Episode 28 - When A Jerk Crosses Our Path

0:08 Welcome, you are listening to the podcast A Resident Life produced by the Time is Now Productions. I am Mike Thompson, your host and Reflector in Chief. In this podcast, we will discuss experiences and insights from living a life devoted to uncovering the authentic self and finding fulfilling purpose from the past, the present, and the future. This podcast is a product of my life and experience and I'll share my opinions. Opinions between people are various and we don't all need to hold the same ones, but it is fun to hear the opinions of others as it gives us an opportunity to freshen up our own. If you enjoy and gain insight from listening, please subscribe and share.

1:00 If you have questions, please e-mail them. And as always, nothing you hear here is a proscription or a prescription. It is a discussion of life and life's internal and external experiences. So let's get to it and welcome, welcome back. Thank you for listening and joining me today. And a special hello and welcome to those joining for the first time. I'm. I'm so happy that we're all together to work on this project of the authentic self and cultivating abiding happiness in our lives and the lives of those around us.

1:47 So let's let's jump right in. A few weeks ago I was riding the bus in the early part of the morning. You know that that early part of rush hour when there there isn't a lot of traffic, but the traffic that there is all seems to be going a little too fast, Very rush, rush and impatient. Got to get where we're going. So there I am, riding the bus as I typically did this summer on Tuesdays, feeling a bit drowsy, but still trying to do some quiet meditation and contemplation and thinking about what I was going to be doing later. But really, really I was more fighting off drowsiness, to be honest, yeah, drowsiness was winning, most definitely. So there I was sort of in this state and but suddenly the bus which which wasn't going fast at all, the bus veered hard while breaking and laying on the horn.

2:43 And Needless to say, my drowsiness was gone. And so is any meditation I had going. And of course, like like everyone on the bus, we all kind of looked out the window. We all clambered to have a look to see what caused the driver to break and veer and honk. It was kind of a jarring experience. So it seems that from what we saw, that just as we were about to cross an intersection with a green light, an expensive car found itself in a turn lane. And that driver didn't want to turn, apparently. So they tried to pull back into the main lane, which happened to have been occupied by our bus, and two solid objects can't occupy the same place at the same time. And our bus driver was alert and quick to react. And frankly, present prevented an accident. Thank you bus driver.

3:41 So that passed. As we gently accelerated and went through the intersection, I I happened to see the face of the driver of the car that almost hit us and there was this look of of rage and frustration on their face. It it literally made me cringe and kind of shrink back from the window. Now by all rights our bus driver adeptly averted an accident, an accident that would have been caused by that driver and frankly I was grateful for our bus drivers attention and quick response.

4:22 Nobody would have had a good day if that day had started out with an accident in a bus. And you know, I I was a bit peeved that the driver of that car not only almost caused the accident, but that they seemed outraged that the bus had honked at them and not let them crash into us as we rolled on. I was I was really stuck on that driver's careless and unjustified rage, at least what I interpreted as rage from their facial expression. A lot of jerk, I thought, what a jerk. And I was also thinking, why?

5:04 Why is it people with expensive cars always feel they have the right of way? And I was also thinking with that kind of driving and road rage, that person will crash that car before it is more than a year old. Very self-righteous, right? And doubling down on this whole train of thought, why are there so many jerks in the world? Why does being a what does being a jerk get anyone? So these, these are all the negative things I was ruminating on. And you know, I felt this tension in my chest and in my shoulders as I did so. It was kind of a physical tension that that made me hunch over a bit and close in. And thankfully I caught myself fairly quickly. I literally heard Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding in my head as I realized I was in the middle of a spiritual cue. Or rather, I had an opportunity to take advantage of a spiritual cue.

6:03 Maybe it was the hunching of my shoulders, that physical sensation which woke me up to the spiritual cue. OK, recap. Quick recap. Remember, spiritual cues are those moments in our lives when we catch ourselves in negative frames of mind. And then we use those moments rather than riding them out and being the victim of them being the passenger. We use those moments to take agency, to take control and to uncover the role our egos play to create and perpetuate those states. And having uncovered that, we then consciously turn those negative states of mind into positive ones states of mind of help and altruism rather than irritation, anger, aversion, even revenge.

6:59 So here it was, my spiritual cue. My mind was sitting in a negative state. I was brooding on the action and the reaction of that driver who almost caused the accidents. My body was tensed up with the negative mindset. Doing a mental inventory of all this, I realized I was I was attached to the negativity of the situation, that that somehow I'd internalized the situation and the driver's apparent rage, and I was reacting to it. I had taken an external incident and internalized it from my ego's perspective. The driver of the car was enraged with me and I was reacting to that emotion which I only presumed and assumed they felt I can't know what they were really feeling. I'm not a mind reader.

8:03 I was basically just going off of visual cues and my ego made all kinds of assumptions and decisions based on that and attached rage to that. And then I felt it personally and reacted to it okay. So back to our bus ride. The bus is still rolling on. And just as I started to contemplate turning those negative emotions to positive ones and kind of releasing the attachment to all this, the bus stopped at the next bus stop. No problem, right? No problem. But there was a parked car sort of blocking the stop, so the bus had to stop diagonally.

8:45 And this effectively blocked all the traffic behind the bus, so no cars could get around and go past. And of course, of course it was a crowded bus stop, and of course there were a lot of tourists, bless them, who didn't know how to pay the fare, how much to pay, etcetera. It was taking a long time. And sure as anything, this situation became dramatic. All these cars stacking up behind us, one of them, a car behind us. They laid on their horn, honking and honking and honking.

9:27 And then just one long honk. And then short ones again. Beep, beep, beep, beep it. I swear it must have gone on for for at least a couple of minutes. You know, it seems like hours, but a couple of minutes is a pretty long time to sit there and have to listen to honking. And although I couldn't see who was honking, I knew in my bones who it was. I knew it had to be that car that almost hit us, trying to get into our lane. That what I called enraged driver. And finally, finally, the bus started going again. Everybody was had their seats, paid their fares. The bus started going again and cleared the blocked lane and they looked out my window just as I heard of the roar of a revving motor. And sure enough, the car and driver I knew it would be wailed past us.

10:21 Honking the whole way just blew by us and all my work to get out of my negative mindset. All that work, which I'd really only just started, went poof, gone. And I was back to contemplating why are there so many jerks in the world and how is it the misery, jerks cause must be just a fragment of the misery they feel, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Projection, projection, projection. And of course all of this line of thinking is my own baseless projection onto them onto the jerks of the world. Frankly, that line of thought does have a certain gratification to it, doesn't it?

11:11 But as gratifying as it is, it, it isn't the way to move positively forward. So as the bus rolled on and the offending car and its driver were long gone, I had to laugh to myself with a bit of a sense of gratitude. The extra chapter to this experience was helping me to get deeper insight into I don't know, what do we call it? Jerkery. Assholery. And let's keep this G rated. Let's stick with jerkery. So I was getting some help getting deeper insight into jerkery. The second part of the story, I guess this experience was sort of essentially a random act of jerkery. And the nature of random acts of jerkery is they're like a toxic spill of negative emotions.

12:16 Jerkery creates negative reactions and emotions in others. The the image that comes to mind is of a person aggressively and even violently pushing and elbowing through a crowd and leaving bruises and squished toes and upset in their wake. Screaming babies spilled drinks, and while that person elbowing through is focused on their goal and getting there, they are leaving a wake of pain and upset behind them and they are willfully ignorant of it. That wake is the toxic spill of negative emotions. The toxic spill of jerkery. And what are the emotions that come up when we encounter a jerk when we're swept up in the wake of jerkery? Those emotions?

13:07 Outrage. Anger, wanting revenge or comeuppance? Schadenfreude. And it it isn't fair, right? Why and why me? I didn't deserve that. And and jerker is disruptive. So let's try to break this down some. On one level, I had a spiritual cue resulting from the initial near miss accidents and I was able to start to look at my negative mindset caused by the situation created by the jerk. The process of doing this, if I'd have been able to finish it is pretty straightforward and mostly consists of mind hacks we've used before. Okay number one step one, breathe. Breathe deeply and breathe deeply again. Do pause.

14:11 Mentally step back and look at our negative emotions and mindset. Look at it objectively, kind of from a distance. Three, explore where do the negative emotions come from. Certainly with that question posed to ourselves, the ego will shout from me. 4 Gratitude. Thank that ego for being on guard, for protecting us and being alert. 5 Agency We can't fix the jerk.

14:56 We can't stop jerkery, but we can assert control over our minds and egos and reassert A mindset of compassion, altruism, and unconditional support, even for jerks. 6 Compassion. Actually send some compassion in a prayer or a thought to the jerk who caused the whole thing. It is a bit of a long exercise, 6 steps, and of course in your daily life, as things move along quickly as they tend to, we may not recall each step and what order and so on, and that doesn't matter.

15:52 The point is to be awake to the spiritual cues and to work with the experiences and emotions in those moments to reestablish a sense of agency. A sense of agency where we are actors of peace and compassion in the world. That with the actions of our body, our speech and our minds, we are causes of peace, not conflict, harmony, not disruption. Now remember earlier I said I felt a bit of gratitude for chapter two of this experience, that I found some deeper insights.

16:41 So chapter two was when the bus was at the at the bus stop and blocking the road. And the deeper insight is this reflection, literally reflection. Essentially, others other people are our mirrors. They show us ourselves with those we get along with. We are often being shown those aspects of ourselves we like, that we are comfortable with, that are synctonic with who we believe we are and the self we believe we are putting out or want to put out into the world the identity we project, the most positive version of ourself that we can imagine.

17:33 When we become irritated with others, those others are still reflections of ourselves. The difference is we are seeing them in parts of ourselves we don't like or don't want to see, or are impatient with or try to hide. Consciously or unconsciously, we're seeing in them parts of ourselves we don't like. Our egos resonate positively to those things that reinforce positive self-image. Pats on the back, right? We like those Pats on the back. Our ego loves Pats on the back, and our egos react negatively to those things they don't want to acknowledge, own up to, or admit. We all have the capacity to be any way, any type of person. Kind, thoughtful and generous, you know, or mean, cruel and selfish.

18:40 We have the capacity to go either way. It is our egos and our conscious minds together that make the choices about how we are and how we manifest the the egos, the autopilot and our conscious minds. Our intentions do the hard work to be better. Our egos, like the horse and our conscious minds and intentions are the riders steering the horse. Part of the exercise of living intentionally, of living awake, is being actively conscious of this reality that others are our mirrors, and it isn't enough to just be aware of it.

19:30 We need to actively use the information and experience we get from the insights we realize to change ourselves. We need to use those insights to further tame our egos and cultivate the heart of altruism, the deep heart of loving kindness. So where am I going with this time for the reveal, this deeper experience from Chapter 2? This prompted me to ask myself, am I? A jerk, too. Have I been a jerk?

20:17 When have I in my life, engaged in jerkery? And the the honest answer to those questions is tough to swallow and hard to admit. But yes, yes, yes, yes indeed. I've been a jerk. I've unleashed jerkery in the world more than once, most certainly more than once. And sitting with this self knowledge, realization, and admission, a number of doors and possibilities open up.

20:58 I can explore the causes of my jerkery, my own jerkery. You know, maybe I was late for something. Maybe I was frustrated or angry. Maybe I was in physical or emotional pain. Maybe I was depressed. Or on the other hand, maybe I was ecstatic and in my happiness and joy completely, completely thoughtless and oblivious to those around me. So, exploring the causes of our jerkery, we come to 1 root cause, being completely oblivious to others and only concerned with ourselves.

21:38 Again, the cause of jerkery. Being completely oblivious to others and only concerned with ourselves. When we are completely oblivious to others and only concerned with ourselves, we are not engaged in altruistic actions. We are not being actively compassionate. We are not uncovering our authentic selves. And we are definitely, definitely not being creators of peace and happiness for others. In this oblivious state, there is only only ourself, no one else.

22:26 Our mission, our goal, our objective, our need, want, desire, wish. That's all there is. Our self So OK, another door that opens up is. With this insight. I can actually feel compassion for jerks, for the jerks I encounter in my life. Whether they are infrequent jerks or chronic jerks or just the random jerks Feeling compassion for them, I make a forward step toward being true to the value of extending help without condition or distinction.

23:11 Being without condition or distinction is foundational to our project. And next, with this insight, I am I am humbled. I cannot sit in judgment of jerks because I've certainly been a jerk. I cannot put myself above jerks or anyone for that matter, because really we are all the same and we are all trying to be happy. Every being is just trying to be happy. All of us are doing the best we can. This kind of humility is is so profound and so important to our work.

24:06 Without humility, we will lose our way trying to be a person others rely upon, a person that others will miss. When we're not around, we'll veer from the path of cultivating abiding happiness for ourselves and others. Humility is home base. Throughout our project here, we keep coming back to key mindsets that we must continue to actively cultivate. Humility, gratitude, altruism, compassion. Every time we do our spiritual cue exercise, if in our mental and emotional exploration we look for the points, the openings, the seeds of humility, gratitude, altruism and compassion, we will continue to make forward progress that will positively change our lives and the lives of those around us. So that person who almost crashed our bus and who later regaled us with the very irritating sound of their car horn, that person is someone now I feel very grateful to. Yeah, they may have been a jerk and left a trail of jerkery behind them, but because we've

25:38 done this work, as a result, their actions caused me to do this work and we've done it together now. They also left in their wake. Besides toxic stuff, they also left in their wake the seeds of spiritual progress and enlightenment. One more time the jerk and their jerkery left in their wake the speeds of spiritual progress and enlightenment. Isn't that something? Nemesis becomes teacher? Isn't that really something?

26:22 So thank you. Thank you again so very much for joining today. Your good, positive kind actions touch everyone. Be assured of that. They touch everyone everywhere. As we do this work, we will certainly avoid jerkery in our own lives and be better stewards of the blessings we have in our lives. So let's continue to walk this path together. Let's all try our best to be awake to those four key mindsets humility, gratitude, altruism, and compassion. The more we look for them, the more they will awaken in our hearts and minds and show us how to act positively in every situation. I look forward to our next episode as we continue to uncover and discover our authentic selves. Thank you.

27:21 Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more, please subscribe and share. If you'd like to share your own experience, thoughts or ask a question, please send an e-mail to Mike at Resonant dot Social with Gratitude. Theme music is courtesy of Stock Audios distributed by Pixa Bay, A Resident Life is a podcast from the Time Is Now Productions.