How I Learned The Golden Rule From a Strange Series of Events

"That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind."
The Ethic of Reciprocity (The Golden Rule)

So, yesterday was a strange day: I woke up feeling extremely tired and weary. There was no electricity all morning, and I ran late for a meeting I wanted to go to early. Mornings are just better to get work done. But power never came.

Finally, when I figured I don't need the ironing and the styling and can just step out of the house - it was already around 2 pm. I reached a client's office. Minutes later, the key person I was working with had to leave on account of an emergency. I said no problem, let's work when things are sorted out. People are important, not things and affairs.

Anyhow I sat there clueless and unable to get up and return or to do any meaningful work at all. After a couple of hours, I requested to have a cab arranged to drop me back home. The cab arrived. I packed up to leave. Seconds before I stepped out of the office, the cab meant to pick me basically just ran away. I was left stranded at the gate. "Nothing,"I took a deep breath, "is going to be on time today." Another cab was sought. Funny, the second driver gets a call from the first, they're somehow related; the first describes he just marooned a client. The second inquires why, to which the first reportedly replied, "My mind suddenly got confused; I didn't know what was I supposed to do, so I left."

I said nothing. I had seen the cat several times in the Matrix today, I was sure, and something was being re-loaded or unloaded. "If I am lucky," I reflected, "I am perhaps being saved from an accident. Or I am walking into one. Either way, I have no control over the events of the day." I reached home to find the gate locked, with no one home to attend, and me without a key. Actually my parents slept soundly inside, shaking off a jet lag, and the door bell was off due to load-shedding, again! I contemplated jumping in, but didn't want to give on-lookers fresh ideas on how to rob a house. Twenty minutes later, I was let in when my brother came home with a key.

I slept early but badly as my whole body refused to calm down. The best way for me to earth any negative energy is to sleep on grass or floor. I rested on the floor.

The events of the day had a parallel theme to them: that of my unplanned elopement with Fate.

I was tired the day before yesterday. I felt as if I had reached The Wall, and I had my nose pressed against it. I felt a dangerous feeling surge in me: I felt constriction, I felt death.

I checked my SMS's and found an invite to a trip to the mountain. I did a bit of research, and made up my mind that I was going to look into the arrangements next day. I then went to sleep during the night determined that I will run away without notice. Then I woke up yesterday morning, and experienced a truly fascinating thing: the Universe acting bizarre, and nothing happening on time. Yes - Time! That eternal curse of the human mind!

But I continued with my unplanning. As close as one can come to "leave the world behind," I did yesterday. There had been a great discontent in my heart - and I was ready to "give it" to a few persons. I kept repeating to myself: "I have reached the end of grace - I have reached the end of grace! No more!" I just decided to smash everything I built to bits - because I could not go on. Or so I felt. I could not go on like this!

I checked the trip details, and almost mentally prepared myself for what could be a taxing journey. I told my chiropractor I want to leave. I told my client I am just going away, and left them puzzled. I cut off contact from friends - retaining just the last bits of kind response. I tried calling Amatullah Armstrong, perhaps she would understand my condition? But her phone refused to connect, and my phone's battery ran out.

I've seen this kind of thing before: I am supposed to work out my situation myself, I know.

I understand I feel great anger, rancor, frustration. I almost want to finish off some "business." Strangest of all, I perhaps want to attract some attention by behaving oddly.

And I don't like that. I do not like my Self when it seeks attention. There is something going on here that I must figure out. After all, all events we don't want at least teach us something, thus becoming meaningful in our lives.

I knew if I write the whole thing down, I'll eventually understand what's happening. I need to observe the strange behavior of the Universe.

Today the strange streak of events continued. I woke up in the morning and remember I saw my grandmother in my dream. She signed some papers and showed some unusually assertive behavior, for which I was glad.

Upon waking, my parents informed me that my grandmother has fallen ill, and they are going to go attend to her. It is late night now, and my aged grandmother is being taken to the hospital. I knew what my dream meant. [June 23: She'd had a paralytic attack.]

Besides that knowledge, I also woke up to resolve I am not going to be like her in one respect: that of leaving the world to hide behind a strict devotion to prayer. My prayer is staying alive - so what am I doing now? Planning to go somewhere at once to be not known and to be noticed?

My heart finally gave me kind advice. It said, "Never make rancor or resentment with another the basis of your action. Go away wherever you want or do whatever you do if you feel the action is truly for you and by you."

My path is the path of love, of heart. My heart is not an evil heart, it is a heart that loves - and it is hurt for love, it gets angry about love like only a human heart could. I have always felt that people who take actions in fits of rage or despair only live to regret or avoid their guilt - and that love can be built stronger if we can control that rage that kills us within. Rage is not the answer, truthful decisions are. If someone or something hurts us by its very being, it is better to be kind, to let go gently and to free oneself kindly - than to remain in rage.

If I am enraged, I am supposed to take a decision or to calm the assumptions of my own mind - all the while honoring my true feeling: rage! To honor a feeling is to simply acknowledge that it exists, and from that understanding, work to a solution.

Strangeness continued as yet another time, my cab didn't arrive today to pick me up to take me to physical training & then work. The client canceled for today, and I kept changing my schedule of commitments. Finally I decided that there is one thing that stops the madness of time: sharing abundance with someone who is in need. Also, I must become present in the NOW. The moment I decided this, the foolish cabbie who had turned off his phone arrived at my door an hour after the call time. He almost ran away again as I went in to collect my things to get going. What madness! But I decided not to give in to any bizarre event any longer. I didn't ask him for explanation - I knew it was the Universe talking to me. I needed to talk to the Universe directly.

And then, suddenly, I figured out what was happening!

Had I expressed a wish to throw everything away, leave it all behind - had I expressed a living death wish? Did I say that I am going to be angry, take decisions based on sudden changes of mood?

Well, the Universe heard, and it answered right back. Forcefully. Clearly. It would NOT cooperate. It would run away from me, if I run away from it. So be it!

I learned several things at once:

• Decisions are not to be based on our relationships with others, but on our relationship with Being.
• Anger is no good, on Self or the Other. The best basis of action is to do the appropriate thing.
• If I hurt the Universe, or plan to, it will hurt me. I watched within a few hours how the Golden Rule works: I planned to abandon my Universe, my Universe showed it will leave me stranded.
• I am loved, but being ungrateful.
  
• I need to be truthful; and at the same time, stop imagining. If I am consistently led to imagining ill, then the key question is where is the discontent coming from?
• Perhaps I should remove myself from my circumstances. There is violence in the air, and I absorb illness from my surroundings. Yesterday, a couple of people expressed to me an almost similar discontent; that quite buzzing feeling. So I will go, but not at the cost of breaking hearts. If I break expectations, it must be for Allah's sake, not my private agenda. In taking action for Allah is blessing; in serving self's interest is hell.
  
• This is all for the good, and the better. I must align my perceptions quickly, for the Universe is under a great shift - the NOW moment is out to abolish the past and the future. The Matrix indeed is being reloaded.
• The Universe is really a mirror of my being. What I do to it, it does to me! This is very insightful spiritual lesson that I was meant to have.

Having learned these, my strange mental condition - "constriction" as its technically called in spirituality - nearly abolished. I feel an expansion of the heart, a calmness. Amatullah has prayed for me, and I have, of course, chosen not to run away.

Amatullah said, "Sometimes we try to move a giant tree, when Allah only expects us to plant a seed."

So I sit, I wait for the seed to show what it will grow into. If it dies, so it is by the will of Allah.

I am not at odds with my Universe anymore. May my heart be in peace!

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Published on June 23, 2008. I will not edit it shorter!