There is a popular line taken by self-help books and
personal development gurus, and sometimes by our best friends when we confide in them our problem with someone else: they sagely advise us to avoid 'negative' people. The
people who are good for you, they tell us, are enthusiastic, generous,
optimistic, rise to a challenge, are big in heart and vision. The complainers,
the timidly conventional, the ones who put you down or tell you why your idea
will not work, the self-preoccupied and the anxious are not the sort of
people you want to know. Popular wisdom tells us that if someone lets you down,
you are better off without that person in your life. We like to tell ourselves
that we have 'grown out of' a relationship - an idiom we rarely use when we are
the ones who have been grown out of. We encourage each other to label other people as immature,
inadequate, not quite up to our own higher standards. Dump them, we suggest; an ugly word for an ugly thought.
For
you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but only to the
particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it
(T14 X 7)
So we brusquely
sever our connections, or wish we could, which amounts to the same thing. Or, 'with the best will in the world' as we like to
say, regretfully or otherwise, we drift apart. There are people we avoid because we are embarrassed by
our own hostility - no one likes to think of himself as unfriendly - and by our
own fears of conflict or rejection. We do not like people who confuse, alarm or
remind us of our uncertainties. It feels safer to keep a distance of space, or
of time, or both, between us and them. But we are not on separate little rafts with variable compasses. We are all in the same lifeboat.
Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and
glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have another
opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in him because they are
yours. The ego tries to find them in yourself alone because it does not know
where to look...if you look only at yourself you cannot find yourself, because
that is not what you are (T8 III 5)
There are also less welcome gaps, between us
and the people we think we would like to see more often, or would like to get
to know in the first place. There are all those amazing people we read about who
we never get to meet, who seem to have the interesting circle of
friends that we are not part of. We joke that we can choose our friends, but
not our family; but it does not always feel as though we have chosen our
friends, either. And when you do get to know them, you find that those
positive, good-for-you friends are as hampered by problems as everyone else.
They may have learned better ways of coping and how to be less fearful, but you
can be sure that they are as lost as you are, or they would not perceive
themselves as here at all. As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so
long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived (T15 XI 5).
We are as solitary as each other, as long as we
believe that we are separate individuals with different agendas. Only the lonely and alone...see their
brothers different from themselves (T22 in 2) - that is, all of us, until we
learn to see every other being as a 'brother', as an essential part of oneself: one moment
of real recognition makes everyone your brother ...Salvation is a collaborative
venture (T4 VI 8)
While we perceive ourselves as many instead of one,
practically speaking we cannot be friends with everyone at once and all the
time. Our existing relationships must change in form and degree of closeness as
we follow our various paths, sometimes convergent, sometimes divergent. But in
your mind, in the way you think of anyone at any time, whether they are still
physically alive or not, still in touch or not, you always have the choice to
be open or closed to them, appreciative or irritated, to wish them well or hold
a grievance against them. You have the gift of peace to offer or withhold. If
you see them as other than you, there will be a distance between you, like it
or not. If you see them as the same as you, regardless of the differences in
form, you will no longer feel alone. Even if your body is isolated, your mind
is still free to bring this peace to
everyone who wanders in the world uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For
it is given you to join with him (T31 VIII7).
The Course does not ask us to try to be more loving. Rather, it teaches us to recognize how much we do not want to, how much we isolate ourselves, in the mistaken conviction that we are bigger and better, or at least safer, on our own. Look fairly at whatever makes you give your brother
only partial welcome, or would let you think that you are better off apart. Is
it not always your belief your specialness is limited by your relationship?
...You would oppose this course because it teaches you you and your brother are
alike (T24 I 8). You may not welcome the message, but it brings release from your self-inflicted loneliness. You are not alone, when you bring to mind the idea
of total connectedness with all those others out there, past present and to
come, in this universe or any other. When you listen within yourself for echoes
of what the Course calls 'the forgotten song', the stirring of thoughts and
feelings that the world never taught you and knows nothing of, you remember
compassion, and recognize that your brothers are not out there but in you, and
you in them.
Thus they define their life and where they live,
adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they
have. And so it is with all who see the body as all they have and all their
brothers have. They try to reach each other, and they fail, and fail again. And
they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the
little that they have. Listen, and try to think if you remember what we will
speak of now.
Listen,–perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state
not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a
song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard
completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a
little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything
particular. But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the
song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who
were there and listened with you...What is a miracle but this remembering? And
who is there in whom this memory lies not? The light in one awakens it in all. And
when you see it in your brother, you are
remembering for everyone (T21 I 5-10)
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