A man goes to buy a national flag. The shopkeeper shows different sizes of the national flag to him. Then the man says something to the shopkeeper and the shopkeeper was shocked to hear that. Can you guess what was it that the man said to the shopkeeper? He asked, without thinking, “Can you show me other colours of the national flag?”

People are victim of their habits. Normally, while buying clothes, they are used to asking to see other colours but that habit creeps in even in buying a national flag! Our habits have become a psychological prison. To be free from this prison should be our endeavour. A rich student of mine and a PhD met me one evening, and with remorse asked me, “I have a lot of tension in spite of money. There are lot of differences between my wife and me. This is creating inner chaos. How shall I handle this?”

What gives us pain and hurt? Is it the differences or how we hold differences? We need to explore on this, I told him. We know how to read external books but the book of life we don’t know how to read. In external books, things are in black and white, but in the book of life, things are in the form of experiences. We have to understand the structure of our experience; the anatomy of our experiences.

What is that one has to understand from our experiences?

We need to know, how we are coding our experiences. It is the coding of our experiences, which makes us experience the experience. Is not our coding through our expectation, through our likes and dislikes, our dogmas and opinions? How do we meet an experience? We meet it with likes and dislikes.

Is there a better way of meeting an experience? Can we meet an experience without the likes and dislikes? What does this involve? Can we meet our experiences with peace and in a state of egolessness?

We meet an experience with our ego, vanity, with our hurt, and hence we mess it up. Let us say, there is a difference with your wife. See it, contact it with silence. The moment we contact it with our ego, then our ego is more powerful than a wise solution.

We must meet our differences with peace, with silence. The silence has intrinsic intelligence. That intelligence knows to solve or handle the problem. Give a pathway for the intelligence to flow. This is wise living.

How can I meet the differences with silence? Do you mean, I should not say anything?

No, that is not what I am saying. Let your mind be restful and not restless. Let your mind be peaceful. It is not the difference that is giving you pain. Rather, it is your interpretation of the difference that gives you pain. So, be calm. Calm involves inner alertness. Calm involves a mind which is not verbose. Calm involves your commitment to see differences objectively and not subjectively. One’s mind is repetitive in its self-talk. Hence, it is churning its own ignorance. When you are not mentally repetitive, then your alertness has objectivity in dealing. Please work on this. Your health will improve. Differences then become an experience and your coding of the experience is dropped and hence you can actually see an experience.