New Powers to Help You Perfect Your Relationships (continued)

There is always a moment before a problem starts with another human being where we realize that what we want is not going to happen. Ordinarily we'll say the other person is about to "ruin my day." But there is, for those of us who want to understand, not only a way for our day not to be ruined, but a way for us to elevate both ourselves and the other person, or at least give them the opportunity to change their lives as well our own.

The nature of change has nothing to do with what another person has done to us. What the other person did presented us with a moment of grace -- the opportunity for us to see that the reason this happened is so that we are moved to where we can take the next step in our life. We can use this painful moment to prove to ourselves that not only has what we've wanted all along not worked, but there exists something that if we change what we want, we can begin to know ourselves at a higher level.

A self-working man or a woman, the person to whom and in whom the Truth begins to become a living force, cannot have a bad day or a bad relationship. It's impossible, because everything that happens to that self-working man or woman is used for the purpose it was created, which is to help the person discover first the condition they're actually in, and then to be moved to read it, and to want the understanding that rests above them.

What happens when we get hurt by another person? We either lash out in the moment we feel hurt, or we run the other way. Have you ever changed another human being by lashing out at them or running away from them? It is not our power to change anyone. All that happens is the experience that is there trying to bring us to understanding just keeps repeating itself... over and over again. Our experience always brings us to this moment of truth where we have the possibility of changing what happens to us.

This is what is in our power to do: Whenever someone hurts us, we can put our understanding first and remember that this person cannot do anything different toward us than what he or she understands to do. Simply put, the person who is hurting us is doing the best they know how to do... and no one wants to be punished for their ignorance. The only way that person will ever know what they don't know is when we stop punishing them for it. But here's what we say: "That's not good enough!" Then we try to drag them through a change, which means we resist their negative behavior. And what do we do when someone resists our negative behavior? We just hunker down all the more. So our resistance to their state not only keeps their state alive, but we're convinced that we're different than them, when really it's one secretive relationship perpetuating itself.

In the moment that I feel hurt, I am in a space where I'm upset with you because of what you just did to me. That space wouldn't exist if I weren't standing as a secret opposite to the other person. What I'm looking at and feeling is really me. Therefore, what's mandatory in that moment is to realize that this space that I'm in