Ditto on the great advice, Luke.
In my case, I have done a major switch from trying to “fix” others – which lead me to psychiatric illness – to trying to find out why I couldn’t fix them.
The answer was that I was frustrated and angry toward them, and it was blocking my own ability to see the situation in perspective.
These days I am healing quickly and have “breakthroughs” on almost a daily basis in how I look at things. Practically all the time, I find that others will seemingly get better almost coincident with something I learn about myself and fix. It is almost a spiritual synchronization in some cases, though not all as some people are going to be difficult, dishonest, evil, whatever.
As Luke said, friends can be a good source of information but also I’ve found that my friends sometimes literally do not even see my faults as others tend to – so if there is a three-way interchange sometimes another person can help.
Back to the parable, I think the biggest problem I have with the plank in my own eye is that I’m so used to looking around it I don’t even recognize that it’s there. It takes others to point it out for me – if I’m sensitive enough to notice – and I use the very behavior I don’t like in them as indicators that I still have problems with my own plank. In a way, my “enemies” became my best instructors and even here on CAF the people who used to go crazy on me for my ideas have helped me to see what I’ve been communicating that I had not intended to. That would be pride and condescention, just to name a couple.
Alan
