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The DK Foundation The Ten Commandments of Everyday Living 9 Do not
gossip or bitch about others, the weather, life – or indeed anything
else. Eventually,
whatever the nature of the spiritual path we are on, we will meet with the
idea of self-responsibility. This
engagement represents a milestone on the road to freedom, but it is also
the end of innocence: never again will we be able to claim and believe
that we are the hapless victims of a life gone wrong. Life
manifests in the only way it can, because the present is but the past
unfolded. This is as true of
our individual lives as it is at the planetary level: it is as true within
the space of one lifetime as it is across lifetimes.
We are responsible for the events that befall us and for the people
we attract. Surely, we can
get caught up in the karma of another, but our own karma will have
attracted that person to us. Our
defence against people and situations whose influence we do not want in
our lives is honest assessment and intelligent choice.
This too is as true of karmic situations brought through from past
life as it is of decisions made in everyday life. The
person who bitches about life and gossips about others has not yet reached
the place of self-responsibility, because if he had he would know that he
has created the world in which he lives. The
opportunity offered to man now is to work with this realisation and to
shape the future by living consciously in the present, rather than leaving
the future to come through on its default setting. In
incarnation at this time, there is now a whole generation responding to
this awareness, albeit with differing levels of consciousness.
This generation has Pluto in Libra and, according to DK in Esoteric Astrology, Libra is the sign in which the involutionary
wheel reverses and conscious choice begins to shape development.
And so when they swerve Bitching
and complaining achieves nothing except a temporary gratification of the Whether
it is whining and criticising, or self-pity and denunciation, the
underpinning assumption is that life and the circumstances and people
which it manifests should be other than they are.
We are quite entitled to want things to be other than they are, but
the responsibility for bringing about change remains with us, because the
placing of responsibility outside of ourselves consigns us to a place of
impotence in our own lives. We have created the world which we see.
We do not believe it, and often to do not want to believe it,
because the responsibility conferred by this realisation is total. The
fabric of the world which we perceive is created not from things and
people themselves but from the
relationship we have with those things and people. In
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings,
Tom Bombadil - a character
who did not make it into the film - took
up the ring which all of the Fellowship, from Gandalf to Sam Gamgee,
feared so much, and played with it, tossing it into the air, spinning it
round, and peering through it. His
mind had constructed no relationship with the evil of Sauron, and without
this relationship the ring was powerless, simply a gold trinket. For
a human being, the point of incarnation is the opportunity to live amongst
the relationships of our making and understand that they are
externalisations of our own reality.
Can you not find a freedom in tracing back the negativity in your
life to the negativity in your mind, because then you require nothing and
nobody other than yourself to sort it? Grey
days, flat tyres, shortage of money, abusive, uncaring people… none of
these things actually shapes our world; it
is the negative relationship that we have with these things that does that.
So if we do not feel able to change the weather or the dynamic in
our partnerships, override mechanical defects or increase the amount of
money we have (and the fully conscious individual, in fact, can do all
these things), then we can change the relationship that we have with these
things so that they do not get us down and take us hostage.
It does not take a Zen Master to reframe on this level; it simply
takes a willingness to be more philosophical and less accusatory.
If we cannot feel positive about a flat tyre, at least we could
feel neutral about it. Tyres
will go flat – it is in their nature to do - and flats are not evidence
of a plot hatched against us by the cosmos. Although we can believe that
if we wish. Our lives would
be so much less sour and stressed if we would take the emotive reaction
out of the relationship we create with people and situations; but,
generally, we do not even try because we are conditioned to react in
certain ways. Complaining and
feeling persecuted and hard done unto is easier than taking
responsibility. We consider
that it our entitlement to moan, even though many people at this time are
perfectly aware that expressing negativity simply increases the power that
situations have over us. There
is a stage on the path when we will reinforce our own identity as
spiritually aware beings by criticising those whose lives and paths are
not as spiritually aware as we consider we are.
In those who are not spiritually aware, this takes the form of
prejudice against those who are different in their lifestyles and, as
such, a threat to decent values. To point at the perceived deviant and
gossip makes us feel more sure of ourselves and what we are trying to do.
We like to believe we are serving spiritual values by doing this.
The price we pay for this intolerance is separation and isolation,
and we simply add to the sum of negativity in the world. There
is a very effective antidote for this kind of intolerance: recall some
stupid thing you have done (and, for sure, you won’t have to think back
very far!), and recall also the misery and pain you experience on a
regular basis, and then ask yourself if this is what being right
feels like. If so, then maybe
wrong has something to recommend it! We
do not know what others are trying to achieve and we do not need to know.
The only thing that need concern us is what we are about. Whatever
George W. Bush might be doing, those who criticise him with such relish
might do well to consider whether in watching him they are not being
distracted from things that they might be able to do something about.
To look for the veniality, greed and self-interest in our own lives
is a more useful place to be scrutinising than the political arena, unless
we intend to be active in this arena.
Howling at the TV screen is not being politically active. Besides,
the quality of our leaders does not make a jot of difference to our
ability to achieve positivity and mastery in our own lives.
Egotism likes to say that we deserve better. Obviously we do not or we would have better: life manifests
in the only way that it can because the present is the past unfolded. Let
us get working on what comes next – what better can we do, the future
being the present unfolded. The
place to start is the relationships which make up the world we perceive. Suzanne Rough The
DK Foundation October
2006 |
