Before we can learn how to step outside the pattern set into motion by some habitual negative reaction toward others, we need a better understanding of the underlying forces that create it. In other words, we must find a way to look at these same moments through a "new set of eyes."

We love to be shown qualities within us that are positive. But love often shows us what is un-loving within us, much as the light of the sun creates shadows. To understand this is to realize that even in the darkest moment of some unwanted revelation, we are never without love; it is always there, even if -- as clouds sometimes hide the sun...

Have you ever been drawn into a fight with a loved one where - by the time you got knee-deep into who's "right" and who's "wrong" -- maybe over the most trivial of matters -- it felt as if, somehow, your very life depended on the outcome of that fight We've all had moments like this, perhaps too many times; which is why it seems strange that we've yet to see the following...

What do we have to do to change the balance sheet of our lives so that for every measure of impatience and intolerance there may be at least an equivalent sum of compassion and consideration? With few exceptions, the usual focus of our attention and interactions with others is centered on our self and the fulfillment of its desires. The mindset of this lower consciousness...

We all know what it's like to find ourselves unhappy and in conflict with someone who just isn't giving us what we want or need from him or her. Whenever this happens, we usually find fault with these people, judge them as being inadequate, and then blame them for the negativity we now feel toward them. But how many of us are awake enough to offer these same people..."

All of our relationships exist for a single beautiful purpose that expresses itself in two different ways: 1) everyone and everything is in our life to help us grow; and 2) everyone and everything is also there in our life to help us see everything in us that now stands in the way of our realizing this same higher possibility.

The real underlying limitation in our relationships is rooted in how we look at and think about others who are in our life.

Our relationships, but especially with those we love, are a kind of "magic mirror." Our partner helps bring us into an awareness of qualities and characters that otherwise we'd never see as dwelling within us.

Other people do not create any disturbance we feel in the relationship. They are revealing to us in that moment the part of us that lays in the dark and waits to get disturbed so it can hide behind the cloud of war.

We grow through our relationships with life, which means that through them we are shown possibilities about ourselves we never knew existed.

Whatever it may be that we find wanting in someone else, we must learn what it means to give that very thing to him or her.

When another human being falls short of our expectations and we realize that what we want is not going to happen, there is a way for us to elevate ourselves and the other person in that same moment.