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NARROWNESS AND ONE-SIDEDNESS
The whole trouble comes from the fact that you cannot harmonise with someone unless he is in agreement with your own ideas and his opinion and way of doing things are in conformity with yours. You must widen your consciousness and understand that everyone has his own law. It is necessary to find the ground of understanding and harmony in a happy combination of individual wills and not to try that all may be the same in an identical will and action.
One of the chief obstacles to the establishment of a progressive harmony is our eagerness to prove to an opponent that he is wrong and we are right.
I am happy about your new arrangement; let us hope it works.
It depends on how much each one cares more for harmony than for the triumph of his own will!
How do you expect others to keep to an arrangement when you are not doing it yourself? How do you hope to get out of your shallowness if you remain always one-sided in your perception of things? June 1931 Page − 287 X is quite justified in thinking and feeling as he does, but he must understand that the others also are justified in their thinking and feeling although it differs from his and he ought not to despise them and call them bad names. Among human beings, the most widely spread disease is mental narrowness. They understand only what is in their own consciousness and cannot tolerate anything else. 24 September 1953 A person who considers only his own opinion becomes more and more narrow.
For each problem there is a solution that can give satisfaction to everybody, but for finding this ideal solution each one must want it, instead of meeting the others with the will to enforce one’s own preference. Enlarge your consciousness and aspire for the satisfaction of all. 28 August 1971 You see only your side of the question, but if you want to widen your consciousness it would be better to look from all sides impartially. Later you will discover that this attitude has great advantages. 17 September 1971 As long as you are for some and against others, you are necessarily outside of the Truth. Page − 288 |