Q: My relationship with a man is very difficult. I wonder if he’s the wrong man for me, or the difficulty is because of something in me? Can you help?
John De Ruiter: Any time that you have difficulty, the difficulty is first your self. When you experience difficulty it’s because you experience a lack, an actual lack that is there in your self in being able to deal with a person or a situation. The tendency when we experience a lack in our selves is that we focus on what looks like the catalyst to that lack, which is something outside of our selves: a circumstance or another person. As soon as you make it about the other person, you become blind to the actual lack which is in your self.
Q: What do you mean by ‘lack?’
John: If you have a difficult time with someone, it’s not really that other person: it’s you. For example, if your self were more highly developed, and you were to spend time with that same person with whom you had difficulty before, you would realize that the difficulty is gone although their behaviour is still the same. Then you realize that you didn’t have the development of self before to be able to be comfortable in your self while with that person.
When you come from a deeper place within, while you’re spending time with someone who triggers lack in your self, the trigger doesn’t exist within that depth. The closer you are relating from within your surface, the stronger that trigger becomes. For instance, the trigger that you experience with someone doesn’t exist in your heart.
When you’re quieted within your heart while you’re with a difficult person, it’s not difficult for you because of what you’re coming from. When you leave your heart and you go into your personality, then your experience of how difficult that person is becomes much more heightened.
When you’re forgiving toward someone, they can be in a negative pattern and you are deeply okay. When you’re unforgiving toward someone, then every little thing that person does in being difficult catches all kinds of triggers in your self. When you’re unforgiving toward someone, you’re easily provoked. When you’re coming from a deeper place you’re naturally more forgiving, so from within you you’re given to sweetly overlook things in people. When someone’s behaving in a way that would normally be difficult for your self, you’re easily overlooking that and relating to something that’s deeper in them. Then you’re enjoying that person despite their behaviour. When you’re not dependent on his behaviour toward you, that relieves him of your self, which also then eases up his behaviour.
The more you come from your heart, the more you like him. The more that you come from your heart, the more that you easily feel for him, and the more that you feel him instead of feeling how his self affects your self. If you’re not coming from your heart, everything that he does will bother you. If you’re deeply coming from your heart, everything that he does has little effect on you and you are right there enjoying him.
If you’re having difficulty with him, instead of focusing on what he is doing or not doing, simply go to a deeper place in you. From within that deeper place you think differently, you feel differently and you see differently. And that’s without him changing.
Q: I understand that.
John: If you have a difficult time with someone, it really says something about you – not first the other person. When you realize that, as soon as you have difficulty with someone you immediately drop deeper within. You drop deeper within by opening and softening.
When you come from a deeper place within, instead of having somewhat hard eyes toward him you’ll easily have soft eyes toward him. The softer your eyes the happier you are.
Q: Thank you.
