Example is the only teaching tool you have.

Would you not use it?

 

Who do you wish to help?

 

You cannot manipulate, arrange, or cause them to come to whatever you would have them come to.  You cannot make them go back to their partners, or lose their fears, or stop fighting, or choose happiness, or – in short –  put themselves into God’s hands. None of this can you do.

 

 

Whenever you arrange something which it is not your business to arrange, plans go awry. Nothing is used the way you intended, and the help you give serves only to magnify a stale situation.

People don’t change because you see the changes they should make.

Stop

Stop trying to control people in any way. To be in the “should” business is to set up vibrations against the very outcomes you want. It’s a waste of time; no one wins. People will do what people will do.  Do not get attached to any of it.

 

 

The only tool I have to do good is my example. If I want them to finish what they start, then let me finish what I start. Do I want them to speak their part clearly, without rancor? Then let me speak my part clearly, without rancor.

If I would see them happy, let me model happiness. Let me be content wherever I am, led to activities that give me joy, open to good that could be done by me.

If I would see them harmonious in all their relationships, then let me model that also. Let me forgive all people for whatever I think they have done to me: there’s a long list. Let me start by forgiving them now. 

 

Above all, peace

 

 

Whatever it is that I would see, that I must become. Above all, must I become peace. My breathing must be slow and measured, my brain rhythms deepened, my vibrations longer, fuller, more resonant.

All this can be accomplished by merely thinking of it, picturing it, allowing your mind to have this image for seventeen seconds or more.  Do that now.

When you want a person to be different, ask yourself only: how can I incorporate what I want for this person into my own example?

 

Thus the master is content to serve as an example

and not to impose his will.

He is pointed but does not pierce:

he straightens but does not disrupt;

he illuminates but does not dazzle.

Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching