Simon: I have read several of your satsangs on guna management, as well yours and James books on the gunas. I find the teaching on the gunas incredibly helpful in being mindful of what my emotional triggers are, but I still seem to be at their mercy. I know that control of mind and speech is a very important qualification for self-inquiry, and a peaceful mind. But I don’t seem to be able to side step taking offense easily – my instinctive reaction is just too fast. I get quite dispirited every time I fail at it, and wonder if there is something I am missing?
Sundari: The teaching on the three gunas is an incredibly powerful tool with which to manage our minds through understanding how and why they are conditioned the way they are. As I am sure you know, all three gunas play out predictably in how thoughts and emotions manifest in our minds. It feels very personal, even though it isn’t. All thoughts and emotions emanate from one source – the impersonal, universal Causal body. That said, we all have a unique uphadi, or limiting adjunct (our subjective reality) or that which makes something appear to be something other than it is. Though there are only three gunas, we all have a set guna profile we are born with, and there are endless permutations of how they affect us as individuals.
Freedom from and for the jiva means we are not at the mercy of how the gunas play out and motivate our likes and dislikes, meaning, our psychological conditioning. Freedom is determined by how much discrimination and dispassion we have developed about our personal identity, and the world it inhabits. It is not possible to be free if we are constantly being thrown by what happens in our internal or external environment – such as over-reacting, taking offense, being defensive or generally reacting in an emotional manner.
All the same, we don’t stop being human when we know that our personal identity is not our primary identity. We do not turn into a block of wood when Self-realization is permanent. Rather, we understand the jiva program, we know that it is made a certain way and certain things will still trigger it. However, when the mind is triggered, is it never for much longer than the time it takes to recognize it, as the Self. If you remain upset way past that, how free can you be?
So don’t aim to be perfect. Aim for ‘strategic unoffendability’. Which means you must learn how to reset your mindset. And that can only truly be achieved with the objectivity that Self-knowledge gives us, using the tools at our disposal to manage the mind – karma yoga – which is consecrating each thought/feeling to Isvara before it morphs into action, and especially when it has. And guna knowledge, which gives us total clarity about what is motivating our thoughts and feelings, and thus, the space to discriminate and be dispassionate.
The Brain’s Negativity and Confirmation Bias
When you interpret something negatively, such as a comment, an action or a lack of an action, as a critical threat or attack, your brain’s amygdala kicks in. That activates your autonomic sympathetic nervous system – fight or flight – response, flooding your system with stress hormones. Blood flows away from your logical brain (prefrontal cortex) and into your survival wiring (reptilian brain), where our more base fear instincts arise from. In this mode, it is no wonder we become instinctively reactive, not reflective. Discrimination and dispassion are not possible.
Taking a scientific look at how our cognitive networks are wired should alleviate our anxiety about being ‘human’ once we know for sure that is not actually who we are. The personal unconscious or ‘System 2’, is up against the much more powerful System 1 – the Causal body. Because of this inbuilt response, our brains are built to prioritize bad news. Psychologists call it the negativity bias. Simply put, your brain pays more attention to threats than compliments as a survival instinct because in the distant past, being attuned to danger kept us alive. Sad but true.
Today we no longer require that kind of vigilance, yet the same wiring makes us overreact to small criticisms for the same reason, which is why it is so hard to stay calm and unshaken when someone criticizes, ignores, or insults us, whether real or imagined. We feel personally attacked—even when the words or actions may not have been aimed at us, and even if we unconsciously know we are over-reacting.
Our brains are just wired to prioritize offense and criticism over positive feedback. So, we feel threatened even though we are not in any danger. We hold onto the bad stuff way longer than we need to – if we even need to – which usually, we don’t. And we let the good stuff take the back seat, diminish or just ignore it.
I have written before on how the negativity bias usually works in tandem with the confirmation bias. We are also wired to look for evidence that confirms what we secretly fear. And we tend to find it, even if it’s not actually there. I don’t think there is a human alive (or who ever lived) that never felt insecure. I think James may be the only exception! For the rest of us mere mortals, when you feel insecure, your brain will tend to grab onto any stimuli, whether it is a vague comment, a strange look or a perceived insult, as proof that you don’t somehow measure up.
And this is because most of us also carry existential shame and guilt, it just seems to come with the territory of being ‘human’. And, which makes us more vulnerable to quickly taking offense. Why add more guilt to this senseless and painful ‘human’ tendency? Recognize it for what it is and where it comes from – beginningless ignorance/Causal body. Don’t own it. Just be cognizant of it, make a sankalpa to neutralize it, and stop beating yourself up.
There are lots of practical ways to let things that offend you roll off your back. To become like Velcro for the good stuff and Teflon for the bad. Unoffendability is not about being passive or pretending things don’t hurt. It’s about learning how to protect your peace of mind by staying emotionally centered when stress gets triggered. And to truly free yourself from so easily getting offended, it will help to understand the deeper forces and root causes that are at work inside your head. And this requires understanding where the ‘voices of diminishment’ as I call them, originate from.
The Hidden Role of Shame and Guilt
Someone said ‘we are all poets or babies in the middle of the night, struggling with being’, and it is very true. Most people experience their darkest thoughts at night – which makes sense, because historically, this was the time we were most threatened and most vulnerable. But many struggle with an all-encompassing interior negativity that never gives them any peace of mind. Kind of like living with a man eating a tiger inside your head, always ready to devour you. It’s no wonder that in such a state, the mind is very quick to overreact, to take offense, or go on the defensive. It is a visceral reaction to unconscious forces that come down to one word: fear.
Over-reactivity, offense or defence doesn’t just happen because someone said something hurtful. It sticks because something inside us pulls it towards us. That “something” is often shame or guilt. These emotions act like magnets. They draw negative messages inward. Brené Brown describes shame as “the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging.” Almost everyone can relate to this.
If you carry shame or guilt from the past, which most people do, you’re more likely to take offense. You’re already sensitive to certain criticisms. When someone’s words or actions touch those old wounds, it feels highly personal—even if they didn’t mean it that way.
That’s why two people can hear or read the same comment or action, but only one gets hurt or lets it rattle them. Personal offense finds a wide open door where there’s already some kind of soul pain, usually buried because of deep wounds from the past.
Breaking the Painful Shame Cycle and Becoming Unoffendable
We do not have to stay trapped in the minefield of such a mind, run by unreasonable and untrue negative emotions, always afraid of getting blown up or devoured. It is not your destiny because your true nature is pure, perfect and unoffendable. So, how do you stop this vicious cycle and live the truth of who you are?
As stated, you need a complete Mindset-Reset based on karma yoga and guna knowledge, which you can start using right now. If you keep it up, it will change your life. Each step disrupts that built-in, downward-sucking spiral of the debilitating power of Maya. When practiced, each step gives your brain a chance to rewire its default cognitive negativity trigger reaction and to effectively regain control of your mind. One thought at a time.
Steps to Becoming Permanently Unoffendable
There is much more that can be written about this, and many therapies to explore. But for true inquirers, it comes down to a few basic steps with the application of Self-knowledge:
1. Capture the Thought and the Guna Behind It:
Pause. Catch the thought/emotion before it morphs into action because once it does, it will move very quickly to creating karma, and the blowback that comes with it. Identify the guna behind it. Notice what you’re telling yourself thanks to this guna created thought/emotion. Is it true? Or are you projecting and denying, assuming the worst, as you always do? Write it down to examine it more clearly and objectively.
2. Redefine the Narrative with karma Yoga:
Surrender the thought/emotion to karma yoga – meaning, give it back to Isvara from whence it came. Ask yourself: “Who would I be without this reaction, and how else can I explain whatever triggered my typical offense/defense reaction”? Could it be that I am wrong about the intent behind what upset me? Almost always, you are wrong. And even if you are not, whatever negativity comes from someone else does not touch you as the Self. If there is truth in it regarding the personal jiva identity, take responsibility. Sometimes we do need to stand up for ourselves, or we need to make amends or apologize if we have hurt someone. But not because it’s your fault. It’s because when you take responsibility with objectivity and dispassion, you are able to respond correctly – or, not at all.
3. Shift the Focus: Move your attention back to the positive, which of course, means move it back to where it belongs – with the Self. Remind yourself of a yardstick Cher uses regarding what is worth getting upset about: ‘if it doesn’t matter in five years it doesn’t matter now’. Except I would change that to five minutes.
4. Practice the Opposite Thought
Understanding why offense sneaks in is the most important step – our brains are wired for it. And the reason for that is not just that the atavistic fear of our caveman ancestors lives on in us. It is the nature of ignorance – the hypnosis of duality. We are all stumbling around in the dark without Self-knowledge, afraid of everything because nothing in life is what it seems. Practicing karma yoga, taking a stand in Awareness and thinking the opposite thought will transform this toxic pattern. It may take a while and you may have to fake it till you make it. But it’s not really faking because it’s true, even if you as the jiva don’t believe it yet.
Much love
Sundari
