Each of us experiences happenings, events and experiences that are different from any other human being. If an event also unites other people, the way of experiencing it is completely different from individual to individual. The intensity, the reaction, the way of dealing with it, the solutions found are different.
The secret of understanding the other lies precisely in this: in being able to put yourself in his shoes to look with his eyes, hear with his skin, listen with his ears. A really difficult change of clothes to make. But a must if you want to understand a different point of view from ours.
Often we fail to place ourselves in this attitude of understanding the other and consequently react with easy judgment, with words of attack, with distancing. Because we don’t understand a different look from ours. We close ourselves rigidly in our view and build fortresses: we fear being contaminated by extraneous perspectives. Instead of seeing them as opportunities for enrichment, we fear them. Because they can make our balance stagger, they can make us change our minds, they allow us to broaden our vision or, perhaps most of all, they can touch weak strings of our interiority that are waiting to be taken in hand and fortified.
Looking at the world without understanding, without incorporating the outside into us, is yet another escape from ourselves. Focusing our attention on what is outside of us means pointing the finger outside. Without connecting it to our interiority, without understanding it. And in doing so we are losing our present. And what this present is communicating to us.
Any event in our life is a teaching for us and for us alone. For the others it has a completely different value. Even if it is the same event. Looking outside ourselves does not allow us to grasp this personalized teaching .
So instead of spending immense amounts of precious energy in trying to go back to causes greater than us, instead of taking the side of one thought or another, we remain within ourselves. And we pay close attention to the sensations that this event is triggering us.
This is the great task that each of us is called to carry out. Before every event in life.
This is the only truth we need , the only truth we can truly discover, the only truth that every event has come to bring us.
We are called to pay attention to our most recurring thoughts, our physical sensations, our emotions, the experiences that occur most during the day. These are the messengers of our interiority, the treasures to be found, the messages to decipher.
Everything else is a frame that can help our inner gaze but that can often hinder it. Because we are no longer used to immersing ourselves so deeply and for so long in ourselves. And consequently we throw ourselves, even with arrogance, outside, hermetically closing the door that leads to us.
If you work on the roots,
the fruits will come by themselves.
Harv Eker
And then it becomes essential to learn not to react, that is, not to implement an action to respond immediately to a stimulus. On the other hand, it is essential to stay and experience the stimulus, observe what it arouses in us, bring to consciousness the internal movements that it gave birth. And wait. That everything is clear inside because clarity cannot come from outside. It is an internal condition. Which then goes to reveal itself outside of us.
Whether it is a pandemic, an accident, an illness or a quarrel, what is important to experience is what that event has brought within us. To then bring it out in a constructive and not destructive way.
It is now time to stop insults, judgments, criticisms and complaints in the bud. And use the precious vital energies we have for creating a new world. Which can always and only start from us. Never from outside.
This is the truth that can lead us to change, improvement, enrichment. Our life mission is internal truth. The search for external truth diverts us from our path. It can be useful to us and can become our ally if we have first embarked on the journey of inner research. But without this trip it is just another escape from ourselves. And from the precious treasure that is hidden inside each of us.
W hen we seek what we lack outside, we are fleeing.
We are running away from ourselves.
When we blame someone for our sickness, when we complain about that annoying situation, when we think we are always the unlucky ones… we are wasting energy and precious time.
We direct the attention within us, we return present to ourselves.
Our malaise is a messenger of our Soul: it makes our darkness evident, our hidden parts , it hurts us right where it hurts us so much.
And then when you feel a pain inside you feel privileged because you are in contact with your Soul.
Do not throw this contact to the wind by turning your attention outside, do not get distracted.
Gather, rest, silence the thought and let your imagination ride.
In those moments we only need tears, emptiness, presence with ourselves.
The Soul, once the void has been created and all distractions swept away, will take you where She knows.
When we look for what we lack inside, we are making a revolution!
