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Every one knows the trying phases of her own working neighbor. But
with all this, and with worse possibilities of harassment than I
have even touched upon, the woman at the next desk is powerless, so
far as I am concerned, if I choose to make her so.
The reason she troubles me is because I resist her. If she hurts my
feelings, that is the same thing. I resist her, and the resistance,
instead of making me angry, makes me sore in my nerves and makes me
want to cry. The way to get independent of her is not to resist her,
and the way to learn not to resist her is to make a daily and hourly
study of dropping all resistances to her.
This study has another advantage, too; if we once get well started
on it, it becomes so interesting that the concentration on this new
interest brings new life in itself.
Resistance in the mind brings contraction in the body. If, when we
find our minds resisting that which is disagreeable in another, we
give our attention at once to finding the resultant contraction in
our bodies, and then concentrate our wills on loosening out of the
contraction, we cannot help getting an immediate result.
Even though it is a small result at the beginning, if we persist,
results will grow until we, literally, find ourselves free from the
woman at the next desk.
This woman says a disagreeable thing; we contract to it mind and
body. We drop the contraction from our bodies, with the desire to
drop it from our minds, for loosening the physical tension reacts
upon the mental strain and relieves it.
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