People as Mirrors

Erich Fromm in his book 'Having versus Being' illustrates that in the extreme, ego desires such as greed, ambition and lust can and should be classified as insanity. You probably also know a few people who have an ugly agenda. It is out in the open and they go after their desires with ruthless drive at the cost of everybody else. And the outcome is insane for all parties involved. The problem is that for these 'villains', their cause of action probably feels right in the same way as all your cause of action seem perfectly fine to you.

The villain is at an extreme very much as the saint is,  with most of us somewhere in the middle. We follow our agenda, on occasions ruthlessly, sometimes subconsciously, but most of the times we make the right choices despite ourselves. Well, chances are you are reading this blog because you are a spiritual path traveler like me. Yes, I think you can become saintly. As a matter of fact, it is one choice at the time that gets you there. The egotistic villain also got to his spot with one choice at a time, that is choosing his agenda over love most of the times. The good news is, that no matter what your starting point happens to be, everyone can take the journey home by choosing love over and over again instead of your personal agenda. The problem is just that often this choice is not apparent to us. But that's exactly what your spiritual path is for. The Tao will gently take your velvet glove off and show you that there is an iron fist hidden beneath. Once you reach that stage of spiritual maturity, your homecoming is guaranteed since from now on you cannot help choosing love instead.

People and environments are mirrors because they reflect back to you the tensions you have within. I remember the times when I was battling my personal demons and I used to feel spiritually connected, yet I observed that I was more short-tempted with my kids than otherwise. It turns out that you can't trust your feelings at times, yet you can trust the reaction of the environment you are in. The reason why the villains act increasingly insanely is because they are sending not so subtle messages to themselves that there must be another way.

A spiritual path is one choice at a time, and as a matter of fact, the Tao asks you to repeat it over and over again: choose love or choose your own agenda, it is as simple at that. Yes, no matter how long you have traveled down the road into nowhere, today is a perfect day to turn the car around. Look at your brother and your sister and their reactions will be a perfect rear-view mirror of what your direction has been up to here. When you turn your car around and when you choose love instead, you will feel that your environment will change with you. You will experience this amazing peace inside and you will be gelling perfectly with your  environment. Seems like an easy choice to me.