The doors of peace open only with the key of trust

Irrespective of what happened to you yesterday, irrespective of what you did to the world or what the world did to you, irrespective of anything and everything, you have to wake up every morning and trust this world all over again. I know it is easier said than done, but you don’t have a choice – just don’t have another choice – because your peace is entwined with your trust. Without trust, there is no peace. Distrust leaves you distressed.

In the thousands of time that you may use public transport, your wallet may be picked a couple of times at the most. Even when you don’t trust the world and check your wallet and check your wallet every few minutes, some competent, professional thief will get better of you and pick your pocket some day… but it would have cost you a million opportunities to be peaceful otherwise. The eyes that see every co-passenger as a potential thief would have ruined your peace thousands of times, while trusting the world would have made every journey peaceful. Be wise and not otherwise.

A Nathuram Godse may get his way through, but in seeing everyone as a potential Godse you will miss a million Gandhians. Not worth it. In search of on Osama, you will have to doubt every noble heart. Not worth it.

One employee may betray your trust. Still trust the rest. A key relationship may take your goodness to be your weakness, and your trust might be exploited. Wake up another morning and start trusting all over again. I may sound naïve, but I’m showing you the gates of peace, which open only with the keys of trust.

If peace is what you seek, even if you were cheated yesterday, then you don’t have another choice but to wake up the next morning and trust this world all over again. Whenever I have been cheated or betrayed or hurt, I have always told myself, “Thank God that I was cheated but I was not the cheat; I was betrayed, but I didn’t betray; I was hurt, but I dint hurt. Let me suffer the wrong but never inflict the wrong.”

Let us assume every morning that the world will be trustworthy from today. The world will live up to our trust a zillion times and let us down a few hundred times. The odds are tremendously in our favor. Let the heart tilt in the direction of trust.

There is only one way to peace – T.R.U.S.T

The truth you resist is the battle you fight

When lived honestly, life heals itself. The truth you resist is the battle you fight.

You have dumped clothes inside a washing machine. The machine has performed its job. Now the clothes have to be taken out for drying. The longer you keep the clothes inside the machine, the fouler the odor will be. Don’t take it out for a few days and the stench will become unbearable. So it is with our thoughts and emotions. The more and more we keep building thoughts but do not communicate, and the more and more we feel emotions but do not express, the greater becomes the gap in the relationship. How long will you sweep things under the carpet? Eventually it will come out; and when it comes out, it will come out in unmanageable ugly proportions.

Thoughts formed but not communicated, and emotions felt but not expressed become incomplete cycles. Incomplete cycles linger alive in subconscious. Metaphorically, the lingering incomplete cycles are like scratches formed on the spectacles – anything and everything seen through the spectacle looks scratched. It is ironical that the scratches are not on objects, but in the medium through which the objects are viewed. In all, they hamper the vision.

When you do not spontaneously communicate your thoughts and express your feelings, you begin to distort them. You tend to exaggerate or diminish the truth to placate your suppressed feelings. When you cannot face it, you tend to deny it. What you cannot accept, you pretend not to care about. As far as our incomplete cycles are concerned, time, it seems, makes a liar out of all of us.

The secret of emotional health is to tell the persons who hurt you that they hurt you, when they hurt you. Otherwise these incomplete cycles will reappear sometime in future and ruin even your good times. The weight of the emotional baggage burdens the present. Something in the present will remind you of some unfinished suppression and reawaken old feelings. Those reawakened feelings will lead you to act in a way that may be completely irrelevant to the current context of your life. However, it is important to remember that old feelings resurface in order to be resolved and not to punish you. Emotional stress is purely due to thoughts not communicated and emotions not expressed. Emotional illness is a storage disease.

You are telling me, “Honestly, if I start expressing all my thoughts and feelings, I will hurt the person who matters so much to me.” I am telling you, “If you don’t, you will eventually hurt the relationship itself.”

Let us learn to face the truth, even if it hurts. Let those who matter to us the most learn to face the truth, even if it hurts. Communicate your thoughts and feelings directly to the person who instigated it. Be prompt. Don’t wait for ideal conditions. Be simple. Finish your complaint and let go. Don’t exaggerate, don’t nag, don’t overkill. If the person feels with you, you have succeeded. If not, understand who you are dealing with. Accept what is. Forgive and let go of your hurt. Move on… You have nothing to prove.