Principles for Perfecting Relationships

Have you ever been so upset, so disturbed by someone, that if you didn’t lash out at them, you were sure the whole world would come crashing down on you? When you and I get upset with someone, our attention is instantly glued onto the source of our irritation. All we do is think about the irritation we have and how it’s connected to what someone else has done.

When you’re upset with someone or something, you have no consciousness of yourself at all. You are only conscious of what you say he, she, or it is making you feel. You are completely outwardly oriented in order to justify your inward agitation.

At the moment you see a person or an event as being responsible for this irritation, what you are actually seeing is your experience of the moment. So really what you’re experiencing isn’t the person, but the content of your own past experience in its narrow confines.

This is the moment where it becomes possible to access the Truth (Love) by reversing your attention. Instead of placing all of the "consideration" on the person outside of you, turn your attention around and place your awareness entirely on yourself. Stand fast in the light of what you see about yourself before you turn that light on another person. Before you talk about the mote in that person's eye, take the beam out of your own. Instead of lashing out in the moment that you’re upset, become aware of your own reaction, and as best you know how, simultaneously drop the reaction by reversing your attentio

We can find an apt spiritual metaphor for this exercise in the movie "Zorro," where there is a swordsman's circle that Zorro instructs his disciple about in this way: "Stay in your circle. Don't go outside the circle for any reason whatsoever, because if you'll stay in your circle, what you need will come to you, and then because you have remained in your circle, you will be able to deal with it on your terms."

Not going outside your circle means staying in the space of your own life. Leave the other person's space alone; it’s not your business. They can't learn the lesson their space provides them, and the truth that's there, if you are in their circle, pushing on it. And what’s more, the only reason you are in their circle is because you can't bear being alone in your own! Stay in the circle, don't go out, and you'll see that fantastic things happen. If you would learn to serve Truth first before you try to straighten out another person then in the very attempt to do that, you would be given the true life that you are intended to have.

Dare to intend this Truth, intend this Love, intend the understanding you have, and as you intend it, be willing to stay in that spot where you can't find who you are and you can't say who the other person is. Then Truth tells you everything, because you've placed yourself where it's possible for It to make the connection with you. This raises you instantaneously to a new level of relationship that always has been waiting for you