All the attributes you see in others may well be your attributes. You might not see the unholy unless you had not felt unholy and didn’t like it in yourself. When you fight with another, there is something within yourself that you are fighting, else why would you storm about what someone else says or does?
You have familiarity with ignorance. You can’t stand someone else’s ignorance because you have had experience with your own. You don’t want to be reminded of it.
You have familiarity with stubbornness, and you are stubborn about someone else’s stubbornness.
You are annoyed with all the attributes that you yourself have experienced. You can’t stand a skinflint, and yet you have been a skinflint.
By the same token, when you are uplifted by someone’s good-heartedness, you have been good-hearted. When you appreciate a smile from someone, you have smiled.
By and large, you become irritated by that which you have displayed. Whatever you come up against, it is a shadow of you. What you love is also a shade of you. What you see is a reminder of you.
When you cannot tolerate injustice, perhaps subtly, you are being reminded of your own unjustness.
Every trait that drives you up the wall, you know it well. So long as you are irritated, you haven’t vanquished all traces of that trait yet. And that which in another gives you joy, well, that joy too is a reflection of you.
You are to get over things. Get over your own selfishness, and others’ selfishness will not be the big ogre it seems to be to you now. Ogre or friend seems to be your repertoire. You have been both aspects. You are well-experienced in both.
Of course, what you see as ignorant, someone else sees as smart. And so on.
Where am I going with this? Attend to yourself more than to others. Others are not obliged to meet your standards. Nor do you have to meet theirs. Sometimes you have to leave well enough alone. If someone is happy, let them be.
You are to be the teacher of life to your own self. If you have to teach, teach yourself. Hold back on trying to improve others. No one thanks you. In fact, you have gotten in their way. Move the chess pieces on your side of the board, and allow others to move theirs.
It is hard sometimes to know when you are helping or when you are meddling. Of course, you always mean to help when it may be only yourself that you make to feel good.
Do good, but be not a do-gooder.
There is such a fine line. You want to serve, and yet you may go overboard.
Pay attention to what you are doing. Do not take over someone else’s path. They have their path, and you have yours.
If someone is hungry, feed them. You don’t force-feed them. You offer. You leave the tray of food. You leave eating to their will.
It is not always easy for you to know when it is hands on or hands off.
Remodel yourself, and you remodel the world.
Remodel someone else, and you interfere.
Let someone ask you for advice before you give it. This is a rule of thumb.