This week I've been reminded of how social media can be a tricky place to be. It's easy to be misunderstood, and to misunderstand others, whether it's language barriers, tone, or misreading someone's intent. It's even more confronting when people are rude, unkind and even cruel - and sometimes, we even find ourselves retaliating or wanting to defend ourselves, which can feel threatening and upsetting.

Whilst we like to think that the virtual spaces we choose to hang out in are free from hostility, this era has us familiar enough with trolls that it's a little naive of us to think we won't have to deal with them at some point. I find myself worrying a lot about how to navigate the tricky waters of these confrontations and dealings I have in online spaces.

Being a yoga student, I often turn to the yogic philosophies and wisdoms that give me resources on how to manage relationships. This week it's one of Pantanjali's yoga sutra that I'm thinking about alot.

Yoga Sutra 1.33 from Patanjali says:

maitri karuna muditopeksanam sukha duhkha punyapunya visayanam bhavanatas citta prasadanam

“By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.”

Ah, elusive calm, right? Peace and happiness can be hard to maintain if we're busy reacting to people around us that disturb the tranquil pools of our mind. But we do have tools that can help us.

Image Source

In this sutra, Patanjali is saying there's four kinds of 'locks' in the world: sukha (happy), dukha (unhappy), punya (virtous) and apunya (the not so virtuous). He's talking about people, and it's easy for anyone to be any of these people at any given time. I'm sure I can manage all four in a minute sometimes, let alone a day or a week!

If locks are people, then, Patanjali offers keys for those locks.

The keys are loving kindness, compassion, delight and disregard or equanimity.

Happy people, you'd think, would be the easiest people to deal with or to be around. Yet often it's our own key that's the issue - we can be jealous of their happiness, seeking to bring them down, as if we're trying to make someone else as unhappy as us. I see this online sometimes with trolls. It's like they are working so hard at bringing other people down because their life is unhappy. Why should others be happy, when I'm not, their actions and words seem to say. And on it goes - they'll never get that calm pool of the mind because by being jealous, spiteful, vindictive or cruel, they're usually creating harm for themselves (and if one of the yamas or moral codes of yoga is to 'cause no harm', then we've failed miserably by hurting ourselves). Patanjali asks us to use the friendliness key, sharing in someone else's happiness instead.

When we encounter people who are suffering, Patanjali says to use the compassionate key - to hold space for them, to listen, to empathise. Empathy is a tool we need to practice. By asking ourselves what that person is living, and how they may have suffered, and to imagine what that's like, enables us to feel compassion. I use this key a lot when people act out of a place of suffering. Sometimes their jealous, vindictive, irrational behaviour can be due to how they've been treated in the past, or that they don't know any other way to be, or don't realise that what they are doing is because they are suffering themselves. By showing compassion, we afford them a dignity they may otherwise not have. Retaliating in the same matter doesn't achieve much at all, and can escalate the situation.

With virtuous, good people, we should use the 'delight' key - be happy that there are people in the world that are so good. Be inspired by them. Observe their behaviour and appreciate the work they do.

The 'wicked' people are the hardest for me, and I find them the hardest in the online world as well, where we can't always escape them. How do we respond to the narcissists, the vicious, the passive aggressive, the ones who manipulate, bully, and belittle - not once, but over and over? And despite trying to use the 'compassionate' key, it just doesn't work. At what point do we 'disregard' - here on HIVE, block, mute, ignore? Refuse to deal with? Let slide? Scroll past? Don't get involved with?

What Patanjali is saying is don't let them bother us. We needn't react at all. We need to be level headed, to act with an equanimity. Sure, we speak up to defend others when they are behaving in unjust and cruel ways, but we need to do so calmly and clearly. Sometimes this might require taking action to protect others, like blocking and muting. It's not that we shut down freedom of speech, it's just that we protect others who are more vulnerable from hurtful words from people who are 'wicked' - or else unable to understand the impact of their words or actions, or even care about them, or work hard to make someone feel damn awful for their own pleasure.

So often I find myself acting from a place of ego and reaction - we all do. It's hard not to. We feel indignant and outraged when we believe people are behaving unfairly, irrationally or without truly understanding us. We rush in to defend the fortresses of our identity. But the trick is to know that we don't have to do anything at all. We can't control how others behave - all we can do is trust in our own goodness, our own efforts, our own virtues - let others think what they may. Let others control the own tranquillity of their own mind pools.

Once we catch ourselves reacting to people in negative ways, we look to the four locks. Am I being compassionate and empathetic? Am I gracious in the face of the happiness of others? Am I reacting in a way that I dislike in others? What is motivating my reactions here?

I find that sitting and not typing for a while helps.

Or type, but not send - walk away, think about it, delete and then speak with kindness and compassion.

Sometimes I fail miserably at this. I'm definitely not perfect, and I stuff up often. But I'm getting better at it.