Swami Satyananda Saraswati said:

“Physical pain and mental agony strengthens the mind. Physical difficulties make the body strong. Most people have difficulties accepting this principle, because nobody wishes to suffer pain, mental agonies, physical afflictions or discomforts. When one is amidst the pleasantries of life, the mind regresses into a tamasic state, for there is no conflict in it. However the key to evolution is conflict.”

It is very tough to understand and appreciate the wisdom, until one goes through the process itself. I will share my story with you. I finished my doctorate at the age of forty two. I was very pleased with myself and I got a WHO assignment as a consultant to NACO (National AIDS Control Organization). I had to edit and work on the Counselling Manual for Training of Trainers in the area of HIV/AIDS counselling. It was very exciting and I had to invites specialists from all over India. We were to have a meeting for three days where we would be brainstorming and then I would write the manual. It was an enormous challenge. The meeting went well, and I started working on the manual.

My boss in the meanwhile took a dislike to me. She was beautiful and intelligent but very nasty. She started finding faults in everything I did and she would ridicule me by calling me old. She was ten years older than me. It was a very hard time as financially both my husband and I were self-employed. I worked on the manual and she kept finding fault with it. Complaining that I had not understood the concept. Anyway I finished working on the manual and it was published. However she criticized me to everybody and because I responded to her criticism, she was enraged. It became so bad that I did not get another consultancy.

I kept quiet about my humiliation, no one in my family knew about it. I decided to start an NGO. It was extraordinary but when I went to register TORCH, the clerk was very helpful and everything fell into place. He said that he was happy to help me as I had made sure that it was written in the correct format. I had to work very hard as getting grants for funding is not easy. I started working with NACO on small projects. One day I got a call from NACO and they said that they wanted me to redo the counselling manual and I was the only person who could do it. In the meanwhile my ex-boss was sacked from her job. She came to work and found that all her papers were in a carton and there was a lock on the door. Apparently she had made the Minister mad as she had ridiculed him. It had been reported back to him.

My lesson was that it was horrible when I went through this experience, but by not sharing about it, I channelized my energy into running an NGO and I did get the credit for the manual.

It was the blessings of my Guru that gave me the strength to overcome the difficulties.

Aim Hrim Klim