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"Every time I go in to work, I try to be positive. I say hello. Some of them say hello back. Sometimes one or two of them don't. I try not to it that personally. And then I sit down and these two just go. They have something negative to say about everybody and everything. I can't help it. I just soak it up. It's exhausting."
It is a truism that if my happiness is dependent upon the behavior of another, the fight is over before it even begins. I'm toast. I am dooming myself to being a victim.
We can't change anyone's behavior. To sit there and not to get involved won't work (my friend above tried that). They're not doing anything wrong, so I can't report them. And to ask them to stop often times will put me in the position of looking like I'm seeing myself as superior, and that simply will make it worse.
So what do we do?
First, when someone starts in about someone else, we can say something like, 'well, they can't be all bad,' or 'gee, I wonder what happened to her to make her like that, because she couldn't always have been so selfish/mean/superior, right?' We interject one thing which maybe will help to move the conversation in a different direction. Or, we just change the subject.
Next, we remember that consciousness is one thing. What we bring to any interaction, every exchange, affects the whole. If we meet the judgment of others with judgment of our own, we simply build the monster of judgment. In both of us. If we bring love and acceptance into the field of judgment, it begins to change. We affect those around us, always. And, like a cup filled with dirty water, as we pour clean water in, the water in the cup will slowly become purified until, eventually, it will be crystal clear.
Finally, we are Vedic meditators. We spend 20 minutes twice each day feeling ourselves at one with the Absolute. Any temporal problem pales in the face of eternity, unboundedness, God. These sorts of things never, never really touch us at our depth, affect us at our core. If we can find the way not to take them personally, they simply will wash over us and we will not take them on at all.
We must be beacons. We must walk into every situation shining the light that is within us, rather than taking on the apparent darkness that surrounds us. Others may turn away from it, but that is their choice. They will be affected by our light regardless. And more to the point, we will be living from our true self. We will be training ourselves always to be giving, never to be taking, to be shining, rather than to be soaking up. This is how the universe operates. This is how we are meant to operate. We walk into the room with our fulfillment intact, knowing that no one possibly can add to or take away from who we are and what we are.
Today I will shine more brightly than yesterday.
 Mural of The Sun, by Diego Rivera, Ministry of Education, Mexico City
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Kober
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