I recently received a vision during a listening time. I saw an archer shooting many arrows one after the other. As soon as he would shoot one, he would pull out another, take aim, and shoot.
At first, my impression was that he was hurting people with his arrows, and that he was a nasty guy. However, it turned out that he was Cupid, and that each arrow he fired, was making people love each other more.
My lesson was that it is always easy to view the person criticising us as the enemy, and as someone who is out to get us. However, when you think about it seriously, you realise that the people criticising you actually love you.
In the system people usually do not criticise each other in the area that counts most (i.e. spiritual development). They rarely fix up any tensions between themselves. However, after some time, all the poison that they have bottled up inside of them comes out in a big explosion, and people get hurt.
Even when tensions are brought up, they are not brought up so that the other person can have a chance to change and mend the relationship, but rather as a weapon against them, and as an excuse to end a relationship.
But in the Kingdom of Heaven, when people criticise you, they are doing it because they love you. Sure, they may be annoyed, disappointed and generally agro, but because they value their relationship with you, they take the necessary steps to resolve the tensions, by approaching you personally. This is much better than talking about you behind your back, and/or by storing away the bad feeling they have against you in a file under your name in their heart.
People who do not value their relationship with you, will bottle up all the tensions they feel, until they have enough dirt stored up to give them an excuse to end the relationship. So the next time you get criticised, stop and remember that the person criticising you has made the effort to take the first step in fixing the tension, because they love you and value their relationship with you!
(See also Criticism.)
Register or log in to take the quiz for this article
