Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Have you ever wished that someone in your life would change? It’s a pretty common feeling.

Something the person does bothers us, perhaps several things, and we just wish they would quit behaving this way.

So, how do you get someone to change? Most of us have found that nagging, criticizing, and scolding don’t do much good, but we don’t know what else to do to get a person to alter their ways.

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

Sometimes things are said or done between two people and the rift is so great it seems impossible to repair. The person has hurt you so much that you just can’t bring yourself to forgive what they said or did.

Of such a situation Eckhart Tolle writes in Stillness Speaks:

Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks

There’s probably someone in the lives of most of us who is extremely negative and not at all pleasant to be around.

We wish we didn’t feel so badly toward this person, but they really drive us up the wall. We tell ourselves, “If only I didn’t let them get to me!” And yet they do, over and over.

Why do we have to put up with such people spoiling our day?

Eckhart Tolle addresses this in his book Stillness Speaks:

It’s so very easy to get upset with people who say things that insult us or do things that annoy us. Yet when we react to them, we also feel bad.

Is there a way to get past the urge to either hit back or distance ourselves when we feel hurt by someone?

There is—and it’s a simple matter of awareness.

If we truly understand that “love is all there is,” we will also have to agree that this primary, immutable law must set in motion subset laws that emanate from it.

Pure love sees nothing that is not love; therefore, it sees nothing that needs forgiveness.  Forgiveness then must flow from love as surely as water from a stream.

The concept of forgiveness is based on the need to be forgiven for doing some thing “wrong” or “bad.” So flowing from the law of love must also be the law of correction.