________________
94
Unlimited Horizons
cided for in previous lives and which we now experience from the receiving end.
This is not any kind of punishment, but a learning process that makes us more and more aware of all the consequences of our actions.
As long as there exists a tendency for egoistic action within us, we need to experience it from both sides until we grow out of this particular impulse within us.
How to React to Challenges Challenges occur whether we like it or not. Yet with skilful action we can neutralize negative challenges and prevent them from ever marring our joy of life again.
However - merely 'thinking about emotionally loaded situations, or 'wishing them to cease' does not make them go away.
To neutralize our attachment to a challenge we often need to re-experience a certain 'trying' situation or re-enter an 'irritating' action. If during this (last) manifestation we consciously monitor our inner emotional reaction, objectively judge it as irrelevant or petty as it really is, and discard any likes or dislikes that would renew our attachment, we become free of this theme.
Even if the theme re-occurs again, - as it often happens - it will dissolve without much of an effect, if we don't engage in it
emotionally. After some time, we do not even perceive it any more, and then it is neutralized.
Example: We easily observe this process in someone who just quit smoking. Though he decided to be abstinent, his longing for a drag gets triggered each time someone in his vicinity lights
