimes we react to what happens or doesn’t happen. Sometimes we react to what might happen and sometimes we react to what happened in the past. These reactions stem from our mental programming, which includes the culture and society we live in, and from the impressions of our past experiences, even from past lives.
The opposite of a reactive person is a poised person. The poised person is not affected by what people think and say. They know themselves from honest introspection. They realize they can’t control the thoughts of other people and they don’t try to. But a person prone to reactions doesn’t know this. They want to know what people are saying about them. To a reactive person what other people are saying and thinking about them is more important than the truth of what they are.
Image yourself walking into a psychiatric ward at a hospital to visit a friend. A patient comes up to you and stares you in the face and calls you crazy. You don’t react to this because you know the person doesn’t have a clue.
That reminds me of an old joke that’s relevant here. A man goes to the psychiatrist and at the end of the session the psychiatrist says, “You’re crazy.” The man says he wants a second opinion. The psychiatrist says “OK, you’re ugly too.”
The second opinion, when someone says something derogatory about you, should be your own objective self. If you know the comment to be without warrant, why let it bother you? Even the great spiritual masters, past and present, have had people say ugly things about them. Even the great avatars Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed were all ridiculed and insulted. But their inner reality of consciousness was never affected by the mutterings of ignorance.
Buddha was once sitting under a tree when a group of young men walked by and started insulting him for what they thought were wasteful efforts at trying to be serene and spiritual. After their insults came to an end, the Buddha asked them what they would do if they gave a present to someone but then found that the present was not accepted. When they all said they would take the present back, the Buddha said, “Likewise, I do not accept what you have given me, so you will have to take those presents back as well.”
I think of that as a great example of poise. Buddha didn’t let the thoughts of limited minds disturb his inner tranquility. We don’t have to either.
What about when things in life go badly? You lose your job. The house is foreclosed. The car is totaled. You’re told you have cancer.
These are real challenges to poise. But it doesn’t mean we can’t experience poise when these type of life situations happen.
I like how Eckhart Tolle explained it. He said these events are not life. They are life situations. Connecting to our source of being is life. And nothing can take that away from you.
He told a story in his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
When Tolle asked her if this loss was diminishing her source of being, she went into deep thought and discovered that it wasn’t. She was able to let it go.
That is an example you can remember when things go badly. That is, circumstances might be impacting your life situation but they cannot impact your real life, your connection to your source of being, your inner dimension of formlessness, of consciousness.
That is the opportunity that misfortune gives us – the incentive to go within. Great suffering leads to great spiritual growth. When life goes smoothly, there is no incentive to rise above it. We enjoy it. We become intoxicated by it. We become addicted to it. To the degree that we develop poise is the degree to which we make progress on the spiritual path.
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