Thoughts for the week:

May 3 Resist No Evil

The desire to “get even,” to get one’s own back, to level things up somehow or other, when we have been hurt or have suffered injustice, or witnessed things of which we did not approve, will remain with us until the time when we definitely take ourselves in hand and destroy it. “Revenge,” said Bacon, “is a kind of wild justice.”

May 4  NO VENGEANCE 

“Hatred ceases not with hatred,” said the Light of Asia [The Buddha]. This doctrine of “resist not evil” is the great metaphysical secret. To the world it sounds like moral suicide, the feeblest surrender to aggression. Antagonize any situation, and you give it power against yourself; offer mental nonresistance, and it crumbles away in front of you. 

We cannot too often remind ourselves that if the thought is right, the deed cannot be wrong. No teacher could ever say that a given act must necessarily be right at any time, because the play of circumstances in human life is too hopelessly complicated for any such prediction. 

If, when someone is behaving badly, you will immediately switch your attention from the human to the Divine, and concentrate upon God, or upon the real spiritual self of the person in question, you will find that his conduct will immediately change. This is the true revenge.

May 8  NONRESISTANCE 

When you fight a thing you antagonize it and it hits back. The harder you fight it the harder it hits. When you give your attention to anything, you are building that thing into your consciousness, for good or evil.

When you are faced with some negative condition, withdraw your attention from it by building the opposite into your subconscious. Then the undesirable thing falls away like an overripe fruit.

Fox, Emmet. Around the Year with Emmet Fox . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.