What is Left Unsaid

By Karmayogi

Children do not do what we say. They do what we do. If we are negotiating to buy a house and the seller, disagreeing on price and terms, categorically says, ''Then let us drop the bargain'', we do not accept his words. We study his voice, looks, tone, facial features and feel he might finally come around and he does. What is left unsaid carries a power that the spoken word lacks. When you want to correct your refractory child or perverse employee, you may shout at them, or advise them on the need to correct. It may not work. You can point out the ill effects of the course he has chosen and then stop without actually saying the words, ''correct yourself''. It will have a better effect than asking him to rectify himself.

What is directly spoken raises a resistance in the mind. The mind decides NOT to do it, irrespective of the words that issue out of the mouth. An idea not directly spoken has a greater chance of being acted upon. One can take a further step. When it strikes you that you should insist on your employee finishing the allotted work on time, if you refrain from expressing it, there is a greater chance of his attending to it. Life is unpredictable, sometimes generous, and at other times perverse. Maybe life reflects what we are. When we insist, life will insist; our obstinacy is met with the obstinacy of life. That way life is far more resourceful than we are. If you can bring yourself NOT to think of the arrears of your clerk, you will certainly see that the work is completed on time, uncharacteristically. A devotee liked his elder brother and spent a good bit of time usefully with him. The elder brother too liked the younger, but often it was to oblige the younger that he visited him. They met five or six times a week while the younger would have liked to visit five or six times a day. The younger was ardent, the elder was polite. Some two or three days of break emerged in their meeting. The younger was pining, the elder was unaware of it. The younger could not know that his insistence would postpone the meeting. On the third day, the younger kept his morning free of engagements so that the elder's visit would not be interfered with. There was no sign of the elder brother or any message of his coming. The younger brother asked another person to find out what had happened. The reply came that he was busy for the next several days! Had he trained his MIND not to expect, the elder brother would have been anxious to see the younger brother every day.