How to Be a Peaceful Warrior in Stressful Situations

When I heard that Arianna Huffington, the founder of HuffPost, had created a new startup called Thrive Global dedicated to work-life balance and wellness, I was delighted – and all the more so when I saw Thrive include inspiring articles from leaders like Amma. So I felt moved to share some of my work with them. I am so happy to share that my article on being present with challenging people is now on Thrive Global! I include it below. May it help you find peace and ease, whatever situation you face.
This is a practice to help you open in presence and compassion when faced with a person or situation that has pushed your buttons.
To begin, take a moment to find your breath by taking three long, deep breaths. Perhaps throughout the rush of your busy life, your awareness of this powerful life-force has been lost. Three deep breaths allow you to once again find inner space and begin to gain more perspective on what you are experiencing.
One deep breath in, then out.
Another deep breath in, then out.
One more deep breath in, then out.
If you are not fully aware of a situation in which someone pushed your buttons, take a moment now to see if you can remember a situation or person that you found challenging.
Now, see if you can perceive this challenging situation or person from the vantage point that this moment is not happening “to” you. It simply is. Remind yourself that any sense of disconnection, separation from this moment, comes from your ego. The ego can be understood as a distorted sense of self that only knows how to live through feeling separate. It continues, the more you feed it. So if you choose to feed it now, that suffering will keep growing.
What happens once you begin to expand your sense of awareness, rather than close off? You gain greater insight. You see more. You experience more. You can begin to see into what really is. Suppose you remember an encounter with someone yelling angrily at you. You notice your immediate reaction to become tense and closed, sensing danger, wanting to leave. Leaving is an option, but first, let us meet this moment.
Going deeper, you see that this person yelling makes you feel unloved. It is this feeling unloved that signaled danger. You have primal wiring that tells you that you are dependent on your parents’ love for your survival. We all have this tendency. It is part of our human make-up. When you perceive yourself as not getting love from someone you see to be a source of love, you can actually feel afraid for your life.
But if you go deeper, you see that no one person is the source of your love, no matter how close you may be to that person. Love comes from all, through all, in all. It is everywhere, always, even in the midst of an angry, emotional storm. Go deeper and you will find connection to that love that is so much bigger than this one, temporary experience or person. Maintain this big picture.
Breathing, allow tension to soften. More rooted in the big picture, you can also notice how the angry person is emitting deep, painful feelings. You know painful feelings. You can relate. You understand the helpless feeling in the face of overwhelming pain. Within the sphere of mindful witnessing, you feel closer, less separate from what is. You have touched the heart, human connection.
Looking closer, you see how tense this person’s body has become. You see how much pain they are in. You see the disconnected state they are in. You then begin to realize that if you disconnect and react to their anger, you would only add fuel to a painful fire.
You can begin to see that this person’s expression of pain is a call for love. This person does not feel loved. You know this place. You know this pain. A feeling of spacious compassion arises, and you are present. You are not the source of love, but by being present, you can rest in the source of love, pure consciousness arising. As you choose to rest here, you offer the other the greatest healing possible. You are a portal for transformation. You rest in who you are. You offer a quiet, humble reminder of what is.
By acting consciously, not only do you help to release your own reactivity to painful situations, but you also help to ease suffering in others. You no longer add fuel to the fire of your pain or theirs. In this, everyone wins.
Even broader still, by meeting this moment as it is, you send out a deep state of receptivity for peace and harmony that goes beyond this one incident. You signal to the universe that you are open, ready and willing to release all limited states of consciousness in you that perpetuate these kinds of painful situations. By learning to be present when faced with challenging people, you become a peaceful warrior, and a transformative alchemist of light and love in the midst of pain.
May all beings everywhere be free.

Find Out What Your Resentment is Teaching You and Take Back Your Power

Namaste,
Few of us like to admit that we carry resentment. It may not fit our self-image, or our desire to be “good”. On the other hand, we may become so attached to a resentment that we feel entrenched in it, convinced of its absolute reality. Either way, whether we suppress resentment or identify with it, we miss the chance to understand how we have given away our personal power. I would like to explore this tender subject with you here. I invite you to be present as you read along, with an open, humble and honest heart and with the willingness to be gentle with yourself.
Maybe it is because of my French upbringing and having to take Latin at school. Each time I hear the word “resentment”, I find myself reminded of its Latin roots:
Re – to do over again
Sent – to feel
When you resent, you become like a broken record, replaying painful feelings over and over again, keeping you tied to your past. Your ego has managed to convince you that this is a good thing to do. It may give you a sense of temporary power. It may make you feel as though you are somehow getting back at a person or a situation you feel has hurt you. But as you re-sent, going over old pain on a continual loop, it only keeps you suffering.
Like all emotions, resentment carries a message for you. It tells you that you have not yet decided to move on. You are holding on to a perception of the past and a limited idea of who you are. If you knew, for example, that your true nature is love, and that you exist within an unconditionally loving universe, you would not give any time or energy to the idea that someone else “should” have acted a certain way. It is up to you to be in tune with the reality that the moment supports your highest good, rather than it is “happening to you”, no matter the passing circumstance.
Living in harmony with the reality of love is a choice you can make in every moment. You do not need someone to love you, for you to feel loved. You can choose to rest in your self-value as a loved being who is part of a loving universe. Someone acting in a way that is dissonant to that does not need to pull you away from this ever-present truth. Staying connected to that reality is up to you. So if you are feeling somehow lacking and unloved, and you allow this to fuel resentment, then you have lost sight of your true loving nature and are holding on to an illusion that is causing you pain.
It is important to remember that you are the one holding on. No one is keeping you there but you. If you feel hard done by, and believe that someone is holding you down, then at some level, likely unconsciously, you perceive yourself as disconnected from the whole. This is good news. If you have been giving your power away, it means you can change the dynamic by no longer doing so.
In the spirit of candor and honesty, here is an excerpt from my diary, in which I processed a resentment that I was feeling:
I touched some deeper parts of my psychological basement that I feel were brought to the light so that they could undergo a process of rebirth and renewal. What arose, as my mind grew quiet, was the awareness of a field of resentment that had been hiding from my sight. So I gently welcomed it, and went deeper into it.
During my practice, I was present for these painful emotions. I became aware of a painful incident in my life I had not yet fully integrated, where my feelings had been hurt. So through the process of meditation, I was able to go back to that scene and learn to see the event as it was, without narrative, without attachment, without judgment – not the way I had perceived it in the moment – and integrate the teachings it had for me.
There is no doubt that in the incident, I had not been treated kindly. That was not the question that left me feeling resentful. Instead, I was left wondering what I was to do about the feelings of being hurt. I felt powerless and hard done by and that made me feel resentful.
As I continued my meditation, what I saw, as I opened gently and lovingly to uncomfortable feelings, was that I was ultimately feeling hurt because the other person was not who I wanted them to be. I had projected my expectations onto another. What happened did not measure up to my idea of how they “should” behave.
After my meditation, I saw:
Resentment is a choice that only hurts myself. It does not change the circumstances or the other person whom I may resent. It festers in me like a covered wound that swells with rot.
We want others to be the way we want them to be, because in some way we are attached to the idea that they are the source of our love. But to do so is to not see the other person clearly. It is an unfair expectation that we have created and imposed upon another. This only causes pain to us and to them.
EXERCISE
Ask yourself with love and kindness, “Do I feel resentful towards anyone or anything in my life?”
Do your best to be honest. Take a moment to really sense and notice, without judgment, what comes up for you.
If you become aware of a resentment, ask yourself, “Where do I feel this resentment in my body?” Is it in your head, jaw, shoulders, gut, heart, toes…?
Describe how it feels. For example, is it tight? Does it feel hot, dry or cold? Do you feel as though it has a colour, or a shape? Just notice, again, without judgment, what comes up for you.
Now address that place gently, as you would a frightened child. Ask the resentment what it is doing there. Just watch, doing your best to witness it, rather than engage with it.
Notice what happens when you bring your attention to it.
Allow the resentment to soften, simply because you are bringing your attention to it, and listening, without trying to push it away.
Then ask the resentment what it needs to feel free.
Give it room to breathe, without trying to fix it, hold on to it, or direct it. Just as you would watch a flower, witness the resentment as it is. Keep breathing and giving it room.
Remember that you are love and loved. You exist eternally within a loving whole.
When you have had enough, thank the resentment for its presence. Thank yourself for your presence. Thank the universe for the love that is present.
Love yourself.
Love others.
Love our world.
We are one Earth family.
Namaste,
Parvati

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The Power of Your Soul Voice

Namaste,
Happy Easter and happy spring! Spring is here and with it comes greater warmth, longer days and more light. It’s a joy to see nature awaken!
With every change in season comes a change in the sounds around us. Birdsong is a definite feature in spring! As a musician, I am acutely aware that every season has a particular sound palette. Not only do I witness this change externally in my environment, but as a singer, I also experience this change internally. This spring, I find my voice more open and bursting with new life as I am in the studio again finishing new compositions for you to hear. As such, I was happy when I learned that April 16 is World Voice Day, a day very close to my heart.
It is my great love to give voice to insights that arise from meditation and life-changing events such as singing at the North Pole, and a miraculous spinal healing. All of my work, whether it is music, yoga, words or activism, is about being a surrendered instrument.
For that reason, I would like to share this week about what it means to give voice and how it is key to your health, happiness and wholeness.
Much of our developmental information happens in our early years. By the age of one, we have established biodynamic patterns in our body and psyche that set the stage for our adult life. Before we are able to articulate words, we are sputtering, gurgling and making all sorts of sounds. During infancy, our bodies are fresh and unencumbered by cerebral tensions. Expression, as a means of feeling connected to raw life force, flows through us as toddlers.
As we grow, we learn to form ideas and put them into sentences. In that process, we begin to place a filter over our impulses as we interact and socialize. We discover what we must and must not do in order to get the support from our surroundings that we need to survive. By the time we grow up, we may have lost touch with our inner impulse, our soul voice and our connection to the primal force of “being” versus controlled thinking.
Finding your authentic voice can be challenging if you have become disconnected from your natural impulses. Growing up, you may have heard phrases like “hold your tongue!” or “shut your mouth!” or “tighten your lip!”
You may have been told either to be quiet at a time you were enjoying giving voice, or to speak up at a time you were enjoying silence. Listening to conflicting signals, you may end up unsure when to express or when to listen. You can become out of touch with your internal compass, and feel trapped in indecision and fear of disapproval.
I believe that the more we allow ourselves to deeply relax and subsequently open, the more we access our truest source of power, which is beyond our limited ego or will. I have found this to be true as well in exploring the power of the voice, whether through singing or through authentic communication.
Authentic communication is expressed through your whole being. Your mind becomes quiet and alert. Your heart is “two-way open”, that is, open to another and to yourself. Your personality is in service to the impulses of your soul. Your soul is connected to the divine.
Connection to your soul voice, expressed through your body, happens most easily when you are relaxed. When you are at ease, you tend to settle and root. When you root, just like all things in nature, you grow and arise. When you are rooted and vital, expansion happens. In an expansion experience, you are living a soul-directed moment. When your life is soul-directed, you are in alignment with your highest good, and the good of all beings.
WHEN TO VOICE, WHEN TO BE SILENT
Every day of your life, you are faced with many choices, whether to flee or to face, whether to voice or to remain silent. There is no easy answer as to how to find your authentic voice. It is an unfolding process, because it is part of growing, maturing, becoming wise. There have been times that I have given voice when in hindsight, it would have been wiser for me to remain quiet. And the opposite has also been true, when silence weakened me and I allowed it to hold me captive.
In the process of learning to give voice, you will stumble and fall. You risk appearing silly and feeling hurt when you put yourself out there in any way. The greater the perceived risk, the greater the perceived fall. But I have found when I challenge the fear of falling that there was never anything to fall from in the first place.
What other people think of you does not matter. At the end of your life, when your body turns to dust, it will be your own choices that you will have to face. You will be left with questions like, “Did I love well? Did I live fully?” My sense is that when you are standing at death’s door, the times you held yourself back in fear will seem as though you allowed a cloud to convince you that the sun does not exist.
In order to find the courage to speak your truth or be silent according to your own soul rhythm, you must manage the part of you that does not want to grow, because it will create all sorts of reasons not to be true to who you are. It will say, “Stay small. Hide. Don’t do it. I may get hurt.”
Someone whose approval you wanted may laugh and ridicule you. You may feel embarrassed. You may judge yourself as being stupid for what you feel and for your desire to express. But it hurts far more not to do what you need to do or say what you need to say, and remain frozen in fear.
When you feel you must act, you must. In hindsight, you may prefer to have done it differently somehow, but you will not know until you try. And if you are humble and willing to learn, there is no better teacher than life itself. By trying, you will know for next time what works best for you and you will discover how to better attune yourself to your inner voice and your natural, authentic expression.
These key signs from your body/being indicate when you are authentically aligned with your highest good:
When you feel rooted, vital and expansive speaking, speak.
When you feel rooted, vital and expansive being silent, be silent.
Knowing whether you feel rooted, vital and expansive will only come with practice. Check in with yourself as often as you can so that your awareness shifts to encourage that state of being.
I sometimes imagine myself in the future after either having spoken up or remained quiet. How would I feel? Would I regret not speaking, if I chose to remain silent, or would I feel peaceful and warmly joyful? Would I feel remorse if I did speak up or would I feel free, vibrant and relaxed? Consider this for yourself, then go with the choice that brings you the greatest amount of rooted, vital expansion.
You can do this imagined test when you are undecided about anything. Rooting comes from the contact your feet have with the ground, how your energy travels down to connect with the Earth. Vitality comes from an arising, once you are rooted, with an uplifting movement that travels through your spine. Expansion happens when you are rooted and vital, so that there is a feeling of openness, surrender, and receptivity to this moment. When you are rooted, vital and expansive, you feel balanced rightness, neither too high and light, nor too heavy and stuck; neither too quiet nor too loud, but just right, perfectly you, in balance with who you are.
Until next week, remember:
Love yourself.
Love others.
Love our world.
We are one Earth family.
Namaste,
Parvati

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The Power of Patience: Four Steps to Move from Drama to Love

When you face a challenging person or situation, your knee-jerk reaction may be to defend yourself. But this often pulls you into dramas and away from your centre. In cultivating patience, you give yourself the space to find the cool waters of wisdom-compassion, and see a much fuller picture of what is going on beyond reactivity.
It is important to speak up about injustice. Yet, first make sure that your actions arise from a place of wholeness, not from againstness that will only lead to greater pain for everyone. In acting vengefully or impulsively, you fuel an existing fire of anger or hate. Your fight-or-flight reaction is a primal instinct that kept you safe in the jungle. But you no longer live in a jungle.
Patience provides you with extra space around your running thoughts. In the same way you can find space in each breath, patience provides an expanded view, even in constricted settings. Patience is not easily cultivated and often grows through adversity. It is like a sweet, fragrant flower that can bloom within the grit and the mud.
When you feel as though life is a battering ram directed straight at your heart and all you encounter are difficulties and obstacles, you may be called to soften, surrender and cultivate patience. Patience keeps your heart warm and open, while your mind remains cool and calm. With internal balance, you can meet the present moment more fully.
Patience is a deceptively powerful and transformative practice. Far from being resigned roadkill, or seething beneath suppression, it opens you to deeper understanding of yourself and the world, and helps you connect with the love that always is. Here are four points to help you embark on this transformative journey and embrace the power of patience.
1. START WITH YOURSELF
If you look up patience in the dictionary, you might read something like: “the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like; an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay: to have patience with a slow learner; quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care.”
You may think the slow learner you are asked to have patience for is the person who hurt you, offended you, created problems for you. It is true that patience teaches us to see all beings as evolving, however rough, unsteady, prone to err and imperfect they may be. However, is it possible that the slow learning for which you are being called to patience is also your own?
You have come this far on your spiritual path. You know there is a more balanced way to live. You want to be free from suffering. And yet, here you are again, triggered and frustrated in the face of adversity.
Too often, when we face adversity, we add insult to injury by criticizing ourselves for events over which we have no control. Not only have we felt criticized by another, we may criticize ourselves with thoughts like, “How have I ended up in this situation again? How could I have reacted again? When will I transcend these emotional reactions and live with greater steadiness?”
It hurts to be judged or experience negative moods in others. But it also hurts to judge yourself in reaction to them. If you truly love yourself and rest in a place of wholeness, the ups and downs of others’ moods, and the ever changing temperament of each passing day, will pass over you like changing weather patterns. But if you are attached to what others think of you, and hoping for approval or praise, criticism hurts doubly.
Practice humility and patience for your own folly. It is easy to point out “that person over there” who is behaving badly. But we all have our own hurtful tendencies. You know you can hurt someone. You are likely a master at criticizing yourself! You might reactively pour negativity right back at someone who pours it in your direction. We tend to treat others the way we treat ourselves.
When you practice patience for your own humanity, the way you err, the way you hurt, the way you buy into others’ miseries and take them on as your own, you evolve. You develop greater patience and understanding for the same tendencies in others.
2. IT’S NOT PERSONAL
We tend to take people’s bad moods, emotional reactions, judgment, criticism and attacks personally. Of course, toxic energy directed towards you can hurt. But it does not have to. There is tremendous power in not taking things personally. In doing so, you peel away the dramatic story masking the moment, and reveal deeper truths. You come to see that everyone is wounded, everyone needs love, and most feel deeply afraid they won’t get the love they need. Everyone is doing the best they can at any given moment.
Hurtful exchanges and nasty comments can happen so quickly that you hardly know what has gone on. When you practice patience and take a bit of breathing room from a volatile situation, you can slow down the tape of your reactive mind and see the subtler pathway of your knee-jerk reactions. You can move your awareness inward, and ask yourself, “What buttons of mine did this person push? What did I feel? Why did I react like that? What about this did I find hurtful? Is there something else I could see that am not seeing?”
Most people are just trying to get through their day. They may be carrying a whole lot of mental fog, swirling unhappiness and unresolved desires. When we are unconscious, we act selfishly. Consumed with our own wants and needs, we don’t perceive the happenings in our environment and the needs of others. Being sensitive to the world beyond your ego and the needs of others is a skill cultivated through spiritual awakening. This is why you are here.
Every drama has a hero and antagonist to keep the plot moving forward. To be free of life’s dramas, let go of seeing yourself either as the hero and others as villains, or as a victim seeking a hero.
When you next meet an apparent antagonist, take a moment to ask yourself a few questions to avoid taking their misery personally. Is it possible, for example, that your co-worker who got angry at you had an argument with his wife that morning? Perhaps he left the house fuming and took it out on the next available person: you. You may never know why he acted hurtfully. What you can know, however, is that his choice to be hurtful has nothing to do with you.
Even if your co-worker had valid points (maybe you did forget to answer his email in a timely manner), communicating those points in a way that causes pain is a choice he made. His choices reflect who he is, not who you are.
This quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sums up life relationships so beautifully: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Everyone, including you, carries wounds, deep childhood hurts that lay gaping until we inadvertently pour our own salty tears into them. We mean no harm. We bump into each other like diamonds in the rough, polished by life unfolding. It is healthy to try to see the good in others. When we do, we stop making them the source of our unhappiness. Instead, we start embracing the powerful opportunity each moment brings to take responsibility for our own lives. See that each person is doing the best they can with the skills they have at this time. When we avoid taking things personally and rest in the bigger picture, our hearts will flower into the fullness of compassion and we will no longer hurt or feel hurt by our ignorance or the ignorance in others.
3. EVERYONE WANTS TO BE LOVED
Here are some powerful thoughts I ask you to consider. Find a quiet place and allow yourself to go deeper with these:
“Everyone wants to be loved.”
Wow. Take a moment just with that.
“Everyone wants to be loved. And everyone fears they will not be loved.”
Think about that.
Think about that some more. Breathe it in. Let it resonate.
“Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone fears they will not be.”
Apply that thought to someone who pushes your buttons. Think of him or her that way, just wanting love, fearing he or she will not get it. Think of how you want to feel loved. Perhaps, you two are not that different.
Think of your parents that way, just wanting love, fearing they will not be loved. Try to feel the fear they have, and know you too feel the same. Perhaps, you are not so different. The love you seek is also the love they want. The fear you have, that you won’t find love, is the very same fear they have.
Think of your friends and other family members. See the way they hope for love, the way they feel disconnected from love, the way they do love. Where is the love in all these relationships? In which way do you love? What if it is not so much about how much love you get, but about what you give?
When you see yourself, the fears, the hopes, the desires you have for love, in others, when you see you are not that different, then love can blossom, like a lotus from the mud. You can feel connected, loved, fulfilled, even in the face of adversity.
Now think of yourself. Touch that place of “I just want to be loved, and I fear I will not be.”
This is a deep place. It has been there likely a very long time. Perhaps it was exacerbated by your mother, or your father, or someone else. But it is a wound you carry. No one made it. It is yours. If it is yours, then you can heal it. Since you are the one holding on to it, you can let it go.
4. FIND THE LOVE BEYOND THE FEAR
We hold onto wounds, feeling almost precious about them, as they form our identities and create who we are. As we grow, we must let go and move beyond these divisive states so we may emerge into wholeness. But this only happens as we understand the wounds we have, how they are born from ignorance, just as when another hurts us, their actions are born from ignorance. When we understand and have compassion for our ignorance, we will feel more understanding and compassion for the ignorance in others.
We all have a deep place within where we fear that we will not be loved. Sometimes, around that raw and fragile feeling, is a feeling of vacant hopelessness. But this will not last. Beyond all these painful, dry, and desolate places is a fountain of unending love. The goodness of life is within even the most desolate times if you allow yourself to settle in and open, patiently, to the flowering spring. The force of life emerges again and again, without compromise. It simply is.
Beyond your fear of not being loved, is love. In your fear of not being loved, is love. Around your fear of not being loved, is love. The fear itself is love, as it shows you your very humanity, your potential for openness, receptivity to that which I would simply call Grace… the force that is beyond our ego’s grasp and comprehension.
When you are willing to be patient, to rest, in stillness, quietly, without fighting, with this fear of not being loved, you find tremendous creativity. It is in some ways the linchpin of the psyche that moves you from the grip of the ego into a place of oneness and compassion. Rest there and you will find love and all will change.
Until next time,
Love yourself.
Love others.
Love our world.
We are one Earth family.
Namaste,
Parvati

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The Healing Power of Forgiveness

I write to you this week having just returned from the last stop on Amma’s North American tour, the retreat in Toronto. Time with the Satguru is transformative in ways words cannot describe. At this Toronto retreat, Amma guided me deeper into my true self. I witnessed shadow aspects of my psyche and glimpsed into the light that lies just beyond them. May we all release our attachments to the illusions that keep us feeling disconnected from the light that always is. May we permanently rest in the reality that we each are children of the Divine!
Returning to my life in my music studio, as I turn to completing the finishing touches on my I Am Light EP, I have become aware of some of the recent tragic events, such as the attacks in Nice and Baton Rouge. These underline for me the importance of cultivating love and compassion for our selves and others, instead of allowing the flames of anger, hatred or revenge to grow within us.
While many of us, by grace, may never come face to face with the horrors of such brutal violence, we must still learn to practice the healing power of forgiveness and self-love, moment to moment, in our lives. I would like to share more this week about the power of forgiveness.
UNEARTHING PAIN AND RESENTMENT
My daily meditation practice is a time of insight and personal integration. It is a way I see deeper without attachment and let go of that which no longer serves.
Recently in my practice, I touched some deeper parts of my psychological basement that I feel were brought to light so that they could be transformed. What arose, as my mind grew quiet, was the awareness of a field of resentment that had been hiding from my sight. So I gently welcomed it, and went deeper into it. After my meditation practice, I wrote in my diary:
“Resentment is a choice that only hurts myself. It does not change the circumstances or the other person whom I may resent. It festers in me like an uncovered wound that swells with rot.”
During my practice, I was present for these emotions. I became aware of a painful incident in my life I had not yet fully integrated. The event had hurt my feelings. So through the process of meditation, I was able to go back to that scene and learn to see the event as it was, without narrative, without attachment, without judgment, and integrate the teachings it had for me all along.
There is no doubt that in this incident, I had not been treated with kindness. That was not the question that left me feeling resentful. Instead, I was left wondering what was I to do about the feelings of being hurt. I felt powerless and hard done by and that made me feel resentful.
As I continued my meditation practice, what I saw, as I opened gently and lovingly to my uncomfortable feelings, was that I was ultimately hurt because the other person was not who I wanted them to be. I had projected my expectations onto another. What happened did not measure up to my idea of how they “should” behave.
We want others to be the way we want them to be, because in some way we are attached to the idea that they are the source of our love. But to do so, is to not see the other person clearly. It is an unfair expectation that we have created and imposed upon another.
There is a story of a Buddhist master who receives a gift from his student of a glass vase. They admire the beauty and enjoy it. Until one day, the vase breaks and it is no longer. The student was distraught, whereas the master was undisturbed. The student thought perhaps that his teacher did not like the vase. He inquired, asking his teacher, “Master, did you not like the vase? Why were you not disappointed when it broke?”
To which the teacher replied, “The broken vase always existed within the vase.” The master was not disappointed when the vase broke. He was present for the gift when it came to him. He was present for the gift when it broke and was no longer in that form.
When people act in ways we don’t like, they show us aspects of themselves we have not yet seen, or perhaps have seen but not yet accepted. We may see their bright, sunny parts. But we may not want to see their broken bits. When we allow their shadow to hurt us, it is because we have not yet accepted those aspects of that person. When someone acts hurtfully, and when we get hurt by them, both we and they have forgotten, in that moment, our connection to eternal love.
YOU HAVE THE CHOICE TO CONNECT WITH LOVE
The great news is, another person’s actions are their choice. Our response to their actions is our own choice. Through my meditation practice, I saw how I lost myself in taking another person’s choices personally and in wanting them to be other than they are. There is tremendous power in these realizations. In seeing them, we reclaim the energy we have lost in being attached to incorrect perceptions of reality.
Rather than seeing painful happenings as a punishment that could build resentment, what my quiet meditation sit showed me was that a hurtful experience was an opportunity to recalibrate around deeper truths, greater clarity and fuller wisdom. It was the universe’s love showing me to be bigger, to let go of wanting, to let go of hoping someone would be the way I wanted them to be and that they would be my source of unconditional love. The universe was giving me an opportunity to develop a deeper sense of self-love, self-respect and self-care.
What I saw was that this experience was ultimately an opportunity for me to connect to a deeper source of love than one that comes through someone else’s flawed and temporal personality. Everyone is flawed. Relying on another human, rather than the divine, to be the source of love is like relying on a weathervane to guide me. It will constantly change direction.
But if I rely on a deeper source of love and tap into the divine in every moment, then all that which changes over time, the temporal, becomes fuel for my personal growth. The temporal is the way the eternal is teaching me how to return to the One. Through daily experiences, I can move from the personal to the transpersonal, for the conditional to the unconditional.
FINDING UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND FORGIVENESS
It is my prayer to someday truly embody unconditional love and be in it always. To me this is Buddhahood, or a Christ-like state. I understand that to realize love unconditionally is part of our human destiny. To say “I will love you if you act like this” is a condition. That is not love, but a contract or an arrangement. But it is unconditional to say, “I love you regardless of how you act.” We can only say this when we fully understand that the other is a flawed human who will make mistakes — and is also returning to the One source, also learning to live their destiny to love unconditionally.
When I began to see this with someone who I felt acted hurtfully, I saw that I could see myself in their mistake. Quite simply, I am not perfect. I too could choose to act hurtfully.
Acting in painful ways is not okay. Cultivating unconditional love is not condoning painful actions. It does not reward pain or make the hurtful act “right”. Unconscious actions that cause pain to ourselves and others are not a true reflection of our human magnificence. Unconsciousness must become conscious as we need to change, grow and evolve back to love.
But human error and poor judgment is not a reason to cease love. As I saw the breadth of the teaching in this painful experience, I was inwardly flooded with the words of Christ: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”, and “Judge not lest you be judged”.
I was left in the free, raw expanse of forgiveness. In this person, who I once perceived as against me, I saw our shared human frailty and capacity for love. I felt humbled, grateful, open, connected and loving.
I believe that we are all a lot more similar than different. Our differences lie in our choices in the moment, how we choose to act. We could act from a place of love and connection or from a place of disconnection and pain. But we all have the capacity for both. We all share the hope that we will be loved. In this, we are the same.
To quote an upcoming song of mine (Lokah) that interpolates the traditional Buddhist loving kindness meditation:
May all beings be well.
May all be happy.
May all beings be at peace.
May all be free.
Lokah samastha sukhino bhavantu (may all the beings in all the worlds be happy).
Let us become more aware of the potential to return to a fuller perception of ourselves and of our world. Perhaps as we do so, we will unveil aspects of ourselves and of our lives that we find hard to accept, even painful. But remember that all that happens provides each one of us with an opportunity for new sight, new growth and new life – if we are open, ready and willing to receive it.
Until next time,
Love yourself.
Love others.
Love our world.
We are one Earth family.
Namaste,
Parvati

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