How to not to react to hurt?

Questioner: How to stop the immediate reaction when we feel hurt?

Acharya Prashant: Why stop it? You don't like that reaction, right? Who is this one who doesn't like that reaction Manish (questioner)? You have said, “The reaction comes when you get hurt.” I am asking you to consider, “Is that reaction itself not hurt?” Do you get hurt first and then there is a reaction or is hurt itself the name of the reaction?

Aren’t the two one?

You have an image of the right life. You have an image of the right responses. You have an image of yourself also. You want to live and be as per that image. Something happens, a reaction arises from you. That reaction is not what the image dictates. That reaction is not mentioned in the image manual. You don't like that.

Your concern is not your reaction but the fact that your reaction does not subscribe to the goodness manual. If you could be deeply tutored that the same reaction is a great reaction then you would no more be bothered about that reaction.

I repeat, we have been told how we must react to certain things? And when we don't find that our actual reactions are matching the prescribed reactions, we feel offended. We feel, we have lost a few points. We exist in other’s eyes. The manual also comes from others. We are always assessing ourselves as per the template provided by others. There is no need to stop any response. The reaction that you give to any situation is who you are.

If you curb that reaction, if you block the expression of your conditioning then you are only depriving yourself from knowing how deeply conditioned you are. Will that help? That is the only way you can know yourself in situations.

Situations bring out the fact of your being. Otherwise, you only have imaginations and assumptions about yourself.

You may keep feeling that you are the most courageous fellow in the world. It is only when you are faced with a little cat in the dark that you come to know how really courageous you are. And if that confrontation with the cat doesn't happen then your imaginations will continue. You will keep feeling to yourself and certifying to yourself and boasting to yourselves that you are really fearless.

There is no need to feel offended when the cat scares you. The cat has done you a favor. The cat has told you of the fear that is already reciting in your depths.

So, when that reaction comes, watch it. And don't watch only the reaction, let watchfulness be something that you fall for. Let it be your natural abiding state. Then you will also be able to watch all that which contributes to the reaction. Your reaction, your hurt doesn't arise in a vacuum. You don't suddenly get hurt. Hurt is pre-scripted. Hurt has been building up since a while.

You must watch the process of accumulation of hurt. You must watch how bit by bit you become susceptible to hurt? You must watch how layer after layer, item after item, you have kept collecting material that is prone to getting hurt.

Unless, there are combustibles in your house how would anything catch fire? Not only must you watch the moment when the fire arose but you must also watch the entire process of accumulation of inflammatory material. We don't watch that. We don't find that important. We watch only that particular instance when the fire broke out. That particular instance is spectacular, sensual but it is just the end product.

You must watch how one is brought to a point where one becomes very-very susceptible to hurt. You have collected so much that is very fragile and you are carrying it with you. Now, you can be hurt. You can be hurt because there is a lot of peripheral accumulation that you are carrying. That accumulation gets hurt. Don't you want to know what is it about you that gets hurt? And from where did you gather it?

You, in your purity cannot be hurt. You in your absolute nakedness cannot be hurt. You without any accessories cannot be hurt. You without any attachments, any belongings cannot be hurt. You without any expectations, hopes and desires cannot be hurt.

Don't you watch from where you collected these hopes and desires? Don't you want to watch all that? Or do you just watch that sensational moment of the break out of fire.

Yes, the mind is a sensationalist. It loves big headlines. But if you are really an explorer, a lover of truth then you must read the fine print. You must look at the entire chain of causation.

The more you gather to protect yourself, the more weak you become, the more you become vulnerable to hurt.

Only that which you collect to defend yourself against hurt, gets hurt.

Are getting it?

Nothing that you have is unbreakable. Time breaks everything. So, if you have anything, you will get hurt. All things get broken. All things will leave you prone to hurt, doesn't matter what you have or show me something that will remain unscathed by time.

The more you are mired in networks of identities, good and bad, this and that, me and the other, the more you will find that your day is spent counting your wounds. And there are so many who spend their entire lives licking their wounds.

You don't want to be one of them.

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