Roger Harty: It’s All About Reaction

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LAST week I wrote about change and the fact that accepting change as a constant is a great awareness for living.

Change by its very nature is beyond our control and nobody can ultimately guarantee you what is going to happen be it in the next minute, hour, day, week, month, or year.

If we can’t predict what is going to happen then how can we control it. The answer is obvious, we can’t control it – it is simply beyond our control. This in turn brings its own kind of fear as we somehow do not like or embrace being out of control.

Ah!!  But there is good news to follow. Here it is…

We cannot control what happens in our lives but, We can always control how we react.

The secret that I am sharing with you is to go to the control centre, the second part of the equation. The one thing that we always have control over is how we react to any given situation.

The only game in town is our reaction. ‘It’s All About Reaction’.

Anyone will tell you it is easy to react when the things are going well in our lives, when we get good news.

However the real benefit of knowing how to control our reactions can come to the fore when we get bad news, when things are difficult and the going gets very tough.

The Buddhist advice here is very clear.

Treat success (good news) and failure (bad news) exactly the same as they are both imposters.

What they mean by the word ‘Treat’ is to control how we react – to train ourselves to react to both equally.

Even the most ardent of Buddhist practitioners would tell you that this type of reaction does require regular and consistent training of the mind to come to this realisation and then application of the same.

Perhaps that is why they are called Buddhist practitioners as they are in a constant state of practice and as we all know the more I practice at anything the better I get.

Jesus in His own way demonstrated this by sincere example when He offered up His life for us on The Cross.

As He was suffering and was being mocked by soldiers (Who represent all of us), He reacted with complete acceptance of His situation.

He did not complain about being wronged or even of His innocence. He did not blame anyone or anything but entered into a state of complete acceptance of His tortuous situation. His final reaction which was the only thing He could control at the time was…Thy Will Be Done.

He demonstrated through self- example and unlimited love for us that Acceptance of God’s Will is the ultimate form of reaction.

It’s all about Reaction!

• Next week I am going to write about ‘Control — It Gets Bad Press’

One Comment

  1. Matty O'Leary says:

    Change by its very nature is beyond our control?
    If we can’t predict what is going to happen then how can we control it?
    Wrong, again!

    once a upon a time, in 1930’s Europe there was a ‘Treat’, a man named Mr Hitler who tried to change the Western world. One man by the name of Mr Chamberlain believed “Change by its very nature is beyond our control” and “If we can’t predict what is going to happen then how can we control it”.
    However, lucky for Western civilisation there was a man by the name of Mr Churchill, he, like most ordinary people believed change is not beyond our control. He also predicted the attempted change. But, was not listened to at the time, because most ruling people were like Mr Chamberlain and Mr Crean.

    Change is possible – its occurrence can be allowed or non occurrence is possible by resistance and when push comes to shove, change is predictable by the awareness of people with eyes wide open and made possible with the power of the mind and if necessary as a last resort, the body too by means of force.

    Change if desirable is welcome. However, change if undesirable can and must be resisted. We simply have to look at our society to see possible changes and predict the outcome one way or another.
    It is up to us to be a Chamberlain or a Churchill in mindset.

    What is it with the left to reference our great Western cultural values and religion too to manipulate, guilt or just weaken our mindset into appeasement to be politically correct.

    The Price of Peace – Churchill & Truths of Appeasement:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiOMaB-IsDM

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