Hi Inky,

One thing I have learned from experience and counseling (that I really needed) was to never suppress my spontaneous reaction to people. You should always trust your instinct because it is a raw true unrefined compass of whether a situation is good or bad for you. The emotional mastery is to control the way you express that feeling. You have every right to feel anger toward such a destructive and offensive gesture, and are not wrong to start to be reserved about this community if such behavior is allowed especially if it comes from its leaders. A true spiritual leader should be able to communicate properly if there is something you need to improve, and in a respectful and considerate way. I don’t understand in the story if this woman told you what needs improving but nonetheless this gesture speaks of a very primitive person and I would not think she has mastered herself in the first place.

Your fear of going to community events I also understand because I tend to react like this. You are protecting the involved people and yourself from your own anger. This is what more refined people usually do as they are not beasts that just go and explode in anger. However it also means that you are so sensitive that you have not learned properly how to assert yourself. Maybe the fact that this is a spiritual community also plays a role in the sense that you perceive it as authority and it is more difficult to question authorities. Maybe this gesture that angered you at first has grown into feeling that your dignity as been destroyed in front of these people, do you get too worried about people’s opinions of you? Anyway, every person that respect themselves choose to be surrounded by people that treat them nicely and this is completely healthy.

So there are 2 things that I think you should focus on – your abilities to assert yourself, and maybe to decide whether you are choosing a healthy community.

Give yourself some time to relax and do things that bring you pleasure 🙂