Happy May!Greetings Radiant Beings, Is hate more potent than love? Is your environment stronger than you are? Love is the only thing that can transform you; not even death will change you. When I first heard the first two statements, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around them while I could fully commit to the last two, that love is the only thing that can transform us and that death does not have the power to change us. If hate is more potent than love, and our environments are stronger than we are, then the journey to know the Self will be more arduous than I first expected. I needed to consider these statements and how they impacted my potential for evolution. It was time for me to be brutally honest and radically accepting about where I was in my understanding of love, my ability to love others, and how my environment impacted me. So I started down the rabbit hole, and I have found over the years that this is a bottomless rabbit hole but one that I am grateful to be traversing. For me, the first consideration is what is love and how do I define love. Love used to mean doing everything I could for someone I "loved" and helping however I could. For me, it denoted I was the reliable person you could call on no matter the situation; I would be there to bail you out. I would show no compassion, but I sure would enable one of my kith and kin to continue behaviors that were not helpful, all in the ruse of showing my love. I had always thought the way I was doing things was the right way and that I had a complete understanding of what love is. It wasn't until I spent time in Yogaville and had an experience with Swami Satchidananada, where he firmly scolded me and asked me about ahimsa (non-violence), that I even questioned my manner of interactions with people. At this intersection of my journey, I began to question the difference between enabling and compassion. So, I asked the question, what is the difference between compassion and enabling? I needed to ask why I thought I could make everyone's boo-boo go away and why I thought it was my responsibility to make everything all better. I cannot make a person happy or sad, just as another person cannot make me happy or unhappy, as happiness and sadness lie in the space between our two ears, our minds. It is our minds that create the illusion of being happy or sad. Consider a parent with an addict as a child and every time the child gets into trouble, they bail them out; this could be crashing a car and they buy them a new one, they lose their job for the twentieth time, and they pay all their bills; the child is always in some crisis, and the parent always comes in for the "save." The blame always goes to the other person for causing their child so much pain and misery. We say we want what is best for a person, but we do not know what is best for them because we don't see what karma has propelled them to be in the situation they find themselves in or that we find ourselves. We want what is best for them based on our perception of the dilemma. We must remember the first yama is non-violence, and this is tricky because we want to help, but we must examine where this desire to help comes from. Do you want to take the pain away from someone you love at the expense of another person? Do you want to change the situation for your benefit and the benefit of the person you love to stop suffering? Do you want to save yourself from the turmoil, and taking care of the situation is "less complicated" than having the patience to see it unfold naturally? Sometimes the most loving thing to do is to cultivate forbearance and allow the problem to play out as it should without your interference. We see our near and dear ones in tricky situations and want to "rescue" them from it. My mom told me this story years ago, but it wasn't until I started examining the way I love did it make sense to me. A butterfly was getting ready to emerge from its chrysalis and seemed to be struggling, so my mom thought she would help this butterfly get on its way. In actuality, she weakened the butterfly so it would never be able to soar because the chemical it releases during this struggle strengthens the wings, allowing the butterfly to develop and fly. She felt horrible for issuing this butterfly a short life of misery, but what could she do after the fact? We fail to consider that every time we jump in to save a person, we keep them from the struggle they chose in this lifetime (karma), and we are clipping their wings, so how will they ever fly? You don't have to have children to cripple a person; we constantly stifle another person's growth by clipping their wings. We habitually allow another person to play the victim because we practice being a victim, which is what we "understand." The question then became, how can I turn my back on someone I love? How can I not help those that are near and dear to me? If I turn my back on someone that needs my perceived help, how can I consider myself being a good person or a person that wants to be godly? How can I justify such behavior? I started thinking about what God is and isn't in my limited ability to understand, but I knew I needed to get God out of some of the boxes I had placed her in. The first box is that God has favorites because humans have front-runners. The reality is GOD DOES NOT HAVE FAVORITES! God does not hate the person that sets his temples ablaze, nor does he love the person that builds churches in her honor more than he loves the others. God is omnipresent, meaning he resides in the sinner as much as in the saint, and the only difference between the sinner and the saint is that the sinner has a future, and the saint has a past! Do you want to smash your left hand simply because it is not your right hand? No, you do not, so why do you want more for your kith and kin than you do for your co-worker's kith and kin? The soul will always pick the route that will lead us home (this path is not easy; it is full of snares and pitfalls), while the ego will always choose the easiest route. We want the most effortless way for ourselves and our kinship, and it doesn't matter what happens to others. The second is God not attached to an outcome; God has no skin in the game. If she doesn't have skin in the game, why should I? Remember, God, does not have favorites. God does not want one side to win and the other side to lose; God wants what is karmically appropriate to happen at each interval in our lives. Thirdly, God is love and neutral, which means love is impartial; if I love someone, I need to be unbiased when karma comes knocking. Before I can detach from others and their situations, I must learn to be fair to myself and my circumstances; this means I must never consider myself a victim (remember, there is no word for a victim in Sanskrit.) If I see myself as a victim, I will always see others as a victim, and the need to rescue will stay strong. And as long as I keep saving others, I remain the heroine in this show, Ranjani. We must remember we are here to serve each other, but we must be cognizant of why we do things for others. If we do them for the wrong reasons, we are not helping; we are hindering our growth and the growth of the person we have intended to help. Swamiji said, "I am a person you can lean on that teaches you not to lean" We should use this as our guide. Let others lean on us, or we trust others when we need to but remember the goal is to stand on our own two feet and for others to stand on their two feet. We all should be able to stand like in tadasana, just like a mountain; no matter what happens, we are steadfast. Next month we will examine why hate is stronger than love and why our environments are stronger than we are. In-Service, Ranjani Self-Inquiry Questions Do you love to offer advice? If you answered yes, why? Does your sense of purpose involve sacrificing to satisfy others' needs? Is it difficult to say no when others demand your time and energy? Is being seen as a "giver" imperative to your self-esteem? Do you feel responsible for solving other people's problems? Do you cover your near and dear's issues (drugs, alcohol, infidelities, addictions, incest)? If you answered yes, Why? Do you constantly fret about others' opinions of you? When you "help" others, does it make you feel superior to them?
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