Are the world and its inhabitants always imposing on you? You may find yourself at the heart of your own troubles. Your external world and all the people in it reflect the state of your own psyche. So when you feel that people are taking advantage, it’s because at some unconscious level you’re taking advantage of yourself, punishing yourself without realizing it by withholding the joy of life from yourself. The person who acts it out for you is actually being sent by your Tao to do you a service—to show you what you’re doing to yourself.
Do you feel people are taking advantage of you? Start off with feeling gratitude to these people for playing that role. This instantly stops you from taking it personally. Then thank your Tao for the reflection. This instantly stops you from feeling like a victim. Life becomes once again a beautiful learning and healing process, rather than an obstacle course or horror story.
Next express your self-love. It’s facile but it works—say it out loud in the first person: I love you. Say it again with more feeling. And again until you hear it as you’d want to hear someone you really cared about telling you they love you.
Then, hold the person who you feel has wronged you in mind and tell them you love them. Use the same tone of voice and say it till you break through all resistance and feel it. Doing so is the essence of magnanimity. It creates the sympathetic internal environment you need to conduct a more self-affirming inner dialogue. That will automatically produce a sympathetic external environment in which to conduct a mutually respectful dialogue between you in real time.
Now notice how you withhold the joy of being alive from yourself from moment to moment—how you block out the joy of simply being alive which is your birthright—by tensing your belly against life, by holding your breath against it, by tensing the back of your neck, by tensing your hips and buttocks and so on. Be clear with yourself that by relaxing these muscles instead and letting yourself breathe more freely, you’re opening yourself up to the joy of the moment, regardless of external conditions or any self-defeating thoughts going on in your head. Take a chance and actually relax—release all that tension. Say “tension, release!” and it will.
Having retrieved your personal power and situated yourself correctly in respect to the external situation, you’re ready to approach the other person. First ask your Tao to produce the perfect moment in which you can both spontaneously discuss the issue and be open to and with each other. Then decide your intended outcome. For instance, that you both walk away from the discussion happy—with pride intact, feeling good about each other, having agreed to your mutual satisfaction to redress the imbalance in your relationship.
And when that moment arises, as it inevitably will if you give it the chance, proceed to communicate as follows, all the while bearing in mind that appearances aside, the other is really merely reflecting the damage you’ve been perpetrating on yourself without realizing, and has actually been serving you in taking advantage of you till now. Hence you speak lovingly:
I feel (whatever you feel—upset/sad/afraid/angry) because I think (whatever you think has happened that constitutes them taking advantage of you), and what I’d like is (whatever you’d like to have happen now—them acknowledging the error and agreeing to rebalance the situation in whatever way is mutually appropriate).
If done with humility, dignity, kindness, firmness, respect and determination not to allow any possible dodging tactics on their part and even on yours by getting scared and sidestepping what you need to say to them, this technique produces the desired result and you’ll get the outcome you wish for.
Barefoot Doctor is famous for soulfully evolving and lovingly presenting the supremely powerful, ancient Taoist personal development and reality-manifestation process in a pure, simple and efficacious form for anyone caught in the modern madness of everyday life.
