Resolving conflicts in Life
LS201610-01Resolve external conflicts by resolving our internal conflicts.
What we respond to others come back to us. When we harmonize the internal the external is harmonized.
To resolve conflicts externally, we have to resolve our own internal problems and conflicts. Otherwise, no external conflicts can be permanently resolved.
Life is a big exam full of mini exams. The man in his NDE have to feel and bear all the hurt and harm he caused to others when he was alive – because he failed these mini exams. From his experience, we know we will be experiencing what he went through as well – if we fail our life’s mini exams by responding incorrectly. And vice versa, we will be rewarded if we pass and score life’s mini exams by responding correctly.
For example we saw an opportunity to make money, but it involves scamming others. But after we scam, we know we can get away with it and will not be caught and punished by the law and police. Will we do it then? If we respond incorrectly by going ahead with cheating the victim, we will have to bear and endure the burning pain and sufferings the victim felt when he experienced his loss – as if we are the scam victim ourselves. But if we respond correctly by realizing our selfish desire of being greedy for money is wrong and giving up this idea of scamming others, we will not have to bear the pain and suffering of a scam victim.
When we have firm conviction about these mini exams and their resultant consequences, we will start to be serious about these mini exams in life, hence, start to become a good human being. Trying to avoid mistaken responses of selfishness and selfish desire that leads to causing others harm and trying to score as many correct responses by giving up selfish desire and doing as much good as we can for others.
As we progress through all these mini exams, we review our mistakes we have made in past exams, remember these mistakes and the correct responses to them, so we do not repeat them again. Likewise, we reflect and review our thoughts, speech and actions regularly, to check whether we have made mistakes. If we did, we must remember them and find out what should be the correct response instead so we will do accordingly next time we are tested. The precepts and commandments of major religions have provided a guideline on what should be a correct response, and they are reliable as these rules (correct responses) have been provided by those who have walked much further than us in spirit, and have already understand and corrected themselves from all these mistakes we are making in life now. These commandments and precepts are like a simplified textbook on “how to pass your primary school exams” written by professors for primary school kids. Here’s an example of one of such “textbooks”: https://www.cttbusa.org/cttb/6p2.asp.html
As we progress in our mini exams and understand, we will go towards providing better and more detailed responses. Instead of just correcting our external behavior and remaining a “wolf in sheep skin”, we now start to have more awareness of correcting our thoughts, the intention behind our thoughts, why we have such intentions, where do they come from etc.. For example, at the primary level, we learn that murdering someone and being angry is wrong and work to pass this. At secondary level, we know that wounding someone verbally or psychologically is wrong and try to pass this exam. At diploma level, we know that having thoughts that harms others is wrong. At the university level, we know that selfishness is the cause of why we have thoughts that harms others… and so on.
For all external conflicts, we have to always go within to examine what is not working internally to change our understanding and response which will determine the outcome of a certain situation. If an external conflict repeats itself regularly, we must examine if we are stubbornly repeating the wrong response. If we know we are responding wrongly, but we still keep responding this way, we have to examine the cause behind this wrong response – is it because we do not have sufficient understanding of the situation? Are we having unrealistic expectations about the other person? Are we too fixated on having the situation changed instead of opening our minds to accept the situation as such? Etc.
Working towards a correct response requires a certain level of wisdom arising from intuitive understanding. If we feel we do not have sufficient wisdom and intuitive understanding, then it is important we work on the foundation, which is still the precepts and commandments. Work and purify our hearts deeply with these basic precepts and commandments first and reduce our selfish desires… when we start to understand ourselves better, we will also understand others and conflicts better to resolve them with wisdom.
When everyone starts working on ourselves, instead of trying to work on others (hence creating external conflicts), we will be so busy with our own mini exams and have no interest or time to create conflict in this world.
SilentContemplation
