This strategy gives you a chance to practice something that is probably completely unacceptable to you. However, if you give it a try, you might find that it's one of the most helpful exercises in self-improvement.
As the title suggest, the idea is to imagine that everyone you know and everyone you meet is perfectly enlightened. That is, everyone except you! The people you meet are all here to teach you something. Perhaps the obnoxious driver or disrespectful teenager is here to teach you about patience, the punk rocker might be here to teach you to be less judgmental.
Your job is to try to determine what the people in your life are trying to teach you. You'll find that if you do this, you'll be far less annoyed, bothered, and frustrated by the actions and imperfections of other people. you can actually get yourself in the habit of approaching life in this manner and, if you do, you'll be glad you did. Often, once you discover what someone is trying to teach you, it's easy to let go of your frustration. For example, suppose you're in the post office and the postal clerk appears to be intentionally moving slowly. Rather than feeling frustrated, ask yourself this question, "What is he trying to teach me?" Maybe you need to learn about compassion - how hard it would be to have a job that you don't like. Or perhaps you could learn a little more about being patient. Standing in line is an excellent opportunity to break your habit of feeling impatient.
You may be surprised at how fun and easy this is. All you're really doing is changing your perception from "Why are they doing this?" to "What are they trying to teach me?" Take a look around today at all the enlightened people.
1 comment:
Thanks for the post! I think this is a really good perspective, and doesn't even require the assumption of perfect enlightenment. The Universe gives us events and people, and interpreting all experiences as cosmic teaching moments is I think accurate.
And sometimes I think what the people in one's life are there to teach one is compassion for oneself, to love oneself as much as one cares for others by setting appropriate and safe boundaries. That's an issue for me currently with my family, and I think oh so relevant to the deeply connected relationships of D/s. As a trivial example: sometimes the slow postal clerk is there to teach me patience, and sometimes she is there to teach me that I need to love myself enough to walk away and come back later.
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