QA124 QUESTION: Since there are so many pairs of opposites, is there such a thing as two people being opposite in thought and trying to get along? How would the love concept work between two opposite people?
ANSWER: Do you mean opposite in every respect?
QUESTION: In feeling, in opposite thought – a character of a person being opposite to another person.
ANSWER: If the love and the development exists and if the development is accordingly, there might be a tremendous amount of complementation. But I would venture to say completely opposites hardly exist, because all human beings have certain things in common.
There might be many characteristics that are truly opposite, but in the developed beings where there is love and true insight, they then complement one another.
QUESTION: I still feel that it is much easier to get along with certain people than with others. Therefore, if two people are the same type, wouldn’t it be easier for them to get along?
ANSWER: It is very difficult to say what determines the same type. You might have two people who have many, many aspects in common. Let us take, for instance, an aspect of outgoingness and self-assertion and aggressiveness. Now, if two people have that, they may be similar.
But if they lack understanding for themselves, they must also lack it for the other, and they would clash. That similarity might clash while a different reaction might bring them even closer together.
Of course, I do see what you mean that in certain, perhaps, questions of taste, of inclination, of attitudes in a certain matter of what one likes in life and how one wants to live, these aspects are important for a harmonious life.
Therefore a mature couple will certainly take into consideration such aspects and will not only be governed by spontaneous emotional reactions.
QUESTION: If I may pursue this a bit further – there are giving types and there are selfish types. Isn’t it much easier to be two givers than one giver and one selfish?
ANSWER: The two givers, if they are healthy givers, would be much more mature, while the selfish person who only grabs and only takes and cannot give would be the person who is still an infant, and therefore would have a very difficult time to maintain any work of a relationship.
On the other hand, with the person who only gives and has a very difficult time receiving, it would also be difficult, because then he who only gives and cannot receive must be resentful. Even if he does not realize the resentment, it is a very natural thing.
One does not want to be exploited. If two givers of that type would live together, that would also cause friction, because then each hidden compulsive unhealthy need to give and reject receiving would be a slap in the face of the other person who has the same need, and they would be in friction together – in the extreme case.
Wherever there is lack of emotional health and maturity, where there is an infantile attitude, relationship is impossible or difficult to the degree that this maturity is lacking. When a certain amount of maturity exists, where giving and receiving happens in a relatively free exchange, in an unhampered way, then a relationship can bloom and blossom.
QUESTION: It seems that we see people that fight like cats and dogs; others seem to be going together so beautifully. The nature of the people is what I’m trying to bring out. I’d like to know if one should look for the same nature to try to get along with or try to conquer the cat.
ANSWER: Conquer the other person, you mean? {Yes} Conquer the…well, you see, you cannot generalize that, my dearest friend. Each case is different. It depends what the relationship is – whether it is already established; how many favorable points, how many constructive points already exist in it; how much room for growth and unfoldment and mutual happiness exists in this relationship; or if it is primarily destructive, hampering each other’s growth.
You cannot, again, make a hard-and-fast rule. Each case has to be painstakingly examined, very closely looked at. Impossible to make a rule! Impossible to state you should look for your own nature or you should not look for your own nature.
Are the frictions only because you are what seems incompatible with one another, or are they perhaps because you have such different natures. Or are the frictions due perhaps to something that is behind this, that needn’t have necessarily anything to do with this apparent incompatibility and difference in nature.
In the last analysis – as you have often found out, all of you – your strong negative reactions to others is always a result of your not being in peace with yourself about a certain topic. If you get along with yourself, in this particular respect, you can get along with the other person, even if he or she is different.
So if these people want to and they’re both on the Path, they will look in themselves, as you all have learned to do. If I am presented with a specific case, then I might be able to give a specific answer. Generally, this is all I can say.
