I see this car everyday on my morning walk, and everyday it is a reminder to see everything that comes to me, no matter how difficult it is to accept, as a blessing.I wonder what a difference it would make in this persons life if they would've written"Cancer is a blessing?"
Certain things may be difficult to see as blessings, and our initial response may be that of resentment or anger but by dwelling on them, or speaking them, or writing them we only reinforce them and and give them strength.
Although we may not be able to control our thoughts we can control our response to them. By not dwelling on the negative thoughts, and by not giving them power by speaking about them or writing them, and by replacing them with a positive thoughts, we can actually transform our habitual thought patterns.
It might be difficult but with time our friend could learn to see his cancer as a blessing. Instead of reinforcing the negative thought every time he sees his car he could use a positive message to remind himself that everything in life truly is a blessing.
Although I haven't personally faced anything as difficult as cancer, I know that someday I will, someday we all will. It is inevitable that we will all have to face death. I hope that when the time comes I can have the strength to see death as a blessing.
Posts
5 comments:
my thoughts on these matters have been totally transformed by a certain professor i had this semester. the idea is this... by tolerating overwhelming circumstances, being able to sit with the pain that goes along with them, we come in contact with part of ourself that is highly creative that pulls us through these circumstances, while at the same time dismantling the conception of self that we previously held along with limitations that we thought we had. this is essentially, in his view, the process of change within psychotherapy.
so, yes, i agree that difficulty is a blessing. Rupa Gosvami refers to this in the Bhakti Rasamrta Sindhu as tat-krpeksana, seeing everything as mercy. but how is it mercy? how can suffering become the vehicle for transcendence?
my guess is that we fully allow ourselves to experience pain. it can and maybe should be horrible, while at the same time understanding intellectually that it is meant for us, that it is transforming us and bringing us closer to glimpsing eternity.
i think it is important to not use thought to distance ourselves from reality. rather, we should use thought to understand reality with as much immediacy and intimacy as possible. imbued with understanding we should let ourselves feel pain fully, knowing that the pain is burning away our limitations, allowing us to see ourselves stripped of shortcomings, and coming closer and closer to experiencing everything, everything, that comes to us in this world as the wonderfully merciful hand of God.
The sentiment is ironic on a car anyway, since cars contribute to cancer.
beautiful, gauranga.
Inviting you to visit my blog about Vaishnavism in Indonesia (the biggest Moslem country in the world). Hare Krishna.
The way I see it, if bad/unfortunate things never happened to us, we would just perpetually grow more vile and hedonistic. We can accept maya's illusion and feel punished or mistreated, but that only makes us feel worse and become more entrapped. If instead we recognize that these things are provided to purify us if we simply humbly accept them without retaliation, then indeed they are blessings, and how great is Krishna for bestowing this mercy to us. All we have to do is recognize everything as happening per god's plan, and simply by accepting and learning from every event that happens to us, we can free our minds from material nature's entanglements.
Thanks to the mercy of karma, eventually everyone reaches a point of purity sufficient to adapt the proper consciousness and makes it back to godhead, though it may take an inconceivably long time for most.
Post a Comment