What most annoys us in others is often what’s flourishing in us. Assagioli on the good will to understand and the projection trap that keeps us alone.
By Roberto Assagioli
Assagioli Archive, Florence. Source: psicoenergetica.com.
Original title: Buona Volunta di Comprenderci [i]
Translated and edited with notes by Jan Kuniholm [ii]
Editorial Note
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sørensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered.
Abstract
Roberto Assagioli on the inner work required to understand others. People change continuously, he argues, but we hold them in the static images of who they once were, conversing with a friend who has already become someone else. The faults that annoy us in others are often the unrecognised ones in ourselves. Real help waits to be asked, follows the soul’s own timing, and accepts that “everyone finds his own light by himself.” The practice is to transmute every critical impulse into good will to understand.
One of the main reasons for mutual misunderstanding, I believe, is that we forget, or disregard, the fact that profound changes take place in everyone, but particularly, most radically and most rapidly, in those who live spiritually. Instead, we stick to our “judgment,” to our impressions, to what we have been able to know of a person on one or more occasions, and we then evaluate him or her always in that same light. Others do the same with us. Many mistakes are thus made and it often happens that while we have the illusion of conversation or relationship with a given person, he or she is actually completely different, in a way. The one we thought we knew is no longer there: a deep chasm has come between us, so that while we believe we understand and are understood as we once were and are communicating with a friend, we are actually communicating with a stranger. Conversely, we may have formed a pattern in which we obstruct understanding with a persistent reminder [to ourselves] of “the impossibility of understanding.”
Those who seriously live the spiritual life inevitably progress, and this progress is accomplished by means of deep crises, and by rhythms and cycles that we do not understand but which must be respected in their effects. We must take this into account and change our static mental attitudes into a disposition of flexibility, expectation and welcome towards what is new that may appear in the other person, in whatever form it may be.
None of us is always “like this,” or only “like that,” but least of all those who are continually “worked” by the Spirit, who performs incessant transmutations. (“One does not carry the Spirit within oneself with impunity!” — Soter [i] ).
With an open heart and a free mind, let us always approach each other without preconceptions; willing to accept, understand and love each other as we express ourselves now; seeking to remove from our minds the image (thought-form) in which we stubbornly see the other. Let us be willing to recognize the good, the fruit of renewal and of who knows what obscure labors — right there, where we were accustomed and inclined to find, or to imagine that we would find, what is not-good! Let us cultivate in ourselves the joy of the surprises that souls — ours or others — hold for us. Let us also have respect — respect, not soft indulgence — for another person’s mistake, which is often the step that makes him or her ascend, and is often a source of intense spiritual work, a trial in the midst of which new life, the life of the soul, is built.
Let us finally realize that we do not know what is good and what is evil in others. Let us get rid of that useless and sometimes ridiculous, anxious sense of “protection” towards them. Let us be sincere and recognize it for what it is. Let us consciously adopt the unconscious wisdom of a child of about three years old, who, in order to encourage a shy kindergartner (we are also kindergartners), said to him with conviction, “It’s OK to mess up, you know!”
It will help us to do this if we keep in mind that “others” are Souls, and that everyone’s own soul is the only omniscient conscious guide [for themselves]. Our solicitous “help” can often be untimely and utterly ignorant. So some violent reactions [by others] [may be] well justified, because souls defend themselves against meddling intrusions.
In conclusion: [what is needed are] respect, understanding, love towards those souls, giving help only when asked and following the indications implied in the request itself, and not one’s own desires and impulses, however generous and altruistic they may seem to us. It can sometimes be far more generous and spiritual to refrain from helping directly — when such help is not appropriate — than to blindly satisfy our emotional need to “give.”
Sometimes the personality refuses and the soul struggles and demands: when it is truly like this, the soul’s request inevitably ends up triumphing at the right moment. We must wait with quiet faith for that moment, and with patience, as one waits for the birth of a baby or the blooming of a beautiful rose, helping its coming inwardly, always in a spirit of freedom and deep respect, of intense, calm and impersonal [ii] Love. The service of souls is sacred. It is collaboration with the Divine, as His conscious children, so that the only true fraternal help is that in which personalities know how to sacrifice themselves by withdrawing. [iii] All this and much more flows from, develops and is implemented only in the light of knowledge , which guides us straight to Love.
To establish a loving and just balance between ourselves and others we should also be less indulgent towards ourselves, while also having the same sense of sacred respect towards our own mistakes (considering them from the point of view of soul development and not as ends in themselves); and much, much more kindness and understanding towards what appears to us to be mistakes by others. And finally, let us deal less with, and even leave out altogether, the errors of others that do not concern us at all — that unnecessarily clutter our minds and feed delusion, lies, hypocrisy and separateness. Let us be sincere and recognize that our criticism is rarely, very rarely imbued with a feeling of loving help, even when — sensing an internal uneasiness produced by a call from our souls — we try to delude ourselves that we are “criticizing for his own sake,” or “to shed light.” Everyone finds his own light by himself, and if anything he can be helped by the loving understanding around him, not by criticism.
Have we observed that almost always the faults that most annoy us in others do so only because they are flourishing in us? That therefore what so offends us in others is, often, only the projection of what we have been unable or unwilling to recognize in ourselves?
Let us try to learn to get rid of the illusion that shows others to us according to our own imagination — that is too often colored by base emotions of jealousy, envy, pride, etc., veiling our true being and feeding mutual misunderstanding. A loving disposition will be of great help to us, as will a deep glad humility that enables us to recognize our mistakes and shortcomings, to reconsider our judgments and to be sincere, or rather, to be aware of our incompetence to do so. We never judge, and we actively and systematically transmute every critical impulse into an impulse of GOOD WILL to UNDERSTAND.
This attitude of flexibility in the face of possible changes in others must start from a deep respect for the soul, from the vital feeling of the divine that leads us to consider the perennial becoming, the ceaseless creation, the constant progress of all Life and therefore, with good reason, of the soul, which lives in every human form.
Why are we so quick to stigmatize others about whom we actually never know anything — because we are completely ignorant of their motives, their world, their mystery? Who among us knows the plan of another person’s soul, when after long years of intense spiritual work, we can only so laboriously get a few glimpses of that of our own soul? Too often our idea of the other person is only our idea of him, [which is] absolutely opposite from reality. Thus we continually offend and hurt [others] and are continually offended and hurt, often about what is truest, purest and most sacred in others and in our own daily efforts. Between ourselves and others we raise ever higher and thicker barriers, isolating ourselves behind them, instead of creating or recreating Union by penetrating into the sacred and luminous Truth of the soul, where the treasures of true Love, of true Friendship are discovered, where there are joy, agreement, unity, and true fraternity.
That same duty we have to others, to follow or respect inner change and progress, we also have to ourselves. This is a good remedy for our laziness, for overcoming the tendency to fall into habits — especially affective, emotional and mental habits. It prevents one from stagnating in the past, from passively tying oneself to experiences that are actually already outdated. [That attachment] would hinder the expansion and free flow of the soul, causing and sometimes prolonging unnecessary suffering, which so harmfully sustains the illusion from which the soul yearns to release itself to speak its truth. That is a useless waste of time which we must guard against, all the more now when we are strongly encouraged towards the maximum use of our energies, considering that the time we have to achieve certain specific purposes is very short.
Let us therefore try with good will to “be as we are now, without incurring the wounds of an emotional habit;” let us have the courage to really live the spiritual life.
We must become so self-conscious and so impersonal — truly Observers — that we know what we are; that we know our faults and our qualities, our shortcomings and our real progress, so that we can be what we have seen ourselves to be, without false humility and without dangerous illusions, without acceding to and passively being overwhelmed by the conception that others have formed and project onto us. All this [we must do] impartially with regard to praise and blame that we know we do not deserve, dissolving by our clear awareness of ourselves — in the light of the soul and thus of Truth — the lie that others attach to our backs, eliminating the false “I’s.” The proof of our impersonality towards ourselves, our sincerity and discriminative ability, will consist in being able to reject even the thought-forms of others that would tend to attribute to us better qualities than we have.
We know how to be absolutely true. Let us do our best to bring into practice what we are mentally convinced of, in our relationships and our daily lives, rather than hesitating to deal with it. . . precisely because we do know it. One does not know a thing until one lives it, and only then does it become automatic and leave us free to move on to the next thing.
Shall we then, spiritualists of the whole world, live the spiritual life more decisively and intensely, and draw near, understand and know one another, as upright souls, as consecrated Children of God, animated by good will? Impersonally, in a happy spirit of friendship, burning with one and the same Fire, shall we together concentrate all our forces of conscious Will of Love, and affirm with the realized power of God in us, by word, thought, action, the “qualities” of the Spirit? With a constant collective effort, do we want to make the most of [those qualities] — bring them to light, set them in motion, make them efficient, make them vibrate, keep them out in the open, sustain them with our whole being, offer them to the world increased by our conscious humanity, warmed by the warmth of our purified heart? Shall we be living channels, and together actively collaborate in all possible ways in the appearance of what is desired and ardently desired — even unconsciously, by humanity — the advent of TRUTH on Earth?
We prepare the way. Let us be His trusted servants and friends. Let us be His heralds. Let us make the pure sound of our silver trumpets ring high. We are agile and ready, alert to His signs. We are Souls embodying, living and expressing His Power — eternal forces and youth of the world, the joy and light of the world.
Let us revive ourselves in the blaze of this proclamation of renewal and join the Revolution of the Spirit — without clamor, without violence, without barriers and without dissension, under its banner of Love, Peace, Universality. Let us be the pioneers of this revolution undertaken ardently and freely for Him, the Divine One, for the glorious manifestation of HIS WILL.
[i] I have been unable to locate this author or the source of the quotation. — Tr.
[ii] Assagioli uses the word “impersonal” here and in following passages to indicate “impartial,” “unbiased,” “objective” or “not subject to personal attachment” rather than the more common English usage of “indifferent.” -Oath.
[iii] The Italian word translated as “withdrawing” is ritraendosi , which also has the sense of “retracting.” Assagioli is assuming the reader’s awareness of the distinction between ordinary “self” (personality) and higher “Self” (soul), and the sacred collaboration here means action by the soul, with the personality following its lead. -Oath.
[i] Source of this article is Assagioli Archives, Florence, but this version is from psicoenergetica.com. — Tr.
[ii] Editor’s interpolations are [in brackets]. -Oath.
