Reaction or Creation
There are times when something suddenly happens that makes you sad or upset. You feel like you did not have a choice in that. There is always a choice. In the case of thoughts or events that seem to come out of no where, which is rarely the case, you have the choice to either react or respond to them. Reaction is what most people do most of the time. There is no right or wrong here, it how we were raised in this society. If you will take a moment after something occurs to breath deeply, so you can step back from the situation. Then from this new place you can make the conscious choice to respond instead of react. This gives way to creation as you bring something new into the world. In this way you really can and do change the world around you.
Reaction usually comes from old instincts, like fight or flight. We have been inadvertently trained by our parents, teachers and society to react a certain way in any given situation. In this way of living, reacting to the actions or words of other people, we give away our power of choice. When you react, no matter what the situation is, it will start a cycle of reaction in the world around you. He did this so I had no choice but to do this back, and then the other person will of course have to react as well. This carries over into all aspects of our life. Instead of choosing how to live our own lives, we are going with the flow of reaction to reaction. We get caught up in this way of life and do not realize that we have lost control of where our life is headed. This can bring some pretty random events into our daily life. It is no wonder so many feel that life is chaotic and there is no controlling it. This gives way to people believing that luck, good and bad, is what brings any situation into their lives.
The only way to break the cycle of reaction is by making a conscious choice to respond. When we learn to respond, we are becoming more conscious of the way we handle our lives, and this will bring positive change into our life. Most times a situation can seem much worse in the moment that it is happening than when we are able to look back on it with hind sight. So typically, if we are not ‘present’ in the present moment, we will over react to a situation and later we feel bad or guilty about it. Where as if we take the time to breath and be fully here, we can see the event for what it is and then respond to it in a much more appropriate way.
This is where creation comes in. We have now brought in new energy around this situation and how it was handled. Any person who witnesses this event take place and how you respond to it will come away with that new teaching and may start to replace their old programming of reaction. A curious thing I noticed in looking at the actual words reaction and creation, they are almost the same word, just move the ‘C’. So if you can change how you ‘see’ your reaction, you will end up with a new creation.
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ReplyDeleteWhat you say is truly logical...and I think I am not unduly exaggerating when I state you are onto something with the potential to be quite profound here. The practical, daily importance of introspection in our daily lives...and that is something that seems to be all too often missing in our lives...like a lost yet essential art. You have spoken clearly and with great wisdom. There is objective truth in what you say in these four paragraphs (though I lack the mathematical ability to scientifically prove it beyond enough reasonable doubt). Intuitively at least, what you say is true.
ReplyDelete(Of course, how a person responds consciously is also determined partially by their intended purpose and if there is a lack of merit in the intended purpose, the probability will increase in turn that things will still turn out badly or at least confused, as has happened so often throughout human history as well. Whether such a situation ends up being likely to be better or worse than raw, automatic reaction...Well, knowing that with any great certainty would require one to somehow know what might have happened otherwise in a given situation. As every action and inaction can potentially involve a conscious decision, figuring out what might have happened can be like trying to figure out Chaos Theory...let alone all the variables (known and unknown) probably existing in every situation. But we still have (or at least appear to have) rough probabilities to work with I guess. But if a person's intended, conscious purpose is bad...Well, that can happen by accident and such harmful action can even be willfully purposeful...Among people, such conscious responses can be even be intended to manipulate a reaction or set of reactions from a crowd with varying degrees of success. There is so much going on here at the same time in every situation and interaction it can be hard to even see what is what or what any situation is beyond the various (often ego-twisted) perspectives of it (including our own inescapable perspectives...the blind-spot of the ego is what I call this). "We see through a glass darkly."
And yet there is great wisdom and truth in what you said in this post (I haven't read the others yet). And despite all this I must agree...it is generally better for us all to act and live consciously (as often as possible), and respond rather than to merely react, often blindly. If we have our eyes open, perhaps we will be that much closer to figuring out what we should ideally use them for...besides merely seeing whatever we want to see.
As I too often (perhaps with dark humor) think of it; if we merely goes through life just reacting without stepping back and thinking, then I ask what makes us, ultimately, that much different from the cat or dog that we may keep as a pet? Perhaps then, in that situation, a situation wherein we merely react without thinking deeply, we are not actually so different from any other animal...but, as with anything taken to extremes, to a dark place this loose metaphor can carry us in its turns. No one is truly inferior for, at the very least (and as our true potentials, realized or not, are all too often too unknown), we all have the potential to respond rather than to merely react even if all too often, we do not realize it.
And remember...in this world wherein even nothing (the perceived absence of a thing) is itself possible to categorize as something, even an inaction is itself (for good and for ill) an action. A lack of reaction can, on occasion, itself be a valid response in some, particular situations.
Or in tie-dye terms: You can choose to put a color on a shirt and get an effect...or you can choose to leave a shirt or a part of a shirt blank and empty but that too, (an inaction) also creates an effect for whether you act and choose to dye the fabric or not, the fabric of the shirt is still there, either effected by your choice of action to dye it or affected by your choice not to dye it and so to if you did not think of dying it at all.
Now perhaps the need to consciously respond is itself a reaction to the seemingly automatic reactions of others...but at least it carries with it the inherent potential benefits of consciousness and thus the potential for conscientiousness...(though this doesn't sound relaxed and easy enough to describe how it feels when you get good at it)...once you learn how to do it, stepping back from a situation can be very easy when your have practice...but the learning curve can be steep...initially it can be like trying to learn how to not shout when you unexpectedly stub your toe or hit your head...not giving into immediate reaction can even feel, at first, oppressive...
ReplyDeleteBut as your get used to the idea of thinking things through rather than reacting, the oppressive feeling fades giving rise to a new found sense of, (not of power or even of control), but...I guess to use a big word, "transcendental" understanding of a situation...and while this understanding alone will not allow you to escape the situation, it will allow you to seemingly see the situation you may be embroiled in from angles that you may never have known existed. Sometimes this perspective can seem to help, though for all other intents and purposes, oftentimes nothing will have really changed (the water in the half-full/half-empty glass will remain the same regardless of which angle you view it from)...but it can help you understand a more about what’s going on, what happened and maybe, if you're lucky, what can be done about it, if there is anything you can do.