Opening the door of your heart - Part 1

In Ajahn Brahm's Opening the door of your heart, there is 11 categories that revolve around the cause of happiness:

1. Perfection and guilt
2. Love and committment
3. Fear and Pain
4. Anger and forgiveness
5. Creating happiness
6. Critical problems and their compassionate solutions
7. Wisdom and inner silence
8. The mind and reality
9. Values and spiritual life
10. Freedom and humiity
11. Suffering and letting go

This Part 1 of opening the door of your heart, I'm going to share with you  on Perfection and guilt.

These are a summary of some of the short stories (do read the book if you are really interested):

Perfection and guilt

1.  Two bad bricks
   
   Many time in life, we concentrate so much on our weakness and mistakes. In the story of wall building, there were 2 "bad" bricks that spoils the wall. The monks were ashamed to show the visitors the wall because of these 2 bad bricks. One day, a visitor came across the wall and said it was a nice wall. The monk were surprised and wondered if the visitor was visually impaired that he didn't see the 2 bad bricks? The visitor replied that he did see the 2 bad bricks but he also see the 988 remaining good bricks. The story tries to relate that how often in people end a relationship because of these 2 "bad" bricks; and how people get depressed because all that we can see is all our 2 "bad" bricks. In reality, there are many many more good bricks that we just fail to see. Instead, every time we looked, we focus so much on our mistakes and these mistakes are all that we can see, and "they are all we think they are, so we want to destroy them". And sometimes, we destroy a "very nice wall". "We've got 2 bad bricks but the perfect bricks in each one of us are much, much more than the mistakes." Who knows, the "mistakes" that you started out initially, may become the "unique features" when we stop focusing on them exclusively.
   
   
2. What is done is finished and the idiot's guide to peace of mind
   This story tells us that if we try to look at the work that we have already done instead of focusing on the remaining work that needs to be done, we may understand what it's meant by what is done is finished. But when we focus exclusive on the faults, on the things that need to be fixed, we will never find peace. In this story of garden, when we understand how to find peace in our garden, we will know how to find peace anytime, anywhere, especially the ability to find peace in the garden of our heart, even though we may think how messy the garden of our hearts are, with so much things needed to be done or to be fixed.
   
   
3. Guilt and double guilt
   
   
   
   
   
   
   In this story, it shares that a lady was feeling guilty over the death and accident of 2 persons, which she didn't planned for. She knew that she has to 'let go'. And of course there were many times where people will tell her 'Don't feel guilty'. To her, she felt guilty about feeling guilty; she felt guilty that people are telling her not to feel guilty. So, there was double guilt - guilty over the accident and guilty over guilty. "Our complicated minds work like that."
   Guilt is different from remorse. Guilty is usually a term used in court. Thus, if no one punishes us, we will try to punish ourselves, some way or another. Guilt means "punishment deep in our psyche". The solution for her would not be asking her to forget it and get on with life. Instead, asking her to volunteer in a rehab unit helped her as she was able to help.
   
   
   
4. You are what you were told, treated, believed and became
   In the story, there were 2 class of students - A and B. All the students have same abilities. All of them thought that "A" were the clever ones, and they were treated differently from "B". They were told that they were "Class A" and "Class B" students. At the end, "Class A" performed better than "Class B" where they were supposed to be the same. Thus, because of what they were told, treated and believed, they became.
   
   In another story of the 2 children in the supermarket, the 2 children dropped something in the supermarket. The parent of child A responded "You stupid child!" while the other responded with "That was a stupid thing that you did!" The "stupid child" probably become stupid, while the child that did the stupid thing, probably stopped doing stupid things.
   
   
5. We deserved to be forgiven
   If we focus on the "Class B" for too long, we might become a "Class B" person and that is the reasons why we keep making the same mistakes and creating more guilt. But when we look at the other part of our lives; the other bricks of our wall, we gained another perspective, we deserved to be forgiven.
   
   "The most difficult stage of the journey  out of guilt is convincing ourselves that we deserved to be forgiven" The stories being shared are there to assist us but the final step out of the "prison" can only be made alone by ourselves.
   

Look out for Part 2 of Opening the door of your heart by Ajahn Brahm.