Any kind of isolation is cause for conflict

Why do we sometimes behave in a cold manner?
Man has become stoic in life, and hence he behaves illogically. Our life should be filled with feelings and feelings have their own sense. The heart of education is, education of the heart. Put your heart into what you do, whether at the office or at home. One should be emotionally fit, and emotion should be directed by intellect. Intellect without emotion and emotion without intellect are both incomplete.

Everyone knows that life is impermanent, but when death happens, they feel cheated. Why is it so?
You know intellectually that life is impermanent, but your emotion is still hooked on to illusion and expects life to be permanent. So, apart from intellectually knowing, you have to know emotionally, also. Whatever you do, learn to respect your feelings and through feelings, know. For example, you are looking at a flower; you feel the flower, try to touch it emotionally. Look at the flower through 100 eyes as it were. Then, you will find there is a kind of exchange that happens between you and the flower.

You will feel the flower is seeing you, you will know through your heart how the flower is contributing to you through its fragrance and so on. You will learn to understand the flower other than through the mind. Even when you are eating an apple, feel the apple through your touch, through your eyes, through its fragrance and with feeling eat the apple and you will see how the apple is contributing to you.

Can you relate to your wife, husband or boss in this way? Learn to know through your feelings also. Then work becomes joy; work becomes a holiday. You don’t need a holiday to enjoy your life, work becomes a movement of joy and hence a holiday, a restful day and spiritual vacation.

I always quarrel with my wife. Should I leave her?
Look at the issue; observe deeply. By leaving her, you continue to keep the same mind that has the conflict. It is like despite wearing clean socks, you are moving around with dirty socks in your pocket. Every place you go or visit will stink. This stink is not because of the place but because of your dirty socks. So, the cause for the conflict is not your wife but your mind. Your mind has not learnt to deal with your wife.

Have you seen a surf-rider? He knows that the oncoming wave is dangerous. Still he is flirting with it. The surf-rider knows how to deal deftly with the wave and have fun. Any difficulty is like a big wave. You should know how to deal with it. So, the cause for conflict is your mind. Mind is dependent on your wife for the mind is using your wife for your joy. When the mind is using the other for joy, there is a process of isolation that happens.

When one uses the other, then ‘i’ becomes more valuable than the ‘other’, and the same happens to your partner. Each one is using the other for meeting one’s end, and this creates isolation. Any isolation is cause for conflict. Connectivity is the way out. Love brings in connectivity and ego brings in isolation.

Swami Sukhabodhananda