My brother-disciple Stoma Parker—you may know him—told me something that stuck with me. One day, in a conversation, I mentioned a person I find difficult to be around and have tended to avoid. Stoma told me that he does the opposite. He spends time with this person. He said it’s good practice for him—it helps him learn not to react or get upset.

When Stoma first told me that, I hadn’t yet acquired the strength of will to understand it. But I think I’m getting a little stronger now.

For example, I know a woman who can really upset me very fast — I can just blow up at her. The last time I did, I said some unpleasant things and she was very upset, and I deeply regretted it. So now I’m really working hard, when I talk to her, to not react. I think I’m doing a little better. Not mastery — but a little bit better.

Every challenge in life can be used in this way. As Swami Rama said — use every circumstance for grist for the mill.

Stay Within Your Capacity — But Push the Edge

This doesn’t mean we should stay around people who are abusive beyond our capacity to protect ourselves. You don’t want to get hurt, or hurt them. But here is something to consider. If you can open the door just a little bit, now and then, in a controlled way, over time you may slowly grow. Don’t throw the door wide open — then you get overwhelmed, you have to run away, and it serves no purpose. But a little bit, under controlled conditions, and over time you may gain confidence that you can handle it and become less reactive.

It’s like hatha yoga. You come up toward your limit, but you stay just beneath it, maybe 80%. If you stay at 20% of your capacity, you won’t progress. By pushing toward your limit, over time your limit will increase, and you can go a little more.

I know someone with Parkinson’s, and her memory has been affected by the disease. She walks into a room and doesn’t have a clue what to do. Those of us with intact memories don’t realize how much memory quietly does for us. At first it was very hard for me — I kept thinking, What do you mean you don’t know what to do? It took me months to even begin learning that she truly didn’t know. She was not trying to make life difficult. I’ve still got a long way to go but am in process.

So be gentle with yourself. But keep pushing that edge a little. Over time, the limit grows.

Boundaries Are Yours — Not Theirs

One thing worth saying clearly: when we talk about staying in relationship with difficult people, we are not talking about expecting them to change. We are not talking about expecting them to honor our boundaries. Your boundaries are yours. You set them for yourself, for your own emotional sanity — not because the other person is going to respect them. That distinction matters.

There are some people we may genuinely need to step back from, at least for a time. There is wisdom in that too. The question is whether we are stepping back because it is truly beyond our current capacity, or whether we are simply avoiding the discomfort of practice. Slowly, carefully, we can learn to tell the difference.

The Dog and God

Swami Hari was always joking. He once talked about the words dog and God. They are the same letters, just reversed. Like a dog seeks out unpleasant things to repeatedly sniff, so the mind tends to think of unpleasant experiences to repeatedly review. But when the mind obsessively thinks of the same painful situation, you get an emotional problem. If, instead, you can put your mind on a leash, and restrain it from going back to that painful circumstance for the thousandth time, you will have more peace in your life.

The mind that is pulled around by every difficult person, every upsetting encounter, every slight and threat — that same mind, trained through practice, can become something else.

We keep growing stronger. Eventually, we can come to the point where we can hold the mind still. And then we can go through life without being dragged here and there by all the different attractants. In that stillness and silence, you may find God.