How to build good relationships

By Matsya avatar das - 20.6 2017

Every our action implies a feedback from others (as a rule, the response we get is very much the same as our approach, whether it has just happened in the present or it happened in the past), this is the meaning of relationship.
A:B = C:D
The relation between A and B, affects the relation between C and D too. We are all connected in the big game of life.
It is just through the relationships that we have the possibility to express our divine nature, that is developing and experiencing our best original spiritual qualities. However we can experience a lot of sufferance as well.
Our inner well-being greatly depends on the way we trust people in the relationships and the way others respond to us. A sensible, caring person usually realizes within a short time, whether his or her words, actions and even thoughts has a positive or destructive effect on the others.
When a person suffers and seeks relief, compassion and trust, turning to somebody who can help, how can one find the cause of sufferance? Where do disbelief, depression, pain or negative feelings come from, what is missing? The deep cause is often rooted in the relationships.
Everything in the universe is ruled by the divine laws and this order is based on a dialogue, as Galileo’s quote recites: “Dialogue between Two Chief World Systems". Dialogue re-establishes an order, and such order should govern our relations too, so in any dialogue the first priority is to meet the needs of other person through attentive listening and sincere interest.
The more virtuous relations are, the higher is their quality and greater the standard quality of listening and speech skills.
Sattva is order, virtue, harmony. It is the condition that most of all favors our evolution. It is a conditioning state, it is not complete freedom, therefore evensattva guna is to be transcended. The conditioning that arises from sattva guna is the feeling of attachment to a kind of freedom that is always anchored to a mundane layer, in spite of a prevalent virtuous nature. Someone may think: sattva guna is good enough for me, because I am satisfied with one kind of pleasure and one kind of mundane virtues. However a person cannot be satisfied with this vision because there are negative sides and sorrows that cannot be avoid with sattva guna alone, unless one ascends to a spiritual awareness.
Among such sorrows, which cause a great deal of sufferance, is old age. Aging is a heavy humiliation because the person is not able to take care of one’s own basic personal needs, and sattva guna itself cannot free us from such great pain. Sattva is the condition we can easily obtain in our embodied life, although we ought to make another step forward to approach transcendence, in order to reach the abode and original nature of our spiritual eternal Self.

The loss of awareness of our original essence results in a deep dissatisfaction and inner deterioration. People do not behave in a bad manner because they just wish so, rather because they are dissatisfied within.
How can we help people to feel satisfied?
Sensitiveness is not enough to empathize with the others so knowledge and discipline are required.
What about those people who do not even show sensitiveness?
We may learn to acquire, develop, find sensitiveness, which in Latin is calledpietas. Sensitiveness can be found in atman, our spiritual matrix. We cannot trust the mind because when external circumstances change, our mental frame modifies consequently. For this reason we have to help people to start an inner search, to rediscover their real self. In this way, by developing such awareness, we can face the situations that otherwise could have become our limits, according to the changeable circumstances of life.
Our relations should not depend on external circumstances, we ought to learn to overcome them.
A great daily effort within needs to be done if we want to achieve this target. By conquering the inner enemies one after another, we lead ourselves to steadiness, tolerance, peacefulness. By practicing such attitude we learn not to react automatically to events, provocations, offences, abuses.
A person needs to modify one’s point of view. One may wear a heavy shield to protect oneself, but it will not be strong enough because it is only by switching and elevating our point of view that we reach a steady and broad inner confidence.
We miss a great deal of life which cannot be reproduced in the present span of time, if we carry on to identify as real what real is not. By modifying our point of view, our efforts, our dedication towards such an elevated mission will unveil to us the meaning of living.
It is not easy to succeed because we were born with a superficial mental attitude, with prejudices and tendencies acquired through behaviors we have brought back from previous lives. Performance of actions are pressing from our subconscious and lead us to repeat the same old mistakes. Therefore we need great care and attention to avoid circumstances that may put us at risk.
A person does not learn by punishment, rather by improving through education on an ethical and spiritual level, so that one may distinguish and filter between experience and its interpretation and between experience and reaction to events.