In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one. –– Epictetus
How good are you at making sense of trouble? When life pulls the rug out from under you, can you reason out why?
Sometime in mid-winter of 2014, my towel was stolen off the hook at the YMCA. When I came out of the shower, dripping wet, I found my towel gone and in its place a worn and dirty look-alike. I was furious, and the fact that the thief left a filthy towel in place of mine, one I wouldn’t use under any circumstance, only made matters worse. When the emotion finally subsided and I had a chance to reflect on it later that evening, I found myself remembering a similar event that happened a half century earlier, and making sense of trouble.
I was nine or ten years old, spending a winter Saturday at a nearby ski area. I was wearing a stylish ski hat that I had inherited from one of my older brothers. It was a little worn and a little dirty, but I felt very grown up wearing it. While sitting at one of the tables in the main lodge, I looked down and saw on the bench the very same hat as the one I was wearing, only it was brand-spanking new, clean and plush, probably just bought in the boutique shop, or perhaps received as a Christmas present. It was the same color, the same size, identical in every way. It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. I stole that hat and left my worn and dirty one in its place!
I suppose I made the switch as much to cover my tracks and give me time to get away with the goods, as I did out of a sense of decency, not wishing to leave its owner without a hat to wear on a cold winter day. My friend the towel thief probably felt much the same way. The temptation of a new and clean towel, small a thing as that may seem to be, probably triggered in him the same larcenous desire as that pristine ski hat had aroused in me some fifty years earlier.
My first reaction to the loss of my towel, of course, was one of indignation, of feeling wronged, yet it was inescapably clear that I had once wronged another in precisely the same manner as had now been done to me.
One major theme of the Lemurian Philosophy holds that we are not innocent bystanders in the events occurring in our lives. Putting forth the effort to sincerely study and apply the Philosophy can gradually raise our awareness to the point where we may correlate these events with our own thoughts and actions, making sense of trouble, bringing into our lives a greater sense of peace and understanding of ourselves and of others.
I had no claim to righteous indignation when my towel was taken. I am one of those people who believe that things happen for a reason. But were I not a student of the Lemurian Philosophy, I doubt whether I would ever have earned the opportunity to correspond these two events and gain valuable insight from the experience. #actionandreaction #lifechallenges #spiritualprogress #spiritualintelligence #universallaws #lemurianphilosophy
