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 our relationships. Nevertheless, here is a brief description of the spiritual action to be taken: We must stop giving to everyone else 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. Here is an example of how we can begin this new kind of inner work based in a higher kind of understanding about ourselves.

Whenever someone says something cruel, or otherwise does the unthinkable to us, our position towards this hurtful event is “calculated” right within our ensuing reaction to it — a reaction that describes to us the nature of the perceived attack even as it formulates a response to it. But no negative reaction of ours can read this moment any more than a tractor can pick up a copy of Farm News and study the feed prices reported in it. Our red-seeing reactions read only the content of their own right to exist. Their report, all based upon turbulent thoughts and feelings, tells us there is no choice but to return this pain right away or perish ourselves. These lower states cannot possibly see that this person they urge us to pounce on is already in the hands of some pain or he or she would never have thrown this suffering our way. And, perhaps most important of all, this same reactionary self will never understand this one inescapable fact of its own fury: With every pain it hurls back at its adversary, all it does is condemn itself to continue cycling through the level of ignorance that produces this pain to begin with. So, with each blow this unconscious nature delivers, it just creates for itself the need for the next set of blows.

Let it stop now. From this moment forward, let it stop with you. Make it your intention to forever quit yourself from the turning of this invisible wheel-of-woe… [to be continued]