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Hello my friends,
Lets not let anyone push our buttons today,Have peace and grace in your hearts.Kathy
Who Pushes Your Buttons?
How to be compassionate instead of critical the next time someone gets on your nerves.
By Raphael Cushnir
Reprinted from Spirituality & Health magazine, June 2005.
People bug me. All kinds of people. Like the guy who takes up two parking spaces for his SUV. Or the kids who toss beer cans along my favorite hiking trail.
I actually feel hateful toward these people. When I think about them, my stomach clenches and my eyes narrow and I feel an ugly surge of, well, hate. It doesn't last that long, and I don't identify with it, yet still, for that one moment when I'm awash in hate's fury, I just want to wring their necks.
Why does this matter? Because I'm a "spiritual teacher." After a successful career as a Hollywood screenwriter and filmmaker, my life fell apart, my heart broke wide open, and now I write books on love and happiness and travel around the country giving talks on how to achieve them. Does that make me a hypocrite? I'll let you decide. But one thing is certain — it makes me a human being.
Human beings love to hate. Even more, they love to judge. While hate is a feeling, judgment is its rationale. We allow ourselves the perverse pleasure of our hatred when we decide that those who elicit it are evil, or some kind of threat, or that they've wronged us. Even when we're not actually in the direct experience of hate, we still thrive on enumerating all the reasons that these people are different from us, less than us.
Of course I've exaggerated. Often, rather than full-blown hatred, it's just annoyance or irritation that accompanies our judgments. That's certainly the case with my personal examples above. But such low-grade judgments can actually be even more toxic than the hate-fueled variety. This is because they're able to proliferate beneath our radar. Not only can we be unaware that they exist, but we may even deny them outright. Sometimes, those of us who pride ourselves on personal growth, who think we're beyond judgment, turn out to be the most judgmental of all.
The Bible admonishes, "Judge not lest ye be judged." But in my experience, it's impossible not to judge. We all do it, all the time. And it hurts us far more than those we judge. It isolates us, makes us small, and bars us from our spiritual essence.
None of this, however, is a problem. In fact it's a wonderful opportunity. Recognizing our judgments, and working with them skillfully, is how we cultivate compassion. And cultivating compassion is the key to well-being.
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