Whenever someone says something cruel, or otherwise does the unthinkable to us, our position towards this hurtful event is "calculated" right within our ensuing reaction to it -- a reaction that describes to us the nature of the perceived attack even as it formulates a response to it. But our red-seeing reactions read only the content of their own right to exist. Their report, all based upon turbulent thoughts and feelings, tells us there is no choice but to return this pain right away or perish ourselves. These lower states cannot possibly see that this person they urge us to pounce on is already in the hands of some pain or he or she would never have thrown this suffering our way. And, perhaps most important of all, this same reactionary self will never understand this one inescapable fact of its own fury: With every pain it hurls back at its adversary, all it does is condemn itself to continue cycling through the level of ignorance that produces this pain to begin with. So, with each blow this unconscious nature delivers, it just creates for itself the need for the next set of blows.
Most of us already suspect what needs to be done if we are to have any hope of moving beyond the conflict so common in today's relationships. Nevertheless, here is a brief description of the spiritual action to be taken: We must stop giving to our friends and family the pain we cannot bear to carry ourselves. Said differently, each of us must agree to be the one who will "taste" what we would serve to our "enemy du jour" before we throw it upon his or her plate.
From this moment forward, let the conflict stop with you. Each time we will consciously refuse to strike back in anger or act out some aggression toward the one who hurts us, we sow the seed of a new order of a conscious life. Now instead of being used by dark forces that grow at the expense of our soul's development, it is we who use our endless differences with others to grow endlessly. And at the same time that we learn to rise above the pain of our own negative reactions, we create the possibility and opportunity for others around us to do the same.
Each time we will choose not to respond to someone's mental or emotional blow with a blow of our own, that person is left no choice but to see that the only antagonist he has is his own pain. And just as this person's awakening to the continual cause of his unconscious aching is the beginning of the end of it, so too is this true for us.