Let go of hurt feelings

Right from the time I remember, I used to get hurt a lot if other people would not treat me well. It was not easy to forget what they did and I would continue to think about that over and over. I would become so furious in my mind… I would start to plan a strategy about how I would give it back to them.

Those thoughts would occupy a lot of space in my mind. I could not let go cause I would feel extremely diminished when other person ill treated me.  I harboured a lot of revenge and resentful thoughts against them.

Then I learnt about The Three Principles  which taught me that you cannot feel or experience other people. You can only experience your thoughts about the other person or a situation.

Eg. Suppose your partner does not treat you well and you think “How can he treat me like this. What does he think of himself  blah,blah, blah”. You will feel anger.

Same situation and you think “Why everyone treats me like this. No one treats me in a nice way. Am I so bad? …blah,blah, blah ” You will feel sad.

Same situation and you think “ What happened to him. Is he ok? Why is he behaving like this?” Then you will feel compassion.

We do not realize that I felt anger because I thought angry thoughts.

I felt sad because I thought sad thoughts.

We assume that I felt anger because other person made me angry.

I felt sad because the other person made me sad.

The situation is neutral . But it is what we think after that or what meaning we give to the situation is what we will experience mentally. But because of the illusionary nature of thought, it will look as if I experienced the other person or the situation.

So what used to happen in my case is when a person did not treat me I would think lots of sad/ hurtful thoughts and make it mean that “if they did this to me, means, my value got lowered, I become less” and I would feel very hurt.

If you see in the example, in the third scenario, the person felt compassion. Why because she did not make any meaning of the situation. She did not think thoughts like “he did this, means, my value got lowered”. Earlier, I did not see this choice at all. I did not know that I have a choice to not think this thought “if they did this to me, means, I became less” and I would not experience that diminished feeling, which I did not like to feel, which I thought was coming from them and hence used to blame them a lot.

When I realized this, I started to choose differently. And when my choices changed, my thoughts and hence my experiences also changed.

Now, I am able to take other people’s action not so personally and hence am able to let go easily.