In order to bring about meaningful change in others, you must first discover how to make them aware of their fault and the reason behind it without bribing or intimidating them to change. You must use enough non-violent force to bring about consciousness of the error, but not enough to cause a change or a rebellion against change.

The quality of this force is love, love which comes about through being very consciously aware of what is good—and good for others.

There is a marvelous power in being aware and above the whirlpool of your own thinking. Only the pure action of your own conscience is able to change the error of your ways, and if you are aware of this in yourself, you respect this same need in others.

Only if you yourself have found the pure, objective, aware state that you wish others to find, can you have the poise and the power to correct another. In the truest sense, you do not correct; you only act as a catalyst for change and for this you must be the evi­dence of that same kind of change you want for them.

But you must be careful not to inspire change by the action of your overt example. If you are not that quiet example, then by default you tempt others to judge you, and you unwittingly excite a meaningless pattern of conformity or rebellion against your shaming pressure.

And by causing reactions of resentment, you feed all the fetishes and negative habit patterns which have evolved from the inhuman process of being molded by pressure.

All changes, which come about as the result of shaming, manipulation, and pressure, weaken others. They cause dangerous anxieties and conflicts, because what is wrong with us to begin with, happened to us through just that sort of thing.

"A person’s character is always weakened by any change wrought by external influence"

All changes which are wrought in us that come from anything other than being alone with the action of the pure awareness of one’s own error, are dangerous—it is literally temptation at work, and reactions for or against cause ugliness to get inside.

It cannot be done. You cannot alter another’s behavior patterns for good by any form of rehabilitation, persuasion, or pressure—because new conformities, rebellions, and conflicts form. From reacting to such pressure, newer complications, anxieties, and fears always arise that are susceptible to devastating temptation on one hand, and the need to be changed from corruption on the other.

A person’s character is always weakened by any change wrought by external influence, whether it be from bad to “good” or from “good” to bad. We need only to obey our own conscience so we can be our own man.

What we need is a neutral attitude which does not condemn (judge), nor is sympathetic, so as to avoid complicating others and ourselves. When people perceive that we do not judge them, they are free from having to judge us. And yet they know they are being observed.

Awakened to the problem, they have an ability now to feel private shame. They can recover; they grow and so do you, free from the guilt of judging and complicating the lives of others.