Question: Why do people have to be so cruel to each other? I can't begin to tell you the shock and disappointment I feel over certain events. I just can't understand why it has to be this way. Is there no such thing as loyalty or decency any-more? Why are so many people only "in it for themselves"? Is there any hope for people?
Answer: As sorry as it may seem, betrayal and defeat is not uncommon at all. You would be stunned, and hopefully one day you will be, at just how sad the human condition remains, unnecessarily so. In a world where all its people know is secret fear, it's no wonder everyone acts out their lives in secret conspiracies and twisted plots - all designed to bring about a security which is destroyed (from within) the moment they begin to conspire. But here's the real answer for those of us who want a Higher Life: Leave the dead to bury the dead. We have, as I know you're beginning to understand, more important work to be about.
Question: Some problems just seem too hard to handle just by trying to respond differently. What do you do when somebody else is doing everything he can to make your life miserable? I love my wife, and I believe she loves me, but she can be so cruel and cutting at times. She knows just how to hurt me, and no matter what I do to change myself, she's going to continue to do it. How will watching myself change her?
Answer: We are only in wrong relationship with others to the degree that we are trying to take something from that relationship. Your wife is not the problem, although abusive people punish everyone, including themselves. As long as you find her to be the reason why you are experiencing life the way in which you've described, your situation will not, cannot, change.
There is nothing as important as your wish for a new, fully free life. Refuse to accept anything less and you can be certain that whatever questions may arise from your spiritual work, they will be answered by the same Spirit which has lead you up to that point. So, persist with your spiritual studies. You'll soon see, increasingly, that the whole world changes for you in direct proportion to your new realization about what this world is for: namely, your deliberate inner development. As you grow you'll realize something that cannot be understood until then: desert winds neither move nor disturb mountain pines.
Guy Finley