Is there someone in your life you are really trying to help? You know exactly what they need to do, they may even be open to listening to you, and yet after countless hours of explaining and pleading with them, they’re still not changing?
Or at least not as fast as you’d like them to?
How frustrating is that?
The Rav says the only way to help someone change is to “give them breathing space and listen to them.”
We are not here to teach people the truth. We are here to turn enough Light bulbs on in their heads so they can see their own truth.
When the Rav says “listen to them”, he is telling us to erase ourselves and to be one with people. We are all messengers for one another, and there is a reason why we see the solution to a person’s problem. We have been chosen to be there. But it’s not our solution. We are just an instrument for delivery.
People need to internalize things in their own time. Just because we “get it” doesn’t mean they are going to get it. Giving people breathing space has been one of the secrets of my parents’ success. That’s why we say, “there is no coercion in spirituality.” Everyone has their own process, and it’s not up to us to impose our timetable on their change.
The best way to transmit our message is with patience, compassion, understanding, love and old-fashioned listening skills.
Most of us are weak active listeners. Usually when someone is talking, we are already planning our comeback. And how many times do we start our response with, “Yeah, but” - which only negates everything they just told us.
Without feeling where a person is at - and asking the Light to help us communicate from our heart (not our head) - we will only push them further down the hole.
This is a great lesson for all of us this week. We want to remember that we can’t crack people open just by telling them the cold, hard truth. Instead, we want to feel what the person is going through, and ask the Creator to help us to be a pure channel through which our message can flow.
When we strive for this, the words won’t matter. It’s the heart that matters the most.
This text has been extracted from the The Kabbalah Centre
