This may be the greatest
relational position of heart to acquire:
“I can neither harm, nor be harmed.”
Imagine that, as a position of personality, nurtured within—acknowledging now
that any of us can graduate above our present personalities, in spite of what
we’ve learned—for the betterment of us and all we come into contact with. If we
are committed to the above, and we can achieve it, we live a happy life and so
do others, so far as their interactions with us are concerned.
This peace we discuss—to remain
committed to neither harming, nor being harmed—is, first and foremost, an
inside job. It has next to nothing to do with other people.
Nurturing Quietness And Kindness Within
How are we to be neither harming
nor susceptible to being harmed in the overall context of our relational lives?
How do we deal with the bullying element, for instance?
We know that certain personalities
may attract bullying; those susceptible to harm. It is fascinating the link
between those who were once bullied and those who sometimes end up becoming a
bully. We can theorise that if we are susceptible to harm, we, as a human
reciprocal response, have then the potential to harm others.
In protecting others, we need to
work first on ourselves.
If we are to work on ourselves,
making every effort to develop strategies so harm does not befall us, we do so
by nurturing quietness and kindness within. By doing this we halt the cycle of
inner violence, given that our submission to tyranny becomes an attack on our
self-structure. And if we stop the cycle of inner violence, we stop the cycle
of violence toward others. The more self-respect we have, the more respect for
others we have.
We have to understand that none of the abuses that occurred to us were our
fault.
We also need to understand that
those that abused us were, themselves, earlier on, subjects of abuse. They have hurt us because they had
been hurt. Surely, once we allow God to heal our hurts, we begin to have
compassionate empathy for them. Nobody asks to be abused. And it becomes a
repeating cycle.
Forging Relational Peace From Its Centre
– Within Ourselves
There should be no complex way of
saying this.
Peace with others commences from
peace within. If we neither harm nor can be harmed we have found a safe place
in ourselves.
We take care to ensure we provide
safety for ourselves; the key benefactors will then be others.
Sometimes our relationship
outcomes are dependent on how we respond. And how we respond to others
reflects, in unconscious ways, how we respond to ourselves. It is right to
question our anger—not to judge it, but to enquire of it; to learn about what
is going on deeper down.
If our relationships are chaotic,
and there is much conflict, we can expect the same environment is mirrored within—a
chaotic and conflicted environment within both produces and is affected by the
chaotic and conflicted environment from without.
We are mirrors of our world. The
world appears to us as we see ourselves. If it is a harsh place, we have,
perhaps without understanding, nurtured a harsh place within. If it is a place
of beauty, it is beauty we have nurtured within. What do we wish to see?
Whatever we nurture within is what
bursts forth. Whatever of the incoming world is accepted within, that is what we
are becoming.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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