Question: There is a parable about two friends who argued and one slapped the other. The latter wrote in the sand: “Today my very best friend slapped me in the face.” They reached the river. The one who received a slap in the face began to sink, but his friend saved him. And the drowning man wrote on a stone: “Today my very best friend saved me.”
The one who saved his friend’s life asked him: “When I offended you, you wrote on the sand, and now you write on stone. Why?” The friend replied: “When someone offends us, we have to write it in the sand so that the winds can erase it. But when good things are done to us, we have to engrave it on stone so that no wind can erase it.”
Our world exists in the opposite way. If we are offended, we remember it, maybe even for life. If good things are done to us, they are forgotten, forgotten, forgotten. And then more insults come and so on; they lead humanity.
Is this the right message to follow: resentment is on the sand and good things that are done to you engrave on stone?
Answer: It depends on the person’s work on himself. If he wants to rise above the animal in himself, then he will write his grievances only in the sand. Otherwise it is very difficult to live.
A person must lift up the eternal, the perfect, which is above egoism, and record it in himself, on his heart. And all the small, insignificant, insulting things are written down in yourself as if on sand.
Comment: But there will be more records on the sand than on stone. There is a lot of it.
My Response: It does not matter, it is all temporary, it is all erased, washed away.
Question: How is it written on the heart? You say, “Write on the heart.” Many people imagine the heart as an organ. What does it mean writing only good things on the heart?
Answer: Writing on the heart means that I am trying to be impressed by the special actions of my neighbor so that they cut into me like a chisel in a stone, i.e., carve on the heart.
Question: What does it give? Let us say I have a lot of such records. What happens after that?
Answer: You will be made up of them, that is all. In this way, you will bring out in yourself a heart, consisting of the good deeds of other people.
Question: Let us say I have the good that my friend did to me carved on my heart. And if he suddenly does something bad to me, how will it change me?
Answer: You will wash it off.
Question: Can I do it?
Answer: Yes.
Question: So the more good records I have on my heart about this friend, the faster I will be able to wash away the bad things that will come from him?
Answer: This is also true.
Comment: Today, many people write letters to you and you keep saying that the Creator is kind and does only good. And now you are saying: “This is what should be carved on the heart.” Exactly that.
My Response: Yes.
Comment: But that is difficult to carve, you look at the world and…
My Response: Imagine that you are in the state all the time when you feel that the Creator is kind and does good to you and to everyone. How sweet it becomes to live!
Comment: Sweet if you can break yourself.
My Response: You do not break yourself. You raise such an attitude toward the Creator in yourself, above your animal.
Comment: But you understand that my animal feels all this horror that is happening around.
My Response: Teach it that this is not what is necessary to perceive in life, but instead the good that is manifested in the meantime.
Question: If I do this as an exercise, that all the time I try to imagine the Creator as kind, doing good, and to write that on my heart, will this happen?
Answer: Then it will happen of course. You will exist this way.
Question: And will I be able to justify everything, what is happening around me, and so on?
Answer: Gradually.
Question: But will I?
Answer: Yes, you will.
Question: Can this be taken as practical advice?
Answer: Of course. It is all practical.
Question: So is the main conclusion that we write down all the good things and carve them on our hearts?
Answer: Perceive life as the best thing a person has because he receives it directly from the Creator. And everything that he cannot perceive in this way, he should relate to the opposite quality of nature, which is given to us so that we change ourselves and perceive everything as absolute good.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 5/18/23
Related Material:
What To Do When Resentment Suffocates?
Why Do We Betray Each Other
Can Betrayal Be Justified?
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