Hello and welcome to the Happiness Podcast,
Which is based on the awareness centered approach of Anthony DeMello.
I am Don Joseph Coe,
The director of the DeMello Spirituality Center.
This is the third of the three part podcast presenting Anthony DeMello in a nutshell.
In this podcast,
We're going to apply one of the tools to a real life situation,
Namely one that years ago I found myself in.
The situation involved a coworker who I perceived as uncooperative.
They were unwilling to take my suggestions on a project.
The truth was we were both stubbornly insisting that it was my way or the highway.
Fortunately,
I had been reading Anthony DeMello's book at the time and I came across a tool he offered for resolving conflict.
The first step DeMello prescribed was to observe how my brain's fight,
Flight or freeze program instinctively became reactive with my coworker,
Insisting that I either avoid him or try to change him or defend myself against him and if all else failed to attack him by making him wrong.
DeMello was inviting me to see how my brain's autopilot was insisting that I experience irritation,
Anxiety,
Anger,
As if these were the only meaningful emotional responses to this person.
My ego was even causing me guilt over behaving like such an ass,
Which of course my ego projected back on my coworker.
It was all a vicious circle,
The way the emotions one turned negative into another negative into another negative.
DeMello's book encouraged me to keep looking at this unpleasant situation for the opportunity of realizing that it wasn't the other person causing my negative emotions.
I had been in this situation many times before and reacted in exactly the same negative way,
Always believing it was the other person causing my upset.
It took effort to get past my ego's insistence that I was in the right and the other person was in the wrong.
It helps to observe the conflict as if you were another person looking at you in the situation from afar.
It gets you past the ego more easily.
And gradually I got past my ego enough to see the pattern I was running in this situation and to see that the pattern was all mine.
It wasn't about the other person.
It was about me and the way I had been programmed to see anyone challenging my opinions as a threat.
This helped me see this other person in a better light simply as someone going their own way,
Someone being themselves,
Doing their own thing,
Whether right or wrong,
Good or bad,
Which was just my perspective.
And to understand that the real problem was my brain's fear-based programming,
Insisting that I react to him negatively.
It was quite a wake-up for me to actually understand this.
Next,
D'Mello suggested to think of someone I knew,
Someone or someone enlightened,
You know,
Like Gandhi,
With a different programming,
Someone who would reprogram their brain to choose peace instead of conflict in a situation like this,
Someone who could respond calmly without any loss of happiness.
This drove home that there was another way of looking at this situation and the only reason why I wasn't calm and happy was my knee-jerk programming,
Insisting that reality conform to my will.
I got it.
And what happened next was like a miracle.
My mind cleared and my whole perspective changed from narrow and shut down to expansive and open-minded.
Once I got all this,
I was free to take any action that I deemed fit.
I could walk away from the situation or continue to…
