There is no suffering without your compliance. What happens outside you does not cause suffering. What you make of what occurs incurs suffering. We come back again and again to your thoughts, and the necessity to change them.
Too often your thinking has locked you into a position, a fraudulent one. Beloveds, you make too much of what happens in the world. You post a sign on your back that says Victim. You carry a placard that says: “The world is unfair. The world has been mean to me. By its injustice, it has taken something away from me. It had no right. I protest, and now I will not forget it. Those others who did not treat me right will have to relent before I can be happy again.” And so you make a fuss. And so you build a case.
All your attempts and self-talk to reform others and change a situation bring little relief. It may gain you sympathy. Even when you take the offender to court — the court outside of your mind — and you win, the sense of vindication is short-lived. The nagging in your mind continues. Your refrain became: "They can’t do that and get away with it."
Beloved, you wronged yourself. You pinned yourself down to the mat. It was you who wouldn’t let go. You invited suffering. You made suffering welcome. Someone else may have lied, stolen from you etc., but you turned someone else’s misdemeanor into your own personal suffering.
You will not like to hear this, but it is your ego that does all the fussing. Otherwise, you would get over it, whatever it is, that you have stuck yourself in. You could have let go of the incident long ago. As it is, you have allowed it to become a monster in your life that overshadows your enjoyment and the enjoyment of those around you. You have let something trip you up. Do what you can do to relieve the situation. And then be done with it.
Nothing is supposed to interfere with your living life. Nothing is so important that you let it bring you to a standstill. Movement is the name of the game of life. You have to move on. Step over this obtrusive event. It already happened. That means it is past. Do not hold on to the past, for holding on to the past overwhelms the present.
If presently you suffer, you have made some kind of monument to the past. That is without exception. The worse the past was, the more you have to let it go, or else it enters your bloodstream. Anger is weakening, beloveds. It certainly isn’t strengthening. Absolve yourself of complicity in this error that was perpetrated upon you. There comes a point in life when you must simply shrug your shoulders and go on. You can’t stay still in life. Staying still means suffering.
What sense does it make to hold onto offense? Would you really rather suffer than let it go?
Forgive yourself right now for whatever wrongs have been laid at your feet. What someone else does, no matter how offensive, does not have to be an impediment to your life. If you do not let go of this infringement upon you, you keep it to you and you carry it with you. What sense does that make?
There is nothing more for you to accomplish in this situation but to let it go now. Free yourself from the past, the far past and the recent past. Never mind about setting the world straight. Set yourself straight. Do not hang yourself out to dry.
Keep walking. A victim is not a hero. A hero moves on no matter what, despite anything. He certainly does not chain himself to past offense.
Can you imagine if Joseph of the coat of many colors had held on to his grudge? That he had reason to feel vindictive is not the issue. The issue is to go forward in life and to let suffering go.