How Relationship Challenges Reveal Our Illusions
What are your illusions?
Your blind spots, dysfunctional beliefs? Can you identify them on your own? Often, friction is how we grow, through life challenges or through challenges in relationships.
During each Navratri, we worship Ma Kalratri, who represents breaking illusions, our ultimate dark night, and going beyond them.
One of our greatest illusions is that we are perfect and imperfect at the same time. We believe we are right, yet struggle with our imperfections, and conclude we are not ready to fulfil our destiny. Whenever life, especially relationships, challenges our established ways of thinking and behaving, resistance arises. We use our past, our experiences and our backstory to justify our responses rather than question them. Can there be another way of seeing things, another way of responding to life, beyond what I believe to be right? Righteous wars are the recipe for many doomed relationships and civilisations.
Let’s admit: Nobody is perfect, and yet everybody is perfect in their own way.
How? We cannot judge people merely by their behaviour because they behave perfectly and often consistently based on their level of mental, emotional and spiritual development, both as a soul and as a human being. A student in Class 4 cannot be expected to have the maturity of someone in Class 8, Class 12 or college.
And therein lies the peace of God. He knows that everyone is evolving at their own pace, behaving according to their present understanding. Gradually, they will all grow. We, too, must learn to be at peace with others as they are, as well as ourselves.
Do not be surprised when people fail to meet your standards of perfection for them. They are behaving perfectly according to their present mindset. It is your perspective that makes their behaviour seem wrong, and therein lies your resistance.
We can spend an entire lifetime fighting this simple fact.
But when we accept people as they are, as they consistently show themselves to be, we become free to respond differently. We can finally deal with reality instead of waiting for others to change; we realise that it is we who must learn to handle life differently and better. When we take responsibility, we grow, become more mature and build capacity. After all, maturity comes from becoming an adult in our responses. Rather than impulsively, habitually or anxiously.
nstead of waiting for others to change, we realise that it is we who must learn to handle life differently and better. When we take responsibility, that is when we grow, become more mature and build capacity. Maturity comes from becoming an adult in our responses. Rather than impulsively or anxiously.
The same thing applies to ourselves. We cling so tightly to the identity we have built since childhood that we become afraid of responding differently, even when life repeatedly challenges us through familiar patterns. Yet, when we make peace with ourselves and our circumstances, we can finally relax into who we are. Acceptance allows us to grow more smoothly than constant self-criticism and self-judgement.
Only by loving and accepting ourselves can we truly grow. Acceptance makes growth faster, not merely smoother.
Growth demands that we let go of our old selves rather than resist the changes life is pushing us towards.
It frees us from the straitjacket of habitual thinking and behaviour, allowing us to discover fresh, creative and innovative responses to life’s situations.
The true mark of spiritual growth is our ability to remain at ease with whatever life throws at us.
Our equanimity and poise in everyday situations reveal our inner transformation, as does our ability to respond with wisdom and intuition, and the courage to follow through in both small and big decisions. That is what it means to truly go with the flow, not responding to every situation through the same old patterns, but meeting life afresh.
Can I go with the flow?
Where am I blocking the flow?
What illusion am I still trapped in?
What part of my old self am I unwilling to let go of?
That is my prayer to Ma Kalratri.
– Abhishek Joshi
