You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving. -- Saint Francis de Sales
What the good Saint does not say is that the one we need to love is the one least lovable to our reasoning mind. We must go beyond reason to love. To go beyond reason is to divorce our self from our own opinion, according to me.
The unfortunate truth is that there is always and without fail someone we believe who is not our friend...and it is not our fault. Here's an exercise: Imagine that one's face, then say, "I can love you" to the mental image. Thus begins the process of allowing our self to go within, there to experience the freedom in changing our mind.
We can think the exact opposite of what we're believing if we are willing to give up our rigid, righteous and right self-justification for believing ill of the other to begin with, i.e., s/he said or did it first and worse. Our goal now is to return goodwill for ill will...and we will need inside help.
I'm convinced the hard-to-bear-with is so difficult because she is me. What we see is always our self...we find that difficult to accept because we refuse to take the necessary time to really look...to look with newly opened eyes and an inviting mind. We generally are so put off by the difficult one that we will not allow that we are anything like him, thus we refuse to look behind the façade.
It'll probably take a "thank you, God" or two to get started, but the payoff is priceless. We wind up feeling really, really good about our self...because our Self is at the wheel!
Thank you.
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