The title of this post is a phrase often repeated by spiritual teacher, Ram Dass.  I have found its truth on so many levels.

I care a lot about people.  I really, really wish for everyone to be happy and to be healthy.  I also think about people a lot and the great and different ways they live and the things that I can learn from them.  When others are happy, I am also happy and feel that happiness with them.

Conversely, when people are unhappy, I feel that unhappiness.  I think that as is often the case with unhappiness and unhealthiness, there is many times a fog that clouds that person’s awareness, not allowing them to see the sources of their unhappiness or unhealthiness, or that they are even unhappy or unhealthy at all.  Because of that, it can be much easier for someone who is aware and removed from that perspective to identify these things.

So, that someone has identified these things.  What next?  I think, for most people, the answer has been maybe to tell that person what they think they are doing wrong.  Maybe to get upset with them when they don’t listen to what you say.  Maybe to share that information with the others they are close to.   Maybe to stop hanging out with them until they “get it together”.  Or maybe, the answer has been to simply disagree on these things and to hold on to the associated feelings of disappointment or frustration that you’ve created.  To hold these feelings in a place that is only visited in some moments that remind you, or when you are alone, or when you are with that person.

All I can do for you is work on myself, all you can do for me is work on yourself.

Often to tell someone what we believe they are doing wrong has absolutely no effect because they are at a certain level of consciousness, or on a certain wavelength that cannot hear your message.  Understand that if they were on a wavelength that could hear your message, then they would not be in the position they are in.  So they listen, but they cannot truly hear and you become upset.  So now we have a person who is suffering, who needs the love and help of a friend, and we get angry with them.

For a person already in a position without a lot of love and happiness, receiving negative energy from those closest to them will only push them further away.  If you decide next to stop seeing that person, you are only removing another positive influence from them and a person who can be there with them through their suffering.

But let’s say instead that you do not leave a friend.  You are loyal, but at the same time you are holding on to your opinions about that person.  By holding on to those opinions, you create a barrier between you.  There is an energy of judgment and self-righteousness that sets up a wall that blocks any vibrations of love and acceptance.  Whether you realize it or not, this energetic wall blocks any  real loving communication between you.  The person who is suffering can no longer connect, and you cannot connect to them.  You cannot be together.  If you are a dear friend, this severed or muddled connection can have a crippling effect and both will suffer through interactions that serve as a constant reminder of what was and no longer is.

All I can do for you is work on myself, all you can do for me is work on yourself.

By working on yourself, you become a person more full of love and understanding.  You work on being a person that anyone can talk to about anything.  Someone they know who will not judge and will be there for them no matter the case.  This love is transformative.  It is inevitable that we have feelings of unhappiness with regards to others and our relationships, but by working on ourselves we accept and let go of these feelings to become someone better for those around us.