Not all of your responses to pressure are caused by stress. Innocent circumstances may be converted into stress situations that severely damage your health and personal relationships.

Observe from now on how a faulty attitude can cause you to become unnecessarily emotional.

Suppose, for example, you give me a gift or favor me with some special service but with the secret motive of obligating me to do something in return. Suppose, also, that I do not realize your motive, and believe you are doing that kindness for me out of the goodness of your heart.

Therefore, at the time for repayment I do not feel the pull of obligation. You know, of course, what your reaction will be. You will be upset. This is a simple example of how a secret motive can lead to a bad emotional upset.

Anything you give for a calculated return is manipulation. When that manipulation is successful, you learn to get your way, in which case you are encouraged to manipulate me again and again.

However, when manipulation does not work, and sooner or later it won’t, it backfires, causing you to become very upset. At this point it appears as though I have done something wrong to you, and up pops another reason for an emotional upset—judgment.

You have now projected your guilt and made me appear in a bad light as if I were the one doing the manipulating and taking the unfair advantage. After all, the evidence is there—I have your “gift” with those broken strings.

Clearly you have been outfoxed. And now again, because your ego cannot bear to face the truth of your own wrong toward me, you are fixated to the truth about my wrong.

"If you want to master yourself, your OWN motives must become pure."

Observe from now on how a faulty attitude can cause you to become unnecessarily emotional.

Suppose I now resent your judgment. This temptation compels me to err again, and that wrong in me (actually the projection of your wrong) becomes a real threat, and a real reason for you to be upset with me.

A credible reason to be upset has now evolved but one which you have originated to begin with. My revenge, having become a living, breathing wrong (what is wrong with you, now in me) distracts you from seeing your own wickedness and makes it doubly impossible for you to see the cause of it—your greedy, selfish attitude.

This is precisely how parasite personalities get away with murder—yours and mine. They are liberated from feeling the guilt of their cruelty by setting up faulty reactions in their victims, and making those victims think THEY are crazy.

Psychopaths such as these may be corrected or stopped, but only if their secret motives are exposed. Either way, that can never happen as long as they succeed in upsetting you, and making you out to be the bad guy.

Therefore, become calm and composed and stay in your own center. The closer you come to your center, the more pure your motive is, the more of a contrast you are going to be to those dangerous, ambitious, parasitic personalities.

You will be able to see right through their motives and cope with the subtle, hidden attitudes in them and in yourself. If you want to master yourself, your OWN motives must become pure. Only then are you qualified to detect and defend yourself against the games people play.