Don’t you react and get upset when instigated?
A very common example of the above negative energy, in personal and non-personal relationships, is when someone gets angry with you and manages to make you react and get upset, they manage to dominate you.
It reminds me of an incident from Rajputana Chronicles: Guns & Glories, of 1580 AD, as to how Dewan Karam Chand Bachhawat of Bikaner maintained his cool, inspite of being rebuked by his master Raja Rai Singh.
“Raja Rai Singh of Bikaner was extremely angry person and believed in every gossip. He always took decisions in hurry and did not care about its consequences. He would brag and talk loud to conceal his mistakes. The bohemian between Raja Rai Singh and Dewan Karam Chand could not last long and very soon tensions surfaced in their relationship.”
“Both Jain sources as well as Khayat of Dayaldas portray Raja Rai Singh as a very benevolent but extravagant personality. Judging from the marvellous liberality to Charans or bards with which the ‘Kiyant’ credits Rai Singh, he would appear to have had a great appreciation of poetry and every important circumstances of his life is attested by a ballad.”
“However, as Dewan of the state, Karam Chand had a guarded attitude in the interest of the state treasury and did not like this extravaganza on Bhaats and Charans. Hence Karam Chand remonstrated with the King over the reward of Rs 1 crore to a Bhaat but instead of reversing his order, Rai Singh increased the amount to Rs 1.25 crore.”
Can you imagine how Karam Chand felt? Yes, Karam Chand remained absolutely undisturbed as he was a regular practitioner of Preksha Meditation (प्रेक्षा-ध्यान), which is a core spiritual practice in Jainism.
In many different types of personal relationships or at the workplace, we sometimes feel ourselves to be in a position where we feel we are being dominated and controlled negatively by the opposite person. When you react you are allowing this control or allowing the other’s remote control to work.
It is you that chooses to allow yourself to be influenced and dominated. It is important for us to realize that we can choose and take the decision to allow ourselves to be controlled and dominated, or we can choose to express what we feel without being affected by the reaction of the other and still maintaining our love, respect and good wishes for the other.
Let us not allow ourselves to be dominated and influenced by entities external to us which includes objects and people or we will lose energy. Each moment we allow another person’s remote control to work successfully or we allow an object to control and dominate our emotional state, we weaken internally. We become like a puppet in the other person’s hands. A puppet is never powerful because it does not act on its own but is controlled by someone else. We need to prevent that, if we want to conserve our energy and remain spiritually strong.
Both meditation and spiritual knowledge increases our spiritual strength, our self-esteem or self-respect over a period of time. Thus, the increased energy level helps us remain in self-control and not only disallow the other’s remote control to work but also become assertive (not aggressive) and take a stand when required.