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Why do we get hurt?
If someone calls me a fool and I get hurt, does that mean I have an image about myself as a brilliant man - and because someone contradicts that image, I get hurt? Or if someone calls me a loser and I get hurt, does that mean deep down I believe in cutthroat competition even though outwardly I may say otherwise?
My point here is: if something hurts us psychologically, could we safely conclude that it exposes a wound inside, something that needs to be cleaned up fast? It could be our repressed desires, fears, anything. And getting hurt might well be the proof that the thing is active inside of us, even though we may have forgotten about it.
What's the solution?
My point here is: if something hurts us psychologically, could we safely conclude that it exposes a wound inside, something that needs to be cleaned up fast? It could be our repressed desires, fears, anything. And getting hurt might well be the proof that the thing is active inside of us, even though we may have forgotten about it.
What's the solution?
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Comments
Until or if you have total loss of your ego and you get hurt by somebody elses words, take a moment to repeat to yourself what they said and why and then react. they may be right, you may being a dick, you may not. If you are not in the 'wrong' then explain your point of view with a calm and well put together manner, question their motive for doing so and then they may look at themselves.
Stop clinging to the ego, it doesn't exist unless you make it exist, peel it away and throw it in the bin like an onion, unless you want to give it to me to eat!
I think everyone suffers from varing degrees of inadequacy. In a sense, it is the reason why our skandha's arose to manifest as the composite being that we are.
It is an expression of our sense of separation from everything else.
What ever inflames that innate inadequacy points out a path to address the reason of our existence.
My solution is to try to automatically see how all such arising "hurt" fits with the 4NT's.
Meditation is my vehicle to try to allow such hurt to unfold un emcombered by habutated protectionist identity impulses.
Works for me.
There is consciousness, but it is always conscious of some thing: "Someone is disclosed by something. Something is disclosed by someone." (Nagarjuna) We have the illusion that we are distinct, independently acting, permanent entities, when who we are is constantly changing, even at this very moment. No two moments are ever identical and no two perceptions are ever identical.
Listen to Beethoven's sixth symphony for example (my favourite symphony of his--and I assume you like Beethoven too): The music, and what you perceive and feel naturally vary from one moment to the next, sometimes even abruptly. Bear in mind what Nagarjuna says: "Someone is disclosed by something. Something is disclosed by someone." Who you are in that very moment of listening is revealed through the interaction with the music. What is more, listen to the exact same recording a second time around, and the moment of interaction is different--it cannot be duplicated.
We crave for stability, we want to be just one thing, and the certainty of being that one thing. We want to exist. This contradiction is what brings about suffering, because all the various masks are competing against one another. Which one is the "real" you? Various circumstances seem to validate one mask but then two minutes later a there is a circumstance that seems to validate another mask, even a contradictory one. That ceaseless whirlwind of activity is itself suffering.
You are certainly correct though in that the masks take shape in our early past. Different experiences help give rise to and continue to validate the various masks. We like to hang on to certain ones and call that our "identity," again seeking stability (even if the identity is not a very positive one, at least it is stable, so we think!). Many of the early wounds we suffer give rise to the masks we might otherwise not pay much attention to, until someone exposes it like a raw nerve.
None of this is to merely dismiss the masks as non-substantial though. The masks (or tendencies) should be examined, as you suggest, for where they may have arisen from psychologically. The repression of certain masks doesn't eliminate that pain, but only exacerbates the problem, so the masks need to be examined by oneself, which takes time, patience and a lot of healing. We get into the naturally harmful habit of thinking "I am a likeable person," "I am unlovelable," "I am intelligent," "I am a bad person," etc. The word "am" is actually more the source of the problem in those statements than the word "I." In actuality we cannot define ourselves (or others) in any final, essential, absolute sense.
Meditation is to train oneself to observe the flurry of masks but without getting caught up in them, not identifying with them.