VII. The Totality of the Kingdom, Paragraph 7
7 One child of God is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach another. One Teacher is in all minds and He teaches the same lesson to all. He always teaches you the inestimable worth of every Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the infinite Love for which He speaks. Every attack is a call for His patience, since His patience can translate attack into blessing. Those who attack do not know they are blessed. They attack because they believe they are deprived. Give, therefore, of your abundance, and teach your brothers theirs. Do not share their illusions of scarcity, or you will perceive yourself as lacking.
If my brother attacks because he feels deprived, then it must be that I defend myself because I feel vulnerable. This is a cycle that I am ready to break. It is unworthy of God’s Son. It keeps me in hell when I could be in the Kingdom. Jesus shows us the simple way to end this sad state of affairs.
When my brother attacks me I have a choice about how I respond. The choice I make depends on my vision of myself. The Holy Spirit will correct my thinking and clear my vision if I ask Him to. Here is an example of how this is working for me right now. A person at work has persistently caused me problems because he won’t listen. He thinks he already knows and so he ignores what he is told.
My first response to his latest error was anger and frustration. I cannot get him to listen to me and his own judgment is flawed. I am the one who suffers for his errors and so I resented him and wanted him to change. He seemed to be the problem and I don’t have influence over him and so there seemed to be no solution.
I want to wake up. I want to wake up more than I want to solve this problem. I know that waking up depends on forgiveness, so I want to forgive him, the situation, and myself. I want to accept the Atonement in this situation because that is the only thing that will bring me closer to God. My way of handling it in the past has only brought me more deeply into the ego illusion. I asked the Holy Spirit to heal my mind.
In healing my mind He showed me a picture of two children. The little boy wants to win the game. He wants to be the hero and in his mind the hero makes all the decisions himself and they are right decisions. It’s hard to be the hero because he doesn’t have all the tools yet to make those decisions, but it is really important to him that he does so. He needs to appear the hero so he stubbornly persists in doing whatever he needs to so that he maintains this image of himself.
The little girl has an end goal in mind for her game. She has decided what needs to be done to win and since she has played this game often, she is certain she knows the steps to take to win. Winning is important to her because losing would be scary. She sees losing the game as losing everything she values. So when the little boy takes chances with the game and stubbornly fights against her plan, her fear turns into rage.
Seeing us as frightened and stubborn children helped me to diffuse the situation. There are things that must be done, and one of those things is to convince this fellow to do his job differently. I don’t know how to do this or even if I should step into it. Maybe it will be done by someone else in the work place. But, what I feel now is different than it was before.
I feel more understanding and compassionate to both players, both myself and this co-worker. I have invited Holy Spirit into the situation and I trust that He will direct it, so I am not afraid anymore. This opens me to love, which feels more natural. I am reminded that everyone is innocent. I am reminded that my purpose is forgiveness. My only function is to accept the Atonement for myself. I know what I am supposed to be doing and I do it. I am at peace about the whole thing.
I wonder how the story will unfold now.
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