End Suffering on Touchiness

by Judith Anderson

     Being touchy and easily offended is an uncomfortable way to go thru life. Vernon called these wrong emotions our PDFs: precious darling feelings.
     Picture a fencer who strikes an aggressive pose with a sword and says “En guarde!” (Interesting that the spelling of touchy is close to touché.) Now think of people’s reaction when they are accused: instant self-protection. Touchy is defined as our readiness to take offense at the slightest provocation. Even a slight innocuous remark can trigger it: “Are you going _____ (shopping, watching a game...)?” “Why? Don’t you think I should?” And touchiness includes or leads to the more lethal emotions of hidden hostility, secret resentment, grudges, hatred.
     Different types of people take on different negative characteristics, like the shrinking violet or the bull in the china shop. We expect others to tiptoe around us when we are sullen or rageful. Maybe we wear a “Don’t tread on me” sign to keep people away, hiding our fear of criticism or intrusion. Continual self-protection is painfully exhausting!
     Now look at the world’s false solutions: pound a pillow; clutch a teddy bear in a “safe space” in college; demand that someone else take care of us. These so-called answers have replaced what used to be called growing up. Coddling and cultivating PDFs leads to families and a nation full of crybabies, screaming to have their way if anyone should dare disagree with their opinions. No reasoning, no higher values, just raw, unrestrained emotions. Just look at the news and watch the coverage of the latest group/ crowd/mob in action. Can there be any doubt that people are madly in love with their negative emotions?
     Vernon gave a great explanation of how the mind works wrongly to cause explosions, on DVD 17:3: "The human mind thinks that the way it presently thinks is the only way possible for it to think…. Being a false assumption, when something comes along that is different from these series of thoughts, of ideas, set of beliefs, the human mind gets disturbed, it gets defensive…. And I just described to you in a few words the cause of all human hostility.”
     The source of touchiness is the ego, the false personality which fears to be hurt or criticized. In The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power (chapter 6), we’re told: “You may get an immediate sensation of pleasure by snapping back at an unkind person, but, if you do, you have lost a great opportunity for advancing your inner self. Instead, discover why you needed to snap back. You will discover your action sprang from the touchy ego-self. That very observation in itself weakens the ego.”
     While recently talking about cooking with some people, I commented that a lady friend was really a good cook. Someone else replied, “Well, my wife is really a good cook, too,” as if I had insulted them by omission. The error was in comparison and identification. We are defensive because we are identified with a self-picture, a certain image that we think has been slighted. And because it is false, a nature which is only imaginary, we try to protect it from the lie that it’s real. We’ve been lied to all our lives about who we really are.
     My dental hygienist recently asked me if I had relatives coming to visit me this summer. Instantly on guard, the mind thought, “Why doesn’t she mind her own business?” As always, the mind is the problem, with wrong thought causing the difficulty. When we see that people are only idly curious, trying to appear nice and act interested, we can turn our attention to why we had that reaction. All desire to change others must go; change yourself. I can make my responses conscious instead of mechanical.
     If people truly do trespass on our privacy, we can draw a clear line to indicate, without hostility, that they must not cross over. But that’s not an excuse to be rude and offensive. Our own tension will show us when we over-react and become a porcupine.
     In a recent class it was said we must TOUGHEN UP! Get over yourself. Vernon was deliberately tough on our PDFs to show how our wrong belief in ourselves hurts us, and that there’s another way to live, free of always being on guard.
      Truth explains what we are really like. I won’t be so reluctant to let go of my self-defense when I actually see I’m protecting an illusion. The prickly porcupine can be seen thru and given up.
     Do I want to be free of me or not? In The Power of Esoterics, Vernon shows how we can be free of our PDFs: “We must realize how we fail to live from our true nature, how we live from an acquired identity, from a false sense of self. See this, drop artificial personality, and fear of criticism vanishes forever.”