Most of us already suspect what needs to be done if we are to have any hope of moving beyond the conflict so common in today’s relationships. Nevertheless, here is a brief description of the spiritual action to be taken: We must stop giving to our friends and family the pain we cannot bear to carry ourselves. Said differently, each of us must agree to be the one who will “taste” what we would serve to our “enemy du jour” before we throw it upon his or her plate.
From this moment forward, let the conflict stop with you. Make it your intention to forever quit yourself from the turning of this invisible wheel-of-woe. Each time we will consciously refuse to strike back in anger or act out some aggression toward the one who hurts us, we sow the seed of a new order of a conscious life. Now instead of being used by dark forces that grow at the expense of our soul’s development, it is we who use our endless differences with others to grow endlessly. And at the same time that we learn to rise above the pain of our own negative reactions, we create the possibility and opportunity for others around us to do the same.
Each time we will choose not to respond to someone’s mental or emotional blow with a blow of our own, that person is left no choice but to see that the only antagonist he has is his own pain. And just as this person’s awakening to the continual cause of his unconscious aching is the beginning of the end of it, so too is this true for us. Our newly awakened understanding reveals that there is nothing for us to do with our pain but to let it be nothing to us. And with each such spiritual step that we will dare to take outside the circle of suffering, so do we make a way for everyone else… because at last the circle has been broken.
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