“If people are troublesome, you have only to change your thought about them, and then they will change too, because your own concept is what you see. This is true revenge.” Emmet Fox, Sermon on the Mount
We tend to get sucked in to other people’s poor behavior and attitudes. If someone treats us badly, ignores us, glares at us, tells us the most negative thing about us, writes short snippy emails or texts…well, we jump right on that wagon. Most of the time we probably shoot the same ammunition back their way. We have an “I’ll show them” attitude.
It is probably less often that we respond to negativity, judgment and attitude with love or caring or compassion. “What?” you say! How is this possible? If we stay in our ego, in our need to be right, in our need to police the world, in our need to show them the right way…it is impossible to respond from love. Here we stay stuck in the negative energy…nothing can be solved at the same level from which it emerged. We just keep going round and round and round.
If we can accept that our problem with troublesome people must be resolved at a higher level of energy in us…then we can begin to understand how Fox’s statement might work. If we can lift our idea out of the gutter of judgment to a different thought, a thought that projects peace or love or harmony or understanding…Fox says it will “crumble away in front of you”…in other words the troublesome person completely loses his/her power to affect you at all.
Not only does the troublesome one lose the power to influence you…you actually are the power that can influence them! When you shift your attitude from judgment to compassion, understanding and love…from the lower vibration of negativity to the higher vibration of love… you can begin to see them in a new light…you can see them from an open heart.
Take responsibility for the energy, the vibration you bring to life…in all places, with all people and in all ways.
Peace always
Paula
