Here's a special spiritual exercise designed to develop harmonious human relationships. Just as we can be taught the Heimlich maneuver -- a swift action that can be taken to dislodge what is choking the body -- we can learn a spiritual maneuver that we may call upon every day, as often as it is necessary, to help us dislodge something that is presently choking our soul. The point of this exercise and the new understanding it reveals is to help us get past the unconscious thinking that we can do something against ourselves and expect a positive outcome.
This exercise is called the "You-I Maneuver." You can work with it every moment of the day, whether you're with people or you're sitting alone and thinking about someone. To employ this maneuver effectively, you will need to be as sensitive in your interactions with other people as a spider web is to the slightest breeze; your True Nature is just that responsive. Much as a crystal-clear lake reflects the overhead sky, any state of energy we encounter resonates with its counterpart within us. In that same instant, if we are willing, we may share in that consciousness.
And there is no limit to this gift except for what we unknowingly throw away through acts of unconscious resistance to what we are being shown.
When we're around other people, and have a negative reaction toward them, we don't realize that some form of resistance already rules the moment. Feeling the need to tolerate someone couldn't appear within us unless something in us did not want to be around someone "like that." As the intensity of this unconscious resistance rises, it takes the shape of a further negative reaction toward that "offending" person. Key to this exercise is to understand that this reaction always begins with the pejorative word you -- as in "You are this," or "You are that." There is an instant sense of separation between one's Self and the person one is with. Further strengthening this false sense of "I" are waves of negative thoughts that ensure our "finding." Now it is certain: we know who is at fault for the conflict we feel. But now we are beginning to know better than to blame another for the negative states revealed in us.
So in this same moment, when we look at that person and sense in us the formation of this derogatory "you" starting to take shape, we are going to add the word "I" to that same "you." Now we're going to hold in our mind and heart the idea of "You-I." For instance, suppose we're resisting someone because he or she is always in a rush. Instead of just going along with being ruled by the usual negative reaction, we choose another road. We realize our psychic similarity instead of separating ourselves by it. This new understanding is expressed something like this: "You ... I have seen the exact same character in me." For instance if an angry person comes to us, instead of tolerating his or her negative state, we work with this new maneuver through this silent realization: "You ... I have seen the exact same anger in me."
This inner exercise is good for any negative reaction we may have toward the unwanted manifestations of others. It disarms the lie of the "superior" self by effectively canceling its corrupting power to produce the illusion that we are different from the people we tolerate. And in the collapse of that opposite, love and compassion are born: "I can no longer treat you as someone to be tolerated; I realize the fact that you and I really are neighbors because we share a common burden: the need to discover the truth of ourselves through one another."