The gift
other people hold out to you
Once you start to practice the insights you find here on the site, your relationships with other people will get a new dimension. You will become aware of the fact that each person holds out a mirror to you, and now you are ready to accept the picture it shows you as input for your own process of awareness.
You used to see this picture before, only then you are likely to have it labeled as "the reaction of someone else" which was beyond your control. Now what happens when somebody reacts on something you say or do:
you are irritated and show this
the other person interprets this and does not like it
the other person gives you an unpleasant reaction
This is usually accompanied by the hope that the other person would have supported you in the righteousness of the judgment on the source of your irritation, and thus would have accepted your expression. Then the mirror image would have been much more attractive to you, since it would have meant that your judgment was "justified". And now you have to face the unpleasant reaction, and that is not what you were looking
for. Chances are that you are now looking the other way, or blame the mirror. A bit like Don Quichote actually, fighting yourself and the results of your own judgment. Here you plainly see that the mechanisms of your personality are not desirable.
In your defence you may add that the other person is interpreting as well. Only this is not about the other person, this is about you. And now you have a choice: do you use this to strengthen the principles of your personality or to become more aware of them in order to be able to let your investment in them go. This is not about right or wrong, justified or not. The other person helps you to become aware of the
fact that you are judging here, that is all that matters.
You can look at these situations in a new way. You may learn to appreciate people who are a clear mirror to you. They make you painfully yet clearly aware of the tricks your personality acts out. And your increasing awareness of this and your inner Self holds out a gift to the other person as well. Since you give more of who you really Are, rather than of the illusion you created about yourself.
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