This blog follows the last one where I talk about the choice we have in accepting or not accepting the judgements from others.

In this blog I am going to talk about how we can exercise that choice. I will start with the quote from Ramana Maharishi where he says

“If every body minds their own business the world will be a better place.”

STORY TIME: Let’s say you are on a long journey and you are out of water. You are very thirsty – all you can think of is water because that is what you need now. And your map shows you that if you walked for another 20 minutes you will get to a well. You are so thirsty that you start running. You are also stinking from the sweat – your face and clothes are covered with dust and sweat, you hair is matted and smelly.

As you run a lot of passersby scrunch up their noses and make comments like “Dirty Person – Good riddance to bad rubbish.” They move away as you pass by. Kids laugh at you. What do you do? Do you stop and answer back or keep running to the well.

If you always keep in mind the long-term picture or the goal that you have then you won’t have time or energy to pay any attention to what others said. Vice Versa – if you are engrossed in your own journey you won’t bother about others. Or if you are thinking you don’t have a goal just think about the longest term goal- death.

Meditation or Yoga always helps too. Whenever something pleasant or unpleasant event happens to us, we react to it but what we really react to is not the event but to the sensations in our body. If we can focus on the sensations or breathing then we can address it at the root and this is what Yoga/Meditation train our minds to do. For example: if you are angry have you noticed how your breathing is fast and your heart races a little tad faster. Regardless of what is making you angry your body reacts in a certain way and we usually react to that. When we meditate or do yoga we are in essence training the muscle that reacts to just observe. And if we do that we will witness the situation instead of accepting it and make it our own drama. You become the observer – the actors are only acting in the movie they are not real.

It always comes down to me – everything is within me. If I am passing judgements its because I am not at peace with the situation internally and hence I try to solve to externally by passing judgements. a) you can meditate and not focus on the why – if this works for you. b) if not, we are all intellectual beings – it is worthwhile exploring what is the trigger than wants to make us pass judgements and make the effort to just observe and not express or suppress.

Watch out for my next blog to increase the effort factor!