CHAPTER 13WHEN YOU THINK YOU ARE “MISUNDERSTOOD”
EVERY once in a while I get letters from persons complaining over the way the world in general treats them. They are bitter and resentful, and they vent this bitterness on those around them, excusing themselves by saying that the treatment they have received is the cause of their unhappy dispositions.
My dear "misunderstood" friends, the bitterness is at the bottom of all your troubles and it began when you began. It comes from brooding over the selfish point of view. I am certain that you misunderstand yourself when you say that you were not bitter until people were mean to you. If you look back far enough and honestly enough you will find that all your life long you have expected kindness from people and that every time they failed to be kind you brooded over it and made yourself generally disagreeable and repellent. Inside, if not outside.
And all your life long people have vented things on you, just as you vented your ill temper on others. If you had thrown off the unkind action of others and let your own light shine, your own Solar Plexus Sun shine, you would have got plenty of kindness in reparation for every unkindness that was vented upon you.
Years ago I used to think that I was "weak" some way because I couldn't hold a grudge against persons who had been unkind or mean. Later when I found New Thought I saw the reason why. I kept right on being radiant — the unkindness only made a little cloud pass over the face of my sun — and because I kept on being radiant I kept attracting good things from others. I soon found that the next time I came around into conjunction with the one who had been unkind to me he had got all over his unkind feeling and was ready to put himself out to do nice things for me. You can always transmute evil with good will. You can always turn away harshness with the soft answer. You can always overcome evil with good. You can always thaw out other people's iciness and acidness by letting your own sun shine.
You can always cleanse your mind of bitterness by denying the power of unkindness to affect you, and by turning your mind immediately to beautiful things.
You can always cut off your sins (shortcomings, falling-short-of-the-mark-nesses) by lightness — by right thinking, by right interest, by loving kindness.
Whenever an unkind thing comes your way you can always remember that at heart every human being earnestly desires to express all good and all love; that the only reason he fails to express kindness is because of some kink in his thinking at the present moment; due to the bitterness exuding within him on account of recent actions of somebody else. In other words he is passing his bitterness on to you, and his bitterness was caused by the actions of some one outside, just as your bitterness is. And underneath it all, in him, is the great urge which makes him love righteousness.
That same God-urge, working through an unenlightened intellect, makes him criticize and resent the world because it doesn't always express loving kindness and righteousness toward him.
In other words, your bitterness biases you so that you misconstrue the intentions and actions of other people and blind yourself to the good which is always trying to reach you through others. You are a human ink fish, fooling yourself with clouds of your own bitterness.
Your bitterness repels the things you desire because it is God's law that it shall do so.
Loving kindness and spiritual radiance attract the things you desire because it is God's will that it shall be so.
Your bitterness is entirely misplaced — the world treats you better than you deserve. This is so with us all.
You are the only one to blame for all the unhappiness that has come into your life so far. You have received exactly what you attracted. Or rather, you repelled exactly what you wanted. And you are doing it right along every day.
And yet while you are to blame for it all, you are not to blame. For the trouble in you was so deep seated that you could not recognize it.
Hereafter, attribute only good to every human being. Let your soft answer to yourself dissolve bitterness and turn away the wrath within. So shall you grow in wisdom and in knowledge and in soul-radiance. GETTING RID OF JEALOUSY >
Custom Search
|
