How many times in life do we really want to express ourselves to another person about their behaviour or a situation, or even to say how we feel about them, but we hold ourselves back? It is easy to allow our fear to control us which has the unfortunate consequence of turning us into ineffective people with self-imposed limitations on our lives.
Seeker: A question keeps coming up about confrontation, and you talk about surrender on the inside.
Vishrant: Yes.
Seeker: With becoming more open, does surrender on the outside happen as well?
Vishrant: Yes. Generally speaking, it does.
Seeker: Unless the consequence might be too big, usually there is surrender on the outside as well?
Vishrant: It’s about appropriateness. We live in a society that has certain boundaries that are in place; cultural boundaries, sexual boundaries and personal boundaries. If we cross these boundaries it causes trouble, so these boundaries remain. Why cause trouble for yourself or for other people?
However, this has nothing to do with internal surrender. If we don’t have boundaries on the outside it’s possible that people may walk all over us and hurt us. There needs to be a boundary, and you see it especially with kids. The mums and dads have to put the boundaries in place for the child; they still love the child to bits but the child needs boundaries and parameters that are put up.
So we look at fear and we say, ‘Hey, what does fear do?’ It effectively closes us down. It’s also a necessary thing for the survival of the vehicle, but if we allow fear to govern our lives, we stay closed and if we go into a confrontation, whoever it’s with, and we’re operating from fear, well we’re already closed towards them anyway. It’s like we’re not operating from an open space.
If it’s a healthy relationship with a child, these boundaries are enforced to protect the child. The same goes for our own boundaries, sexual boundaries and whether we steal stuff from other people; there’s a boundary there. If we want trouble, all we have got to do is step past our cultural boundaries and see what happens. If we are truly interested in peace we stay within the boundaries.
Seeker: I’m starting to see a lot of fear around. The ego starts talking about ‘if you don’t stand up for yourself you will get trodden over.’ I suppose it’s always been there, but it sort of makes things worse because you’re running off what could happen in the future.
Vishrant: Yes, because fear closes us and in a way I’m teaching people not to close. So we look at fear and we say, ‘Hey, what does fear do?’ It effectively closes us down. It’s also a necessary thing for the survival of the vehicle, but if we allow fear to govern our lives we stay closed and if we go into a confrontation, whoever it’s with, and we’re operating from fear, well we’re already closed towards them anyway. It’s like we’re not operating from an open space. So, we need to learn how to be open whilst in every situation in life and this takes practice because most of us have practised being closed, especially in confronting situations.
Really, we need to learn to be open no matter what’s happening, because this facilitates heart on every occasion. It takes practice, it just takes practice, you catch yourself closing and you go ‘ah…’ and let go a bit. You just keep practising until you get good at being open, that’s if you want to, but if you’re interested in the beauty of heart and you recognise that it really does appear in openness and not in closeness, well you go ‘ah… lets open up and see what happens’. Or, you can follow fear and see what happens. It’ll show you another picture. It’s very difficult for someone to love when they’re operating with massive amounts of fear.
So, one of the things it’s good to look at is what facilitates love and what doesn’t facilitate love? How can I support this beauty? What can I do to support this beauty in my life and in the lives of others? From that you come up with a whole pile of things that are really helpful, and then it’s up to you whether you’re going to continue to do those or to put some kind of habit in place of not doing them.
That’s all we’re doing. We’re talking about changing habits from a habit of closure to a habit of openness.
The beauty of this teaching is that we can learn to be open and truly with another person whilst confronting them at the same time. Is it easy? No, this is not easy but can we justify remaining in life but not really living for the rest of our lives and teaching our children to be the same? To quote Pink Floyd, “Another Brick In the Wall” forever or not?
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