The relationship with others should be recognized as a union that lasts for brief or longer periods, and concludes with the desire to have a better understanding of oneself.
The main point is this: we need the other person to understand ourselves.
We waste so much time, resources and energy trying to understand others, to make ourselves acceptable to others, and be in tune with them.
This creates contrasts, conflicts, and exhaustion, and often we feel worn out, and we haven’t done what we should have: understand ourselves.
Life offers us other people, and we attract them, just because we need to understand ourselves.
Why is it that we attract someone who is totally different from ourselves?
Because this person expresses that part of us that is alien to our way of living, that we keep hidden and suppressed, but this is the part that we must bring out into the open.
We need to relate to other people to understand ourselves, and then to enter the state of Humility.
If I expect to be in the right and want to connect to those who are like me, and if I want to be understood unconditionally, and above all if I judge negatively all those who have different opinions to mine, I am affirming rights that are not real, because nothing gives me the right to judge or criticize other people.
I should try to understand why that person is different, moreover why I accept him or not, but not referring to him, but to myself.
When I am analyzing myself in this situation, I need to enter a state of Humility, because there are questions about myself that I have to face. I can’t start off thinking that I am right, because then my relationship with others will only be one of judging them, and rejecting them as annoying, thus refusing the useful experience Life has given to me.
Always relating every situation to myself could be considered egoistic, a person full of himself, but it is not so. I have understood that if I do not love, understand and accept myself, I can neither understand, love nor appreciate others.
This comes naturally, and the more difficulty I have to understand myself should make me realize that others have the same difficulty, it does not mean that it is easy for other people to love and accept themselves either.
When we meet someone who has an ambiguous, shifty, distorted personality, we quickly judge them negatively, but if we remembered the fatigue it costs us to make our own personality more acceptable, we would comprehend the fatigue of the other person. Then, instead of just judging, we would automatically understand.
Our relationship with other people is the fundamental part of our Life, and if we do not have understanding of the diverse, we have no terms of comparison.
If I am not a lazy person and I work hard all day to get the best deal, I think that is what Life is all about in this world. Then I meet a lazy person, who is fine and living very satisfactorily, well I cannot judge him just because he is different from me, I have to look at what he has achieved with this “laziness”
If his laziness is dealt with in a positive way, he lives at a leisurely pace, peacefully and with awareness, and consequently he feels good, I must try to understand that maybe my way of living should change, let myself be permeated by his way of being.
The advice…. not to judge is important, why? Because the moment I judge someone I am producing negativity, and think that the other person is wrong.
Why? Because if I think that I am in the right, I automatically think that he is wrong.
It doesn’t work like that. The other person is different, and I could receive something from him to improve myself.
It is truly fundamental our relationship with others.
Having said this however, I must not be conditioned by this.
Let me explain: The moment I meet a person I see as different from me, I note his different characteristics, but I don’t judge them. I don’t feel that they are part of me at all, neither do I want to live as he does, so I don’t let myself be conditioned and think that I am the one who is in the wrong. I must live according to how I really am.
In all this, what is important ; who lives in Harmony, and who doesn’t.
Who is living well, and who isn’t.
Someone can be completely different from me, and give me an input from Life that I would never have thought of, it was so totally unknown to me. If that person lives well, and through his own characteristics is fulfilled, well it means that he is right.
All the same, if I don’t feel that his characteristics are part of me, of my way of being, then I should just remember that there are people with different characteristics to mine.
When I am with someone different to myself, who is convinced he is in the right, aware of his behavior and believes in himself, but is unsatisfied with his problematic Life, you have nothing to learn from him. He should learn from other people how to change the way he lives.
It is wrong to say “That’s how I am, I’m all right” if living like that does not lead you to Harmony and tranquility. In this case “That’s how I am” needs to be reviewed.
Maybe you need to express your characteristics positively.
If we want to get ideas to improve ourselves from others, we must first be aware if that person is harmonious, serene and fulfilled, then he can be considered. Otherwise his ideas could only confuse you.
All the different ways of living are legitimate and permissible, each one of us must live in our own way, but before offering or even forcing our way of living on to others, it must be a positive way, so that the others receive serenity and peace.
Without this, we have nothing to give to other people, and we will only assimilate from them, to change ourselves.