Manipulation & Shadow: II
Another glorious slap in the face from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth:
“How you react to people and situations, especially when challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know yourself.
The more limited, the more narrowly egoic the view of yourself, the more you will see, focus on, and react to the egoic limitations, the unconsciousness in others. Their “faults” or what you perceive as their faults become to you their identity. This means you will only see the ego in them and thus strengthen the ego in yourself. Instead of looking ‘through’ the ego in others, you are looking ‘at’ the ego. Who is looking at the ego? The ego in you.
Very unconscious people experience their own ego through its reflection in others. When you realize that what you react to in others is also in you (and sometimes only in you), you begin to become aware of your own ego. At that stage, you may also realize that you were doing to others what you thought others were doing to you. You cease seeing yourself as a victim.” (pg. 188-89)
Another quote from the same page:
“If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit rather than a “little me,” then you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it.
Then out of your alertness would come a response. Who you are (consciousness), not who you think you are (a small me) would be responding. It would be powerful and effective and woulud make no person or situation into an enemy.” (pg. 188)