Theodore Orenstein

Connecting with fellow human beings is a key part of happiness and success. Unnecessarily harming relationships can get you fired, cause you to lose a friend, or otherwise make life more difficult than it needs to be.

When you’ve expressed anger or hate at someone, do you notice that the anger and hate tend to come back at you? When you give love, love is more likely to be returned to you, isn’t it? If you have learned those things — as most of us have — why do you sometimes feel hate, jealousy, and resentment toward people? 

How To Love

This is why: Your ego has been hurt by the harm done to you earlier in life. The pain is retained within your ego, and when a similar situation occurs, your ego reacts before your better self can stop it. You lash out without thinking. Or you silently stew in hatred, anger, resentment, and jealousy without realizing it. 

How can you prevent that from happening? An emotional impulse can be so strong that it overpowers your true nature — your fundamental love for people. On top of that, the deadlines and stresses of life prevent you from slowing down and listening to your better self, your loving spirit. 

You are not your ego. Your ego has been developed over the years through life’s painful and happy experiences. Due to the years of pain that you have endured, your defenses are so ingrained that you do not see them. You do not even realize they exist. They cause you to react spontaneously and emotionally to people and events. They are primeval survival mechanisms — like fight or flight — which may have been worthwhile in some distant past but now usually gets in the way. These defenses can be so strong that they overwhelm your true spirit.

The external events are not the problem. It is your perception of them that hurts you. But you have power over your perceptions and emotional reactions. The past is only your faulty memory. Steady yourself and consider where that hurtful feeling originated. How important is it now? Looking back through hindsight, could things have been done differently? Did you react correctly? You can bring your life into control. You can overcome the memory of those past traumatic events that hinder your present happiness. Don’t let your reactive mind take over just because it may be the first to chime in. 

Don’t act spontaneously from your reactions to people or events. Consider your actions before doing them. Think about what your best response should be. Sleep on it, even meditate upon it, before acting. Consult others whose judgment you trust.

If you give love and receive negative feelings in return from a person, it may be the lingering effects of your past actions toward him or her. It is best to own these past negative actions by confronting them honestly. Try to understand them and sincerely explain them to the people you have hurt. Truly seek forgiveness.

By acting out of anger, jealousy, or hatred, you are seeking momentary satisfaction rather than looking at your long-term interests. Even short term, you have lived long enough to know that anger only begets anger in return. What good will that do? Looking at it in terms of your own self-interest, what benefits you more? Increasing an adversary’s anger at you, or having them learn to respect you?

Turn Hate To Love

If someone hates you, that is their problem. Don’t make it your problem, too. Be honestly patient and friendly with everyone. Turn hate to love. You will be respected, even by those who want to hate you. Don’t let the base, impulsive, animalistic part of you defeat your true good nature. Be true to yourself. Be happy and content, why not? 

If you have the urge to do something that you know will leave you with a negative emotion, don’t do it. If it makes you feel shame or forces you to disregard feelings of shame, avoid it. Why intentionally walk into unhappiness?

Remember what you have learned and take the high road. It is this road that will bring you happiness and contentment. Isn’t happiness and contentment what you want?

We all make mistakes. If you make a mistake, acknowledge it. Express your regret to whomever it has hurt and do what you can to correct it. That will prevent lingering resentment.

There can be no embarrassment, selfishness, or egotism involved if you expect redemption for having done wrong. Being honest and strong is the only way to overcome a mistake. Believe me, others sense when you have done wrong. There will be an awkwardness and a hindrance to your relationships and your reputation until you end it by acknowledging your mistake and apologizing to those you have hurt. Remember that lesson, and do not repeat it. Then you will regain the respect of your friends, loved ones, and acquaintances.

Looking At Our Mistakes

Look deeply and objectively at your own actions: If you were wrong, admit it and learn from that mistake. If you do not recognize your mistakes, how can you hope to do better? 

Look at your mistakes honestly and analyze them. Where did they come from? Teach yourself about them intellectually. Don’t let the emotion prevent you from doing so. That is redemption.

You may realize that you have grown far beyond the events that created those negative emotions in the first place. You don’t need that fear anymore. You need not maintain the jealousy left over from adolescence that can now be put behind you. 

The point is that you can control those emotions — they do not have to control you. You can study them and put them into their proper place. Your good spirit can overcome any aspect of your life that could inhibit you from reaching your full potential. Don’t worry about making a stumble or a misstep as long as you walk in the right direction.

You will gain the power to rise above your egotistical drives. You have the ability within yourself to become a purposeful, dedicated, satisfied, godly being. You have the power within yourself to rise above your lesser urges, your vanities, your fears, your faults, your hurts, and your thirst for revenge. Those compulsions are things you have to neutralize in order to grow. That is the purpose of this school of life. To allow you to graduate into a wise and spiritual being.

Meditating upon such emotions can help you see there is no need to react or feel a certain way. You can understand each emotion with such depth that you can recognize that the reason for the hurt no longer exists. You can see that the negative emotion that repeatedly overcomes you is not called for, because it is not from a current event. It is really you subconsciously reliving a deeply harrowing emotion you felt earlier in life.

Escaping from the control of your ego, and knowing what makes you unhappy, gives you the power to make yourself and others happy. You will have learned what not to do. You will empathize with the pain within the other person, and you will feel it as well. That is the love connection between you and other people that allows both of you to be happy.

You can determine your direction in life. You can learn from your injuries how not to treat other people. After all, you know how it feels. You can live a positive, happy life helping others, thereby creating a positive cycle rippling throughout humanity and bringing you and others closer to the unifying One. That positive ripple’s travels will be your gift to the world. Through that ripple, you will live forever.

No Regrets

Look frankly at whatever it is that you are doing, analyze it, and size it up with honest eyes. See its ramifications and effects, long, mid, and short-term. Does it make the world better? Is it empathetic and just? What harm does it cause? Does it fulfill or harm your spirit? Will it make you truly happy? 

If you regret not acting when you should have, don’t regret it. Act. Act as you should have. If you regret acting inappropriately from anger, jealousy, lust, greed, fear, or some other emotion that once controlled you, bury the regret by honestly apologizing and making it right. If you do genuinely regret it, you will not be embarrassed by doing so, and you will be relieved. You will become free of that pain. You will be able to learn from the experience so that it will not be repeated. You will have grown. Become wiser. Happier. Godlier. 

You will be further along your path to absolute understanding — to enlightenment. Your imperfections will always be in you, and will regularly try to rise, but what you have learned about loving others can always overcome them. You can make every event into one of goodness. You can see beauty and deliverance within the pain. 

Go for the good, that which benefits others, not for adoration, approval, or personal benefit. Good, just, and beautiful things are inherently good, just, and beautiful. 

Doing the right thing because you are taught it is “the right thing to do” is admirable because so many people have not even met that challenge. But doing the right thing because you understand that it is an act of love and promotes the bond of unity among all people is the ideal with which you should identify.

If you can see yourself within other people, how can you feel lonely, jealous, or selfish? Jealous of what? Yourself? For you will know that you are inseparable from all. How can you be selfish once you know that to deprive someone else is to deprive yourself, to lessen a part of the inseparable universe is to lessen yourself.

We are all in this together. Your life has no limits and no boundaries. You are a part of everyone else. The idea that you are separate and that you gain at someone else’s loss is merely an illusion. It is an illusion of your ego. 

As human beings, we have grown in wisdom to the point where we can make that leap of perception to a universal life. It has taken us millions of years, and we are now on the threshold of living in universal love.

Love allows you to connect with others despite the differences you may have with them. You recognize yourself in them. You, yourself, are not always the best person you can be, but hopefully, others will still accept you and like you.

When you achieve clarity, you will realize that your life has really been a life of love, with mistakes and wrong turns. You mean well but have been misguided by your embedded pain. You already have all the goodness you need. What you have to do is remove the obstacles to it.

You will learn to live every moment to the fullest. You will learn to see the best in everything and every being. You will learn to appreciate the here and now. That will make your unfulfilled desires melt away.

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