Who said that the world is fair?
By Mirela Sula
In life, we have met many people who have tried to hurt us. It is likely that we will meet them again. Deep inside us it is normal to feel rage and anger boiling. And often these thoughts that can boil inside of us give us the intricate feelings and the links of our life. Anger does not improve our life at all. This is why we must resist the tendency to be fed with negative feelings, which are heavy burdens for our mind. But when the anger is taken away, it means we can move away from the emotional injuries that are deeply rooted in us. This is why the relationships filled with anger bother us from the inside and they often complicate things tremendously. It causes us grief and pain until we arrive at generalizations like: “Nothing goes right in this world.” This way of thinking brings about lack of hope and it ruins our equilibrium that the mind needs. Ultimately, we may fail to find our inner peace.
Forgive Those Who Have Hurt You…
This anger that is accumulated over the years is not only a rage against those who have done us wrong but a sign against us, which tells we have lost the peace of mind. This means we may be angry with ourselves. Often we are overwhelmed by obsessive thoughts which force us to project the pain inward in order to continue forward. Who said that the world is fair? It would be better if we could just discard the illusion that life should be entirely fair. Focus on the blessings of life itself and avoid the chronic comparisons of ourselves with the luck of others which are not useful at all. In my lectures on meditation I have learned my life motto:
“Don’t feel inferior to others, don’t feel superior to them; just feel better than yesterday.”
“An enemy defeated without any defeats is a treasure. I mean that they are friends in my spiritual life.”- Shantideva –In positive psychotherapy the question to always ask is: “What good is there about this issue?” This is the issue that the client is bringing into therapy. A positive psychotherapist may ask: “What is positive in this event that you are now seeing as a problem?” When analyzing the text of Shantideva’s statement, a positive interpretation would be: To meet an enemy is not a disaster by the stroke of chance because, by appreciating their existence, we are forced to reinvent our capabilities and put ourselves into action. In this way we come to know a part of ourselves that we have not known before and, without even understanding it fully, we can transform an enemy into an inner ally. If we seek to understand what this enemy was trying to tell us (i.e. Why him? Why here? Why precisely at this moment?) and what learning experiences arise during our interactions with them, our days spent spinning our wheels will completely change. This reflection will help us to look at a few of our goals, to see the damage done to us and allow us to derive a positive benefit from it. From here comes the idea: “Thank God they exist.” Or, as Florens Sin says, “Bless your enemies.”
