Good evening ladies and gentlemen of /fringe/. I am going to be making a monthly dharma thread from now on on every second friday/saturday of the month. This will also serve as a Buddhist general and advice thread, or whatever people feel like they want to discuss based on achieving enlightenment and higher states of consciousness. I feel that most of us here are on the same wavelength, so I will be giving out small bits of lessons learned over the month and share how we as Buddhists or enlightened individuals at all should take our approach on it.
Internal Issues
At some point in all of our lives, we meet people who don't like us, and even hate us. They can hate you for your political affiliation, how much money you make, your success with the opposite gender, and even your happiness. So when we are met with these kinds of people, its a good question to ask–why? Why does this person not like me despite me not doing anything wrong to them? Think to a time when the reverse has happened. You didn't like a person for whatever reason, even though they did nothing wrong to you. After asking ourselves why a few times with honesty, we find out that we are facing a problem internally that upsets our egos.
Our egos come up with 1 or 2 of 3 solutions to problems: repression, suppression, and projection. In other words, we either ignore it, condemn it and shame it, or accuse someone else of having a problem.
So when you meet someone who has a problem with you without any previously negative interaction, it is because they have an issue inside of them that their egos have blinded them from seeing the truth of, and in turn they become jealous and deal with that jealousy in the one of three ways.
Lets take someone who is jealous of your success in business per se. They look at you and despise you, really hate your guts. They begin to associate everything about you with negativity. This is projection. Because their ego cannot find any fault with themselves, the problem must be you. Now switch perspectives. You are happy and successful with your business. Money is good and things are going smoothly. Then you look at the guy who hates you. You never did anything wrong to him, he just randomly hates you. But one thing is for sure, his business is doing terrible.
This is a basic example of relieving ourselves of negative pressure in an unhealthy way. Unfortunately, this happens way more often than it should.
The solution to the jealous man's problem is quite simple, but it requires a bit of energy. You must be on a scale of consciousness that at least inspires action, such as anger or courage. Apathy must be overcome in that accepting it is far better than being in an endless cycle of negativity.
Once the jealous man has the courage or anger to confront his ego, he will find his solution. He realizes that accepting and surrendering his jealousy for what it is, a negative emotion, is his pathway to a better consciousness. "I am jealous because I am full of jealousy. There is nothing bad about feeling these feelings, it is just a negative feeling I am trying to relieve pressure from" he says to himself. After focusing on the feeling for what it is, he finds himself relieved of his jealousy. He understands that he was projecting his lack of success in business onto the man who is successful.
Soon enough, after understanding and accepting the emotion, he finds himself happier, and his business begins to grow anew.
This kind of projection comes across in all walks of life, not just jealousy. One of the 20 Universal Laws is that that which you accuse others guilty of, you are afraid to find in yourself. Analyzing peoples projections, we find that projections can come from not just jealousy, but also fear, anger, sadness, and apathy. All these negative emotions seek relief of pressure in the one of three ways, but these never internally resolve the issue, they only slightly adjust it so they don't feel bad in the moment. Our ego must be confronted. Only then can we truly rid ourselves of those feelings.