DO NOT BE CRUEL

INSIGHTS SERIES-1


DO NOT BE CRUEL

By Swami Chidananda


Do not be cruel to yourself. You may not be aware of the ways in which you have inflicted pain to your own self. And you continue to do so even now, in ignorance.

I am not talking of physical violence. The context is psychological and, of course, it affects the body anyway. When you blame yourself unnecessarily or condemn yourself for no true fault of yours, there is cruelty to the self. Relax and be gentle to yourself.

Ambition is the source of much of this kind of cruelty. Therefore you find in this world many millionaires who are neither happy nor let others stay at peace. They live in tension. They fret and fume when small things go wrong (in their opinion, and not really). They seem to be achievers and they are proud of the image they have created in the public eye. The truth however is that, for a little that they have indeed achieved, they have caused a lot of problems also in their surroundings. They are not true assets of this world.

Do you curse yourself when do not perform well? If you do, that surely worsens the situation. It is healthier for you to (take a deep breath and) just examine how you could do better. Please do not heap negative judgments upon yourself. If you do, you will find yourself caught in a vicious circle. Because you think low of yourself, you will spoil the next performance; and because you performed poorly, you will think even more negatively of yourself.

We come across an irony when people get depressed that they did not “meditate this morning”. They call themselves spiritual seekers and they are not aware of the burden that label is causing them. They say, “Oh, I again got up late and missed my meditation today. I have become terribly lazy.” If they know what meditation is, they would right away observe that very thought of guilt or shame at the present moment. To be in the now is the essence of meditation.

So do not regret that you got out of bed late; rather, as there arises a habitual thought of regret, stay aware of that wave. Be in a learning mode and examine (by observing, and not by thinking) the way of your conditioned mind.

You may not suspect how ideals might have caused injury to your psyche. Your fascination with an ideal may have blinded you to the actual, to the realities of your situation. You have a mental picture of Mahatma Gandhi and he becomes your ideal, the role model. You do not have a proper understanding of Gandhiji but all the same have created an image of him. For any variation with that image, you blame yourself and get sad over your imperfections. Upset over your failure to become as good as he was, you go through many related negative emotions. For example, you may get angry with your spouse who, you think, came in the way of your living the ideal life. You may find fault with the society as a whole, which does not appreciate your ways of seeing things.

Heal yourself now. Not by pampering yourself or by indulging in some pleasure pursuit after throwing all ideals to the winds. Heal yourself by staying normal. The excitement of (the prospect of) becoming great or the depression over certain inability to achieve heights are both a play of the mind. What is most important is for you to understand what you are, without any judgment. “Who am I? What am I?” are thus important questions. Stay with such questions and let the frills go away from the mind. You will then find great love and sympathy for yourself. Through that, you will love all and sympathize with all too.