From a site visitor: “…Just been introduced to the ideas of Vedanta:How does one overcome day to day frustrations and feelings of anger etc that may arise during a normal working day? While alone, reading, or with friends (bascially pleasant situations) i find it obviously easier to be in a peaceful state, but when i am at work the general frustration and complaining that is part of my job takes over and everything i may read or meditate on just goes out of the window. I guess im saying, how does one start to make spritiual practice and the journey of Self-realization a part of ones working day? I simply find my feelings of frustation in a chaotic workplace overwhelming! Thanks for your time, Jaime
F.: Ultimately, true peace can only happen when all wanting goes; when all desire to gain goes; when the effects of programming and conditioning and enculturation go; and when even the “you” that sent the inquiry goes. For now, that will sound a bit “far out,” so another consideration will be offered:
Is it possible that nothing in that chaotic workplace is overwhelming “jaime” or making “jaime” frustrated and angry? Is it possible that a “chaotic workplace” is not the source of what jaime is feeling but that happenings in the workplace are merely triggering old wounds or old beliefs or old frustrations which are already present and “lying in wait” just below the surface?
Is it possible that those inner factors are leaving you co-dependent, empowering other people and places and things to control you and how you feel? Is it possible that some assumed roles with hidden agendas and desires and fears are feeling threatened or are thinking that they are being interfered with, or are feeling hurt?
A call yesterday that adumbrated the content of jaime’s e-mail provides evidence of the validity of those considerations offered above: a man was “frustrated,” then “angry,” then “livid” with his employer and a co-worker (and he told them so). They had overruled one of his decisions, first “minimizing his arguments” and then “discounting him” and ultimately “rejecting him completely.” Of course he called the wrong telephone number if he was expecting confirmation that his feelings were a result of two externals…the boss and a peer.
Because he had shared openly some facts about his childhood during satsanga, it was already known that as a child he had been adopted because the woman, supposedly, could not have children. Subsequently, she became pregnant twice and the status of the adopted son would soon be likened to that of “a male Cinderella.” Not long after having their "own" children, the parents’ began to give all of their attention and affection to their "real children." The adopted son would be ignored, his accomplishments minimized. He felt discounted throughout the remaining years in that home. He felt rejected and less than and not enough and not good enough.
Is it now clear why, thirty-five years later, he became frustrated and angry and livid yesterday when the painful scenario that had played out in his childhood was repeated in the workplace? After a short talk, he realized that his fear was that his job could be in jeopardy. He desires a bigger role in the operation in order to attain the raise he wants and the job security he desires. He wants respect. He wants to be noticed. Fears, wants, and desires. All prerequisites for misery.
He saw that “nothing in that chaotic workplace frustrated him or made him angry” but that when two people spoke to him as if they were "The Parent" and as if he were "The Child," then decades-old "memories" surfaced immediately. Their rejection yesterday triggered “old wounds and old frustrations which were already present and ‘lying in wait’ just below the surface.” The boss and the peer did not make him angry. Their words merely triggered a mental-emotional process that allowed already-present anger to surface.
His “inner factors" have left him "co-dependent, empowering other people and places and things to control him and how he feels." His "assumed role" of “The Director,” with its “hidden agendas and desires and fears, felt threatened and interfered with and hurt.” Are you seeing how, to emphasis a pointer from yesterday, one can be "taken hostage by personality, by externals, and by relative existence influences?"
Persons are made miserable when ego combines with co-dependency in a sort of “mental marriage”—a condition that is experienced by billions of persons every day. Co-dependency can even manifest with total strangers whom persons empower to determine how they feel and what they do, as often happens in traffic, for example:
“Who does that person think he/she is, to drag butt in the fast lane and slow me down?! What I need to do next is being interfered with by this numbskull! Damn, people are so inconsiderate and crazy that they drive me crazy!”
F.: Ultimately, true peace can only happen when all wanting goes; when all desire to gain goes; when the effects of programming and conditioning and enculturation go; and when even the “you” that sent the inquiry goes. For now, that will sound a bit “far out,” so another consideration will be offered:
Is it possible that nothing in that chaotic workplace is overwhelming “jaime” or making “jaime” frustrated and angry? Is it possible that a “chaotic workplace” is not the source of what jaime is feeling but that happenings in the workplace are merely triggering old wounds or old beliefs or old frustrations which are already present and “lying in wait” just below the surface?
Is it possible that those inner factors are leaving you co-dependent, empowering other people and places and things to control you and how you feel? Is it possible that some assumed roles with hidden agendas and desires and fears are feeling threatened or are thinking that they are being interfered with, or are feeling hurt?
A call yesterday that adumbrated the content of jaime’s e-mail provides evidence of the validity of those considerations offered above: a man was “frustrated,” then “angry,” then “livid” with his employer and a co-worker (and he told them so). They had overruled one of his decisions, first “minimizing his arguments” and then “discounting him” and ultimately “rejecting him completely.” Of course he called the wrong telephone number if he was expecting confirmation that his feelings were a result of two externals…the boss and a peer.
Because he had shared openly some facts about his childhood during satsanga, it was already known that as a child he had been adopted because the woman, supposedly, could not have children. Subsequently, she became pregnant twice and the status of the adopted son would soon be likened to that of “a male Cinderella.” Not long after having their "own" children, the parents’ began to give all of their attention and affection to their "real children." The adopted son would be ignored, his accomplishments minimized. He felt discounted throughout the remaining years in that home. He felt rejected and less than and not enough and not good enough.
Is it now clear why, thirty-five years later, he became frustrated and angry and livid yesterday when the painful scenario that had played out in his childhood was repeated in the workplace? After a short talk, he realized that his fear was that his job could be in jeopardy. He desires a bigger role in the operation in order to attain the raise he wants and the job security he desires. He wants respect. He wants to be noticed. Fears, wants, and desires. All prerequisites for misery.
He saw that “nothing in that chaotic workplace frustrated him or made him angry” but that when two people spoke to him as if they were "The Parent" and as if he were "The Child," then decades-old "memories" surfaced immediately. Their rejection yesterday triggered “old wounds and old frustrations which were already present and ‘lying in wait’ just below the surface.” The boss and the peer did not make him angry. Their words merely triggered a mental-emotional process that allowed already-present anger to surface.
His “inner factors" have left him "co-dependent, empowering other people and places and things to control him and how he feels." His "assumed role" of “The Director,” with its “hidden agendas and desires and fears, felt threatened and interfered with and hurt.” Are you seeing how, to emphasis a pointer from yesterday, one can be "taken hostage by personality, by externals, and by relative existence influences?"
Persons are made miserable when ego combines with co-dependency in a sort of “mental marriage”—a condition that is experienced by billions of persons every day. Co-dependency can even manifest with total strangers whom persons empower to determine how they feel and what they do, as often happens in traffic, for example:
“Who does that person think he/she is, to drag butt in the fast lane and slow me down?! What I need to do next is being interfered with by this numbskull! Damn, people are so inconsiderate and crazy that they drive me crazy!”
In such instances, people you don’t even know will be allowed to control how you feel and how you react, just as people at work are "empowered" in the same fashion as well.
And the fact is that the enculturation process has programmed people to also judge and blame and criticize themselves for the way that they think and feel and behave, ignoring the fact that programming, conditioning and enculturation remove all ability to "choose." Yet the fact is, jaime, that you might well be farther along the path to being restored to peace and sane living than the masses who are in denial around their misery and who are normalizing their fluctuations between dualistic periods of contentment and periods of anger and frustration.
You can either try to rearrange the workplace or rearrange (more accurately “un-do”) the “mind” which becomes the great liability of all persons. The “mind” is an illusion, the product of all of the lies and ideas and concepts with which you have been programmed; however, an illusion can be significant, relatively speaking. If a driver on a road that is hugging the side of a mountain swerves to avoid a mirage in the road and plunges into the valley 1000 feet below, the mirage was certainly an illusion, but its effects are obvious when a person acts as if the false is real.
So happenings in the workplace are not the cause of your anger and frustration. There are some ideas you have about the way jaime’s life should be unfolding (but isn't); some beliefs about what jaime deserves (but isn't getting); some perceptions about the way that things should be happening in “the world” (though they're certainly not happening that way); and some concepts about the “right way” that things in the workplace should be happening (but are not...and likely never will).
And the fact is that the enculturation process has programmed people to also judge and blame and criticize themselves for the way that they think and feel and behave, ignoring the fact that programming, conditioning and enculturation remove all ability to "choose." Yet the fact is, jaime, that you might well be farther along the path to being restored to peace and sane living than the masses who are in denial around their misery and who are normalizing their fluctuations between dualistic periods of contentment and periods of anger and frustration.
You can either try to rearrange the workplace or rearrange (more accurately “un-do”) the “mind” which becomes the great liability of all persons. The “mind” is an illusion, the product of all of the lies and ideas and concepts with which you have been programmed; however, an illusion can be significant, relatively speaking. If a driver on a road that is hugging the side of a mountain swerves to avoid a mirage in the road and plunges into the valley 1000 feet below, the mirage was certainly an illusion, but its effects are obvious when a person acts as if the false is real.
So happenings in the workplace are not the cause of your anger and frustration. There are some ideas you have about the way jaime’s life should be unfolding (but isn't); some beliefs about what jaime deserves (but isn't getting); some perceptions about the way that things should be happening in “the world” (though they're certainly not happening that way); and some concepts about the “right way” that things in the workplace should be happening (but are not...and likely never will).
It is a combination of those ideas and beliefs and concepts and expectations and old wounds that are driving your emotional reactions and causing you to experience emotional intoxication at times. You are invited to begin to seek, fearlessly and honestly, the real sources that are actually at the core of the fluctuations that you want to be free of. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
READINGS RELATED TO TODAY’S POST:
SEEKING “PEACE OF MIND”?
READINGS RELATED TO TODAY’S POST:
SEEKING “PEACE OF MIND”?
WORKING ON BEING FREE OF PERSONALITY?
READY TO TAKE THE SEVEN-STEP “JOURNEY” TO REALITY?
