The Course teaches that only love and fear are real, everything else is an illusion. Marianne Williamson writes: "What we think of as people's guilt is their fear. All negativity derives from fear. When someone is manipulative, they are afraid. When someone is cruel, they are afraid. There is no fear that love does not dissolve. Like the dark is the absence of light, fear is merely the absence of love." Don Miguel Ruiz puts it this way: "Anger is nothing but fear with a mask. Jealousy is fear with a mask. Sadness is fear with a mask." Understanding this is big. When we feel those things we need to ask ourselves "What am I afraid of?" And when others come at us with these emotions our challenge is to stay present in love and awake to the fact that the person acting out is choosing fear. This person has fallen asleep momentarily, to who they are. Our job as a miracle worker is to stay awake and love that divine being. This gives us the power to reawaken him.
"Everything that someone does is either love, or a call for love. If someone treats us with love, then of course love is the appropriate response. If they treat us with fear, we are to see their behavior as a call for love. Love is always the appropriate response. Our power lies in remaining non-reactive." Of course this is often a hard thing to do, we all have our wounds, our walls. And it doesn't mean that we should allow others to mistreat us. If someone refuses to wake up to his true essence, love them, forgive them, and remove yourself. This is the most loving thing you can do, for yourself and for them.
Staying fully present in love means not reacting out of fear. The ego always emphasizes what someone has done wrong, it seeks to keep us separate, it thrives on our fear. It's a defense mechanism, overly-developed. We have to learn to recognize it's voice, and to choose love anyway. We are all allies in each other's healing. Being a spiritual warrior and choosing love is not an easy path. When someone attacks you, or judges you guilty it takes tremendous strength not to respond in kind. If we can just stay centered and not take it personally, most likely we'll find that their actions have little or nothing to do with us, it's merely their fear talking. "99% of what other people do has nothing to do with us." It's about where they are in their lives, their healing, the stories they are telling themselves. It's tempting to choose fear, to lash back at them or try to convince them we are in the right. The ego really wants us to prove we are "right"! But sometimes it's better to ask yourself, "Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy?" Because the only thing causing us pain in most relationships is not the love we think we're not getting, it's the love we're not giving.
Choosing love is always the right response. Not always the easiest one, but the right one. When I'm able to keep my heart open and choose love, it brings me peace because it's in keeping with the integrity of my divine higher self. When I'm able to do it, it feels right and I feel "in the flow" of life's energy, walking my path in the light. And that's the only place I want to be.
Sending you light and love.
