This morning when I was meditating, I heard loud voice coming from upstairs. It was my mother-in-law, who over excitedly talked to my father-in-law, about what she overheard about Chinese Communist as well as Virus issues, both of which are my least favorite topics.
At first, I tried to ignore them. I tried to focus on my meditation. I managed to halt my ability of language interpretation, which I could only hear the voice but couldn’t recognize what she talked about. It worked only for a bit while. Because (at that time I reasoned) she was so loud and she didn’t seem to stop.
Drama Started…
I was pissed off. I felt I couldn’t bear it any more. My heart starts to beat faster. My breath started to be short and shallow. All I wanted is to shout her to shut up. I knew I was getting emotional at that time. I tried to calm myself down. But I wasn’t able to. So I stopped my meditation earlier.
I still sat there, with eyes widely opened. I had these thoughts in my racing mind: “she is so senseless. how could she do that, without knowing that she’s bothering everyone in the house. This has to stop…” I started to think about how I should bring up the topic. Because you know, between in laws, it’s not going to be an easy talk. At a certain point, I also wanted to avoid talking to them about especially conflicts.
When they finally stopped and got down to have breakfast, I waited till they finished breakfast. I couldn’t hold it any more and I started the talk. It turned out to be very nasty one, as I had somehow expected. She excused herself that she wasn’t being so loud. She just talked a few words not too much, which wouldn’t bother anyone, etc. Any way, she tried every way to deny it and defend herself. And later she uttered even more nonsense, which a typical drama queen would speak. All of those didn’t surprise me because I clearly know what kind of person she is.
I started to “fight back”, using words of course. All I thought was I couldn’t just allow her to spit out so mean words without knowing the consequence. I was never that angry and emotional. My heart beat so quickly and I could feel my body shaking. I knew clearly that I was doing damage to myself, but I couldn’t stop it. I just couldn’t. My anger fire was burning.
The Truth and Insights
Later I told my husband about the incident. Of course he knew something ugly happened. The quarrel was so loud and severe. I consulted him about what I shall do next. Because I felt so bad the whole morning. I couldn’t ease like I usually am. I clearly sense a big turbulence inside. For a qigong and spiritual practitioner, this kind of incident brings the worst damage to not only my physical dimension (body, mind, emotion, energy) but to my true heart dimension. We talked deeply for an hour. He then game me two advises:
One, I need to figure out a way of effective communication with in laws. Because anyone would listen and accept what I say only when I say it in the way that they can accept. If I just want to speak it out, even if it’s the truth, they wouldn’t accept. Then it becomes useless talk, which only feeds my ego.
Two, I need to break down the chain reaction, which is, every time something that I found bothering happens because of my in laws, I would lose my sense and then react. It’s not that she did something wrong. It’s that I hold onto some discriminating thought because of something unpleasant happened in the past. Because I have formed a solid idea about her over a long period of time, which puts me into the disguise mode whatever related to her.
But it’s not her the real person, it’s her the one in my conscious and subconscious mind. I seriously need to break the link which connects to that “her” in my mind. Otherwise anytime I would be triggered to react instead of respond to situations and lose my true heart state. If I manage to break down that link, I can free from that enslavement. It doesn’t matter what she will do or not do, what she is or not. It’s only me inside define my inner experience.