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.
