Question: How do I let go of my disappointments with other people, including my wish to punish them for any pain or sorrow I still feel due to my relationship with them?

Answer: We can never hope to be free as long as any part of us struggles with, or suffers over what others are doing, have done, or won’t do with their lives. Besides, if we could remain aware of the often-compromised state of our own character, that is, how we still do those things to others that we don’t want to do, this awakened conscience would stir in us a new need. Rather than worrying about whether so-and-so gets his comeuppance for being the kind of person he is, our attention would be elsewhere. It would be focused fully upon being in the Now of our own life wherein we would be actively attending to what we must do to let go of old resentments that won’t let go of us!

A great part of our inability to release this conflict-bred sense of feeling ourselves to be a hostage of how others behave is born of a mistaken perception. In our ignorance, we believe we must fix others who have done us wrong, otherwise justice won’t be served. But the truth is far from this popular view and the chain of victims it serves to create.

There are great powers at work around and within us all the time. And as we awaken to realize that these same perfect principles are already in place to empower us, this same understanding puts us in relationship with a whole new order of freedom. Freedom is not a creation of ours. It is not something attained by making life line up with our wishes; it is a system already in place, needing only our awareness of its abiding reality to realize its power as our own. These same invisible laws hold true when it comes to justice for all. We’ve all heard the phrase, “What goes around comes around.” This principle of karma, that what we give, we will receive in return, is a mathematical law whose root runs through the heart of reality. Our present problem is that we don’t understand this principle in operation because we can’t always see with our physical eyes its unfailing fruition. But be assured, what is evil in nature never goes without its reward, just as what is good is always rewarded in kind. These forces of instant righteousness, or perfect balance if you prefer, are always at work. Nothing escapes their imperceptible presence; everything yields to the weight of their judgment.