Quote:
Originally Posted by The Cloud  Taking offense is a negative emotion, correct? Not something that you would actively desire to feel. Then why would you encourage a viewpoint that requires that you feel offended, if your goal is to be happy? You can only be happy right now, if you're ever going to be happy. Giving up happiness now for the perceived chance of happiness later is a dead-end philosophy, because if less happy now = more happy later, then you will always be giving up happiness now in favor of a later bounty, which you will promptly sacrifice for a bounty further down the road. So taking offense delays your happiness just so that you can teach somebody a lesson. Kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? |
I absolutely agree, and I had some time to think about this last night. Taking full accountability really will mean for me from now on not to label the energies that surround me any more. In the example above with the "arrogant" colleague,
I created the arrogance by labeling his behaviour and energies as "arrogant" in my mind. This morning, I apologised to this colleague in my mind for doing so and for assigning a negative meaning to his energies. And I sent him love. I also just let his and other energies
be. This is what I mean with
dancing with other energies. These energies are truly neutral and do not harm or threaten you or take something away from you until you label them. In the example above
I created classical buddhist suffering by labeling and by refusing to just accept the energies of other people as they are. I wanted his behaviour to be different
And you can
still stand up for yourself and teach other people how to treat you without labeling them or taking offense. E.g. someone jumps the queue, someone shouts at you, someone does not listen to you. Without labeling these behaviours as good or bad, you can simply state the facts and emphasise that you do not accept such behaviour.