It's not your job to enlighten anyone

I think one of the biggest challenges we have is the resistance to acceptance.

The only reason we have pain or mental anguish is when we resist the now and when we resist the reality of what’s going on.

If there happens to be an ‘I told you so,’ factor, we can become resentful. It is an absolute recipe for relationship disaster, whether it be in an intimate relationship, a friendship or work relationship.

Fundamentally, what most people are looking for is to be accepted for who they are, for their warts and all, and even their bad decisions.

Sometimes we need to understand that people need to make bad decisions to create their own lessons.

Not everyone wants to be led, not everyone wants to be hand held, not everyone wants to be shown the right way to do things.

I relate to being one of those people.

I’m much better now. For the first 20 to 25 years of my life, I don’t think I listened to anybody., being given advice and following advice.

But I also believe that I am where I am right now, 43 years later, because for the first 25 years of my life I didn’t listen to anybody. As a result of the enormous mistakes that I made I created incredible life lessons; skills, knowledge and life lessons, that have fundamentally led me to where I am today.

Does that mean that everyone that doesn’t follow your advice or makes a bad decision is going to learn the lessons that are required? No, possibly not.

It’s not up to you to enlighten anyone. It is a little bit egotistical and arrogant to think that you could.

Enlightenment is something that comes from within, it’s not something that comes from without.

If you’re sitting there and viewing your ability to enlighten others thru conversation or thru direction or advice, I would say, start looking at you because you might be the problem – in the relationship – not them. I’m not saying that is the situation but it’s worth considering.

Can advice enlighten us? Can helping people make the right decisions enlighten them?

Yes.

But not because you give someone advice, but because if you give someone some information and they process it internally in a very specific way, that might switch the lights on in a way, where they become slightly more enlightened.

We don’t enlighten anyone. No-one is enlightened by another, the only enlightenment that comes from within is the result of the relationships that we create in our outside world and our inside world.

You might be a part of that but to take responsibility and own someone else’s enlightenment, come on, that’s just not the cool way to do it.

First and foremost, if you’re so enlightened you want to share your enlightenment demonstrate what enlightenment looks like.

To me, an enlightened being is someone who doesn’t judge and who doesn’t force others to do perhaps what they want them to do.

That allows others to have their own experience and doesn’t judge them for not listening to yours.

So my advice is, focus on you bro.

You do you boo, you do you.