Do Unto Others

It came as a sudden realization. I was living on the Yasodhara Ashram doing karma yoga. During daily work, resistance kept interfering, as if choking me. I asked myself, “Resistance to what?” as I broke from the kitchen, storming to a nearby creek.

In this moment, it was as if the water stopped. There was a deep understanding that my mind was creating the illusion of a world around me. My sense of reality itself was recognized as an illusion. All is mind. This is the essential truth that arose in that great moment.

When we are born, our senses do not yet understand the names of objects. We do not recognize shapes and colours as infants. More importantly, we do not identify with the forms of our surroundings. It takes years to develop the understanding, “this is a chair where I may sit and read”, “that is a computer, where I may write an e-mail to a friend”. It is mutually accepted, unanimously, that the sophistication of our modern world is the greatest potential of humanity.

So we surround ourselves with objects, people, and places that re-enforce our conceptual identification with the world of form. To be without a television seems unreal to many. Simplicity has long been forgotten, as we drive our cars four blocks to buy a magazine. In some social circles, if you are not wearing lulu lemon or eating organic, you’re not worthwhile to know. To the extent that we place our value on this superficial construct called reality, we are captives. It is this captivity, created by our minds, that represents the resistance to True Reality.

True Reality exists beyond the capacity to identify the forms all around us. Likewise, the True Self exists beyond the person we identify with as “me”. The nature of the True Self is infinite, yet the person we tend to identify ourselves with is defined. Resistance, then, is the false identification with personality as the True Self.

We are all mirrors for each other. I believe Self growth is the purpose for every relationship, every experience. It is relatively easy to recognize weakness in others, but perhaps more difficult to see ourselves as weak. The mind is tricky, and tends to justify our own behaviours. It makes our actions seem holy and sacred. The mind is quick to condemn.

The behaviours of others can be used for our own self reflection. This begins the process of confronting unconscious patterns. Also, the qualities we admire in others can be used to show us that same quality in ourselves. There is no separation. We are all fragments of the same unity striving to reunite. This truth is hard to see in a competitive world. It often takes complete seclusion, retreat from our daily lives…or at least a break from our T.V.