We have learned to “tolerate” those who don’t please us or who rub us the wrong way. We have come to believe that to do so is the same as living in harmony with others. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The whole notion of this order of tolerance is rooted in the idea of superiority, as only a superior person tolerates an inferior human being. When we are with someone, and we must “tolerate” him or her, we are in a state of secret self-love that keeps itself in place by having that which it quietly denigrates.

Unconscious self-superiority solidifies through a process of resisting what it imagines it isn’t like, but by the fact of the negative reaction proves its unseen likeness. Shakespeare said, “Methinks thou dost protest too much,” because he was pointing out that what we most strongly deny in another is what we unconsciously recognize in ourselves. But we’re sure we’re unlike everyone except for those who match the images we have of ourselves. And so it goes that we live from — see our lives through the eyes of a certain false sense of “I” that always resists anyone seen as being “not like I am.” [To be continued…]