Why do I ever get frustrated with someone or something? Why am I frustrated with them? Because they're bringing up inside of me what I don't know what to do with, because they are making me aware of a pain that was part of my life before I sat down to have the pie with them -- that's why.
But I don't want to see that I have this pain in me, so I am frustrated with you. Because that proves the pain has been produced by you, not that you have revealed to me a level of being that is incapable of loving when it is pushed the way it's pushed by something. Do you understand that anger has no love in it at all? Resentment has no love in it at all. Impatience is the antithesis of kindness. And were I to see that in the moment -- where suddenly up comes this impatience, this frustration -- that you, as you are, are not the reason why I'm experiencing this moment the way that I am. What would happen to me in that moment? What would happen? I get it: my nature can't deal with anything other than that which supports the belief it has in its own image.
What happens to me in that moment, if I see that? It's a little shocking. Blessed are the poor in spirit. "God help me." Not, "God help me change you." Not, "Please God change these people, these circumstances, because the world is so-and-so and everything's upside down." Then the prayer has nothing to do with trying to change one's circumstances. The prayer is born out of the revelation of one's own consciousness to one's own consciousness. The recognition that, as I am, I can't do anything other than get frustrated with anything that comes along and proves to me that I'm not this marvelous all-giving, generous, talented person I imagine myself to be.
In other words -- and we've all done this a thousand times -- we can try to change our conditions, and we might even do so successfully from time to time. But changing the condition does nothing to change the consciousness that, given any change in that condition, reveals itself to be instantaneously flammable.
It's hard to believe that we have a nature that would rather destroy someone, punish them, resent them, than see itself as it is. It really is. Most of us still don't believe it. You're just beginning to get a hint of it, but you have to put two and two together. When you don't do... when things don't happen the way I want them to, what becomes of me? What do I express? We know the answer, don't we? And then, as part of that frustration that finds something to blame for it, comes the inevitable justification of why I had to be like that. Or, if I wasn't this way, then nothing would change. Really? How about, because I'm this way, nothing changes. I don't know how it happened. I would rather put someone or something else into a crucible than see my own weakness.
How does that happen? Rather than see I am not what I believe myself to be, I'll do anything. My morality is predicated on what I have to do to keep from seeing myself as I am. Any pain over our sudden realization of a weakness. I'm unable to do what I want to do. I'm unable to get you to be what I want you to be. I can't pull off what I've imagined. In that moment, am I not in some kind of painful state? Am I not frustrated by that? Any pain over our weakness, a limitation suddenly glimpsed, isn't because of the limitation. Pain over a weakness isn't because of the weakness. Pain over the weakness, pain over the limitation, is how the limitation and the weakness want to produce a condition that convinces you it has nothing to do with your limitation or your weakness. It wants you to see something as being responsible for what you are unable to be or to do. "I would have never acted that way if you hadn't said those things." "I would never treat a person the way I just treated you, but the situation demanded it." Do you see that or not?
And anything that justifies, through saying that the situation demanded that I stoop to a level of self that would rather punish you than see its own limitation, belongs to the nature that's going to keep itself hidden forever; and it will. That's what it wants to do. That's how it lives. So, I'm trying to get to this point that we've talked about in some ways for years and years and years, but I'm putting a sharper edge on it. There's only one way for a man or a woman to change the kind of human being they are -- only one way. It isn't changing you. It's not changing this. It's not changing that. It's not getting people to line up. It's not getting my partner to finally see that they've got it wrong. The only way to change myself is to actually see myself the way I am.
I don't want to have any concept whatsoever that the pain that I'm in is not produced by you, but that the pain of that level of being must point to you in order to hide itself. Because, what would I be if that level is actually what I am? What would happen to me? I'd have no hope! If I can't change you or my life, if I can't make things line up the way I want to, what am I going to do with my existence? When, by the way, most of what I do -- at least I sense I'm doing -- is because I'm trying to complete myself, and I know that I'm not complete!
We're meant to see ourselves. We're meant to see ourselves through another level of self that doesn't judge what it sees -- that understands that what we're given to see as the reason for why we are the way we are, can never change why we are the way we are. It can't do it! I'm not the way I am because of what you are. I am the way I am, and you are here to show me the way that I am. Everything that I do is intended to be a mirror.