Saturday, November 11, 2017

The greatest curse of Kaliyuga – Praising and fault-finding – Me, My Guru



Contd........


The greatest curse of Kaliyuga – Praising and fault-finding – Me, My Guru



This statement hit us! We were here to get healed – that was OK, but now when she said ‘if you don’t change for better you are changing to become more negative’ was a sure eye-opener! During lunch we all discussed this and realized it to be true. In qualities that we were working we were growing positively – i.e., if I was irritated 10 times a day and I realized this nature in me and had accepted to work on it, then over the years my irritation has really come down. The number of issues where I got irritated also decreased over the years. Now I was more in control of events that they overtaking my emotions.  But as everyone knew I still hadn’t improved in the area of ‘punctuality’. Where I had improved very commendably in few other areas, here I had only worsened – not in terms of coming (more) late but by way of justifying it and putting the blame on anything but me! Now I had almost become an expert in convincing others infact made them feel sorry for being late. Yes, this attitude has changed for worse! We all applied to various aspects of our personality and found that contrast so clearly that it frightened us a bit.

Thankfully someone asked “ then how do we break that pattern and outgrow our every negativity and what are the reasons which are responsible for this to happen?”




“As already told by me – the twin qualities of praising and fault-finding make it important for us to grow in every direction” she, our Guru ventured to explain “Let me explain..Suppose after lunch someone says “maam pongal (a dish made with rice and pulse like porridge) is very tasty” to which asks ‘X’ says ‘how did you prepare’? and I give out the recipe and X retorts “Oh! I too make it the same way. I just don’t add ghee to it. If we add ghee, even our pongal would’ve been good!”

Or take a second case where one of you say “I like this story which you just said” to which ‘X’ says “I already heard my grandmother tell me so many times before. It’s an old story”.

In both the cases ‘X’ could’ve simply been silent and let the ‘praise’ of others stay. But it was not to be so! Why? (Here, that’s immaterial to let’s move ahead....). X could’ve improved either cooking and took the moral of the story if only had not resorted to fault-finding.

Look at these examples –

A: His discourse was excellent
B: But his daughter went for inter-case marriage

A: what a great artist!
B: but a divorcee!

A: she cooks so well
B: But she wears nightie (night gown) (and yes even that can be pointed as a negative trait in someone)

A: just look at his palatial bungalow
B: but he doesn’t have sons.”

We all laughed when she gave these examples. Most of us had heard it first-hand but hadn’t given it a thought. Now everything was sounding clear. Then we just found others’ responses odd and out of place. Now we saw that they made sense – about the other person’s character or rather lack of it!


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