Daily Insight from the Story of The Little Prince
When someone does something to upset us, they are actually setting us up for a potential growth experience.
So the first realization that needs to dawn deep within us is that this situation is, at least right now, to our advantage.
If we embrace the situation as the divine reaching out to us in the guise of a devil—the person who is putting us down, bullying us, causing us to feel incompetent, making us feel small—then we look for the teaching the situation offers us.
A devil is just a symbol, a personification, of those aspects of life that appear to be against us, our enemy. Indeed the very word "satan" means adversary. (We'll go into this much-misunderstood topic of the "devil," who isn't a real being at all but a part of the one source of all that exists, more fully tomorrow.)
Both symbols, God and Satan, point to the reality that nothing but God ultimately exists—and that therefore everything in our life is working toward an increase in our consciousness and thus our ability to be truly present in our life.
I'm not suggesting we stay in an abusive situation forever or that we just continue to take the abuse. This isn't about being passive.
What I'm saying is that if we see the abuse as God in Satan form, we will grab hold of the lesson instead of fighting it, make the shift within us, and then we will become so present that either the abuse stops or we will calmly and non-reactively elect to detach from the situation either emotionally or physically.
But the key is to allow the "satan," the one playing the role of a devil in our life, to do their work first. This work is to shift us from emotional reactivity into a state of centeredness.
In any response, it's not just crucial to start from a centered, calm place, but to remainthis way even while expressing intense feeling.
When we are centered, the emotion that pours out if we express ourselves to the person we are dealing with has no attachment to it.
We can tell whether we are attached by the fact that, as soon as what we have needed to say has been expressed, we feel no residue within ourselves. Our stillness is palpable.
We are perfectly calm and even more closely connected to the person, at least from our side of the equation, because we are coming from a centered place.
Emotional reactivity knocks us off balance, upsets our emotional equilibrium. Powerful presence expresses itself with great depth of feeling, while never losing its peaceful centeredness.
We can be in tears, yet peaceful in our center. We can be deeply pained, yet we create no pain-body. We can be outraged, but there is no attack in our sharing of our anger.
As St. Paul once said, we don't let the sun go down on our anger. We stay in a centered place, never beside ourselves with rage but always purposeful and hence constructive in the expression of our feelings.
What we say and do builds up the humanity of both the other person and ourselves, instead of tearing down.
When we are present in this way, people can feel the difference. Instead of being pushed away from us, they may well be drawn closer. Even if they aren't, they will experience a strange attraction to us because our presence is resonating with their own hidden essence.
We are certainly no longer people who are easily bullied because nothing in us manifests the insecurity that invites bullying. If people harm us, we are as calm, present, centered, and loving as Jesus at his trial, scourging, and crucifixion.
Presence is the most powerful reality there is. Everything that happens to us can be received as a messenger to awaken us to this power that's inherent in our very being.
About the Author:
David Robert Ord is Editorial Director for Namaste Publishing, publishers of Eckhart Tolle and other transformational authors. He writes The Compassionate Eye daily on the Namaste Publishing website, together with his daily author blog Consciousness Rising:
Join us in the daily blog Consciousness Rising for an in-depth understanding of how we become conscious, truly present in the whole of our life.
