Roy Masters
Your emotional angry responses nurture suffering in the world. However, if you stand firm and do not respond with emotion, you evince love, which removes the catalyst for further mischief.
If you have ever resented someone who turned out to be kind after all, you will understand this principle.
When confronted with real virtue, people feel uneasy. Your patient presence reminds them of the conscience they wish to forget. People may bend backwards to please, in order to confuse you as to their secret motive—try to outclass you with “goodness” to make you feel guilty.
They constantly test you, probing for the guilt of pride and judgment and the need to be glorified. This is a subtle game of manipulation. Careful! If you are truly saved by grace, you will not be toppled by praise or fall to rage.
When you react with anger, fear, guilt and pride, you provide those to whom you are reacting with a justification for what they are, and empower them to continue in their ways. If you applaud their “kindness,” you license them for more mischief.
You may do so to relieve the guilt you feel for having judged them, or because you have begun to enjoy their kingly treatment of you, never realizing that by your servitude they have conned you into the position of freeing them from the stigma of their guilt.
People will not repent of their cunning ways as long as you provide them with justification, either through being more wrong than they are, or through letting them manipulate you into approving what they are.
"Learn to stand up under cruelty without resentment... others will be glad you remained calm."
Learn to stand up under cruelty without resentment. If you accomplish this, after the real stress has passed, your entire nature is strengthened by your experience and others will be glad that you remained calm.
But if you meet life with anger, jealousy, hate, hostility and hurt feelings, your guilt will grow through the years. Worsening, you become angry with yourself and your sickness.
Struggling to will yourself well adds error to error and inflames your suffering.
So dependent are you on outside stimulation that very often you can’t move a muscle until someone burns the toast. Resentment provides the drive in the form of a sense of rightness and a wicked strength.
The ego never wants to lose its reason for hostility for fear of losing a sense of worth and “success drive.” Unconsciously, you often seek a spouse to take the position formerly occupied by a parent.
You need someone to resent to get the energy to function and to feel right about what you became by resenting. It is a way of life that leads to illness and death.