I’ve listened with interest recently to a talk by Eckhardt Tolle – author of The Power of Now in which Eckhardt says our aim should be towards benevolence and fruitfulness. When you understand the word fruitful it means “producing good results”.
So how do we achieve this? The answer is love. The only construct that is real in any sense, is love, and I’m not talking about romantic love. It is love in the fullest meaning of the word, that produces benevolence and fruitfulness.
Often when I’m coaching clients who are dealing with challenging people, you will hear responses that are filled with fear. “When she said that xxx, I reacted by saying xxx”. It is fear, and all negative emotions are related to fear. However, if you can stop for a moment to allow yourself to be conscious and ask “how would love respond to this?”, you will get a completely different answer. You will get an answer that feels better inside. You will get an answer that is benevolent and can have fruitful outcomes.
It’s really very simple. Use your emotions as a GPS to warn you that you are coming to some conclusions that no longer serve you. You can feel it in the body as a negative feeling. Imagine for a moment that all fear responses emanate from the right-hand side of the pre-frontal cortex and that all responses embedded in love come from the left-hand side of your pre-frontal cortex. At any time, we have a choice as to how we can respond. And yes, there are difficult people in this world. As Tolle says, some can be really obnoxious, and that most of our problems come from other people.
But if you can stop for a minute and see the light in that other person – it may be hard to find – but it is there. We all have the light of consciousness inside us. If you can stop for a moment and choose a response that is based on love, one that comes from love – you will never be wrong. However, a response from the fear side of the brain will always be wrong.
So how can you make a difference right now? Choose love not fear.
By Gail Cameron
Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton from Unsplash
