We
know that we need to stop thinking too much in order to find peace. But thinking is not the only thing that needs
to stop. We also need to stop
emoting. That is, we need to stop
torturing ourselves with negative emotional reactions. Emotional reactivity causes 99% of our
suffering. In fact, the only reason that
thinking makes us suffer is that we react negatively to it.
There
is unconscious suffering and there is conscious suffering. Most of our suffering is unconscious. What happens is that something unpleasant
happens: an item breaks, someone says an unkind word, a traffic jam
occurs. We then have an egoic knee-jerk
reaction of anger, frustration, irritation, or disappointment. We abhor the situation and insist on feeling
bad until the situation ends. We make
ourselves voluntary prisoners of this external circumstance. We let something that is beyond our control
hold our sense of well-being hostage. We
thus refuse responsibility for our mental state by remaining asleep in the
nightmare of reactivity while blaming external events and people for “making us
suffer”.
Conscious
suffering involves choosing not to wallow in negativity. The fact that an unpleasant event occurred
does not obligate us to create pain via an emotional reaction. If there is emotional pain, we choose to
consciously contemplate why we are hurting; and not exacerbate
matters by blaming, criticizing, resenting, or claiming to be a victim. We at least attempt to use our suffering in
order to learn about ourselves and grow. For example, if we let something as trivial as an unkind word or traffic
jam get the better of us, we can acknowledge that our ego is throwing a tantrum
because the world is not exactly the way it wants it to be, and that we therefore need to stop
feeding our ego.
When
we emotionally react to everything that happens, we leave our sense of
well-being at the mercy of outside events. Pleasant events might happen, causing positive reactions, but things don’t
stay pleasant for very long. Everything
is in flux, so we are guaranteed that unpleasant events will occur. Lasting well-being can come only from a
lasting source. That lasting source is
the true self.
