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When someone has wronged us and can't or won't take responsibility, we stay away. They're saying, in effect, "I'm not safe for you to be around." Take them at their word. Stay out of their way.
But, if you must be around that person - because yes, of course, there are people with whom we work, for whom we work, people in our family and our extended family, who we will not be able to avoid - then protect yourself. Try to stay out of harm's way, out of this person's event horizon, or at least far enough out of range that they won't have a clear shot. Again, this person has shown him or herself to be not trustworthy, so it becomes our own responsibility to stay out of the way so as not to be hurt again. We do not want to ignore the fact that they are dangerous to us. We don't want to pretend it will be different this time if there has been no indication they've changed.
BUT... (and this is where the Vedic world view gives us something other than most philosophies) we must never discount anyone's capacity for evolution, their capability to change. Not that they have changed, from one moment to the next, but that they can change and that eventually, in this life or some other, they will change. They will grow. They will become someone with whom we will be safe, someone from whom we will not need to protect ourselves.
How can I say this?
Because like me, this person is an expression of nature, and evolution is all that nature knows. A stalk of grass does not sprout from a seed and grow into the perfect stalk and then freeze itself in its perfection; it sprouts and grows and produces seeds of its own before finally withering and dying, making room for new growth and furnishing, with that part of it that is left behind, mulch for the next generation of grass. Like this, we never stand still. We don't stay stuck. We move, or nature moves us. Some can resist for a seemingly very long time, but we, all of us, will move forward and all of us, the wholeness that is us, will know ourselves as the perfection that we are. Nature will win out. God will get Its way.
So we keep our distance, but we don't make that their problem. We don't hold that against them. We stop being upset that an orange tree keeps giving us oranges. We stop expecting a fruit of a different color. When we look at this person, when we think of this person, we simply remind ourselves, using whatever words work best for us, something like:
This person is a child of God/an expression of nature/my brother/my sister, and as such is worthy of love, rather than condemnation. He or she is evolving, and who am I to decide they should be doing it more quickly? In my thinking about this person, I will insist on putting my attention on his or her potential for change, rather than his or her potential for destruction, and what I put my attention on will grow.
Gull
All material copyright Jeff Kober
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