because our merits are not recognised, it is because we have still not
overcome vanity. If it happens because we suffered some episode of
ingratitude or defamation, it is because we must overcome pride or
arrogance.
The fact that aggressiveness is something that depends on the interior
and not on the exterior is shown when we see that there are people
able to bear great disrespect, the strongest attacks, without losing their
patience or their smile, whereas others, for whatever banal reason,
explode in attacks of uncontrolled rage. The former are those who
have spiritually advanced in eradicating aggressiveness within
themselves. The second group has scarcely begun to work on this. We
must not get frustrated if we cannot change the external universe,
over which we have little power to act. Let us work to change the
inner universe over which we have all the power, and then what
happens in the exterior will cease to be a reason for anger.
How can we overcome aggressiveness?
First, by admitting that we have it and, secondly, by trying to
overcome it through understanding.
What is it that we must understand?
We must understand ourselves, understand others, and understand the
circumstances that we have to face. Understand that sometimes we
get cross because we do not want to admit that we are mistaken, or
do not want to recognise certain egoistic attitudes in ourselves. If
aggressiveness is aroused because we suppress our opinions, we must
work to express ourselves just as we are. If it is aroused because
somebody harms us, we must understand that this is due to the lack of
evolution of that spirit, which is still barely advanced in the knowledge
of love. Understand that at some time we might have been in the
same situation, in that state of spiritual ignorance, doing to others what
they are doing to us now, and that if we expect understanding
towards us, towards our acts of egoism, we must also adopt an
understanding position regarding the egoistic acts of others.
Understand that many of the adverse circumstances with which we
are faced are not there to annoy us, but rather to stimulate us when
learning about love, and the overcoming of egoism, and that we
chose many of them ourselves before we were born. And we ourselves
have caused the majority of these circumstances by our rigidity,
intolerance, envy, lack of respect and lack of understanding of the
needs and opinions of others.