Contents
Step 11: “To kill the shadow of gray people there is only one way: turning on the light”
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this chapter of “The 88 steps of happy people” I explain one of the mistakes that we all make more easily
For most of my life I lived convinced that the love unconditional doesn’t make sense. You love someone because he or she meets a set of requirements as a shopping list: do not disrespect you, love you back, do not miss a single day that you need help, treat yourself well and a thousand other demands. And if they are not fulfilled, then it is normal for your love to descend even to the point of disappearing, both with a partner and with other types of relationships. Sounds correct, right? One day I discovered that not only is it not, but that it is also one of the biggest mistakes made on Earth, and I have been as guilty of committing it as anyone else.
Just as generosity is not giving to those who gave you first, but to those who may never give you anything, to love unconditionally is to give love even to those who deserve it less. But, if you’re what I was, this should sound completely illogical to you. «How can you give love to those who hate you?». Relax, you don’t have to do that … for now. If you identify with that question, then I am your best ally, since I understand you perfectly because it was my only way of thinking for years but unlike what many believe, the dangerous thing is not to change your opinion, but that it never changes. Changing your mind indicates open-mindedness.
If we put ourselves in extreme cases, such as loving someone who hurts a loved one of yours, it is clear that encouraging yourself to love him would be like encouraging a baby to pursue a doctorate. Therefore rule number one is not to try to reach Belt 8 of unconditional love on the first day, but to focus on simply take the next step in that direction.
As in many other of my Steps, this one is also made up of a binomial that divides the world into two groups of people, those whose interior is made up of lots of light and little shade and those whose interior is composed of a lot of shade and little light. Surely if I asked you to make a list of ten people in your day-to-day life that you could include in each of the two groups, after reflecting a bit, it wouldn’t take too long to find them, and yet few notice the fact that people who are grayer are simply because they have allowed hatred to settle a little more inside them (as a result of fear), and those who are less so have simply made love to settle inside them . The interesting thing is that both our Inner Success and our level of happiness are mathematically proportional to the amount of love (to the detriment of hatred) that we carry within. This is the reason why the number of merits that the other person makes to be loved is irrelevant. If the goal is remove the tendency to hatred from within and to increase the tendency towards love, then fostering love on the basis of merit is the worst way to increase it, as most people will never do enough.
I will explain why the biggest stakeholder in your change is not others, but you. Imagine happiness as a sun and hatred as a range that goes from a cloudy sky to the worst of storms. Every time you meet a person full of rage, it is that his interior is agitated by the thousands of raindrops that his internal storm produces. They are gray people (who have not yet known how to overcome that state). And every time you meet someone who has learned to reduce the hatred inside you and increase your love, has achieved an internal life without agitation, without clouds and with sun. It is what is called inner peace and it is the main responsible for happiness. The more inner peace, the more happiness (and vice versa).
When I speak of love, I do not mean a spiritual love or religious missions. I am talking about something much simpler. I speak of a domestication of your mind that pulls the reins every time your body wants to get angry with another human being, be angry with someone’s way of being, feel irritated by a gesture or action of another person, wanting to return hate with hate. (As I said, I rejected this type of proposal for years because I considered it unfair.) And once this first stage has been achieved, the second and most important stage must be conquered: not to stop training your whole being to feel the best wishes (if you don’t want to use the word “love”) for every human being you come across. Indeed it is fairer to return hatred with hatred, but infinitely less successful. One day something clicked and I realized my mistake. I guess it’s a form of maturity and sooner or later we all go through it. Just as the baby must go through numerous school grades before he can pursue a doctorate, you will have to go through yours. The important thing is not that you reach your destination today, but that each day you get a little closer.
# 88StepsPeopleHappy
«Of the many ways to kill the shadow of the people
gray only one is the most successful: turning on your light ».
@Angel