Oh my have I had my battles with indignation. It’s a tricky emotion. Essentially it’s a response of anger or frustration for a perceived error in/or unfair treatment. It blocks out all opportunity for expansion and resolution. I don’t know where I developed it, but it seems to be a close cousin to defensiveness. Another emotion I have been far too well acquainted with over the years. I had a few humiliating opportunities to realise that my automatic response of indignation had to be dealt with.
It helps to understand how the mind works. We develop seemingly crazy little prejudices and biases over time, usually based on nothing important that grind their way into our neural pathway, automate and then become our status quo. We’re usually completely unaware that we’re even leaning into them time and time again. You know that feeling of being so familiar with your drive home, that you can’t even remember driving through certain suburbs (another conversation on present moment awareness to come), well the brain is built the same. It’s simply driving us down the same old road without awareness. Tricky if the negative bias we have is towards an unsustainable or even gross behaviour.
This is why I love VEDIC MEDITATION so much. The brain is expanded, the mind expanded (they’re not the same thing) and new pathways, new driving routes can be more easily made. A little extra work from us is helpful though. What stimulated this article, was I heard a story about a man, who received a really expensive telephone bill for their landline. It listed one call to a 900 number was 2 hours long. He rang the telecommunication company and they insisted that the call was made. He was really pissed as he was sure the call hadn’t come from his home. 900 numbers were usually adult lines. But he asked his wife (his kids were 4yrs and under and didn’t use the phone line) and she promised she hadn’t made any calls like that and he knew he hadn’t. So he was outraged and ready to let rip at the telecommunications company Then he paused, rang the number himself and a chipper voice came on telling a kids story. After some investigating it seems the number was in fact printed in the comic strip he gave his little boy from the newspaper to keep him quiet while he himself read the paper. His little boy had in fact called this number, but hadn’t known to hang up and had just put the phone on the ground. 2 hours later someone must have walked by and popped it back on the hook. As his son had only even spoken to grandparents on the phone, and had been handed the phone and had it taken back off him, he had no idea that you paid for phone calls or that you had to replace the receiver.
So it was a simple mistake. And not worth the indignation and resentment over a misunderstood situation quickly resolved. I love this story as we each know a situation (or a thousand) where we have jumped the gun, and denied responsibility and assumed a wrongdoing was occurring. To us. The horror!!
Creativity is the process of pausing at the right times, to ask the right questions. To dig a little. To be curious. To understand we have developed certain ways of thinking over the years that might not serve us or anyone else. To actively participate in the re-wiring of our brains. I now take a tiny pause when I remember to ask myself ‘is this an old automated response’ when I feel that little jump in my chest or tightening in my throat, and then I question based on the answer ‘how can I respond with grace now’. Try it.
If you’re keen to adopt a daily practice of re-wiring your brain so you can be more creative, compassionate and grateful, come learn MEDITATION with me. We have courses in Sydney through February in Paddington and Palm Beach, and throughout the year, as well as in Melbourne in March, Los Angeles in April and Byron Bay in May.
With love,
Jac