QA141 QUESTION: I will soon see a person who I love very much but whom I also fear. Because of the fear, I express at times a hostility towards the person. How can I prepare myself, prepare my mind, so that I can show the affection I have, rather than the hostility?
ANSWER: Well, you are aware of this conflict in you. Now, in the first place it might be helpful for you to know, my friend – and it will relieve you perhaps of a certain guilt towards that person, which then increases the hostility – that it is not that person as such. It is the fear of pleasure, the fear of letting go, the fear of the opposite sex, the fear of yourself, the fear of undiscovered aspects in yourself that you have not come to terms with.
All this accumulates in a conscious resentment, hostility and fear towards the particular person you may be involved with at any given time. It is important to differentiate between the two so that you see it is not that very person actually who engenders this fear. The person merely brings out what is already in you, and the person, in that sense, is coincidental. The fear exists anyway.
Once you understand it from that point of view, it will be easier for you perhaps to prepare yourself in one way or another, to venture unto a path of self-realization where you truly meet and understand and consequently dissolve these conflicts and these fears. For it cannot be done by superimposing your will.
Your will should be used to bring out, rather than push away. If you push away without understanding, you cannot really solve it. But if you acknowledge and say, “Oh, yes, here’s a problem. I have this problem with many, many other human beings. I do want to resolve this problem. In order to do so, I have to find out much about myself. I ask for guidance that help in the right way will open up for me.”
Then you undertake the right thing; you prepare yourself to make your soul ready for love, for relationship, for trusting your innermost self, which you cannot as yet do because there are aspects in you which you still ignore. Therefore you primarily fear yourself, which is then projected onto others.
