How often do you find yourself caught up in disturbing feelings such as anger, dislike, fear or jealousy towards another person. How often do such feelings create misunderstandings and even conflict for you? How often do you believe that it is the other person’s actions that have caused you to respond in a particular manner? Because of this belief, we may have been unable to recognize how our own behavior has become negative too.
Here’s a beautiful example of how our feelings are reflected back to us from others as clearly as a mirror reflects an image that comes before it! This is the case of a young woman, who found that she was always in an unpleasant mood. A friend asked her what was the reason for her unhappiness… to which she replied: “I don’t get along well with my mother-in-law. She never appreciates anything I do, doesn’t like the food I cook and always finds a reason to fight with me. I so wish she wasn’t in our lives; I’d do anything to get rid of her.”
Her friend suggested she seek help from a woman who dealt in magic to see if she could help her out.
The young lady went to the magician to discuss the problems she was having with living with her mother-in-law, who she really wished was not present in her life! The magician after listening to her tale gave her a magic potion and told her that she should mix the potion with milk and give it to her mother-in-law every night. After 30 days her mother-in-law would die and no one would know the reason for it. The magician added that it was very important that The the potion needed to be given to her mother-in-law every night by the daughter-in-law herself.
And so the young lady came back with the potion and started thinking as to how she would make her mother-in-law drink the milk without making her suspicious. She thought to herself, “Considering my relationship with her, she would not drink anything from my hand. I will have to show her that I have changed and that I care for her. Only then I can get her to drink the magic potion.”
The lady started faking her love and devotion towards her mother-in-law. This came as a big surprise for everyone – but the trick worked. As she started obeying her mother-in-law – the mother-in-law accepted the potion mixed with milk each night.
After 25 days of giving the potion, the lady started realizing that her mother-in-law was not the bad person she thought she was. During those 25 days, because the lady was showering love, her mother-in-law was reciprocating very nicely and there were no fights between them. She realised that while faking her love for all these days, she had actually started loving her mother-in-law.
She felt remorse -that she had been giving this magic potion to her mother-in-law and that she might die, she got worried and went back to the magician. She said, “It was my mistake to want my mother-in-law to die. By changing my feelings for her, I have realised that she is a very nice person and that she has very good feelings for me. What can I do to remove the effect of the magic potion?” The wise magician calmly replied, “What I gave you was not poison, but a lovely, saffron syrup. After hearing your tale I understood that all that you lacked was love inside you. Once you started loving your mother-in-law, you saw your love coming back to you from her. So you don’t have to worry about her, she will be alright.”
The young lady was happy to hear this and came home and continued her loving behavior.
The behavior we receive from people around us depends on the feelings that we radiate to them from our thoughts, words, and actions. Instead of being caught up with negative feelings, we need to look beyond the reasons of our hatred or ill feeling for that person.
Each one of has certain specialities and we need to focus only on those specialities to create harmony around us. Even if we start with fake feelings, when we force ourselves to love the other person, we will find that there is a transformation within us and in the other person.
We also have to check our thoughts and if we find that any negative thought is being created in our minds, we must put a stop to that thought and replace it with thoughts that consider and focus upon the specialities of the other person.
When we do this, we will definitely see transformation in others and also find that we can keep ourselves out of negativity and easily and naturally behave positively to others.
This story and the principle that it reveals is true!
p.s. It was borrowed from a Brahma Kumari Facebook Post- which I wished to share with all of YOU on this blog called ENLIGHTENED ANSWERS!!!
ENLIGHTENED ANSWERS 