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We're going to talk about behavioral modification. I think that all through your lifetimes, literally, you've been inundated with erroneous information. It becomes terribly hard to try to figure out what's right. You're inundated by all types of moralistic behavior, commandments, church rules, and law. Behavioral modification is probably the most simplistic.

Our Lord said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Now, let me get more specific about that. Let me try to release some of the burdens of guilt you may have. There are people whom you cannot possibly like. Yet many times, because "Love your neighbor" has been given to you, you are convinced that it's wrong to dislike others.

It is wrong not to dislike. Let me tell you why. If you're going to like and care for every single person (I'm not speaking of love), there's something wrong with your personality. You're deficient in being a whole person. Whole people have decided likes and dislikes, paths in which they follow, paths in which they won't follow.

You must try to love everyone's soul and wish them the best. But you certainly don't have to like their behavior or actions. To stay around a person that you intensely dislike is wrong. It disintegrates that person and yourself. Many marriages, friendships, and family relationships are built upon trying to stay around a person that one cannot tolerate. This causes you guilt and heartache and stunts your spiritual growth. You're laboring so hard to be "perfect" for no reason. Again, Jesus recommends that you "pick up your pallet and walk away."

When you give someone advice (all human beings are filled with advice for everyone), don't ever give advice that you think will apply to you, or what you would like. Try to be objective. That is the most spiritual road. Whenever someone asks you for an opinion or advice, don't internalize it; rather, try to put yourself in that person's place. There, again, is a very spiritual modification.

Care more for yourself. Reward yourself. For one week, try to do everything that you wish to do just for you. For one week, try it. I guarantee that by the end of the week, you will not only be doing things for you, but you'll be doing more for other people than ever before.

Once you can love yourself, so much love begins to emanate. If you find that you're a person who doesn't like people, you're in great difficulty. The greatest challenge that you'll ever have in this life is to get along with other people. That doesn't mean having to like them or constantly give out more than is humanly possible. It means being able to discern how compatible with you others will be.

Do you know that Jesus did not like everyone? He did not like the Pharisees. He could not stand the courts. He could not abide the rulers of Rome. Yet he cared for all people. Do you understand that?

It's impossible for you to walk around constantly, truly loving everyone. When you try to love everyone, you've diminished the word love. You use the word love so much that when it comes to truly loving and caring, you have no way to express it anymore. Most of you, I can truly say, "like" and "care" for others, but very few of you in physical life know what true love is. This is not because you're deficient. It's because on your plane of existence, it's nearly impossible. Infatuation is probably the closest thing.

Because you get a brief glimpse of this feeling with a partner, you're constantly looking for the next, in your slang, "fix." The older you get and the more worn down you are from life, the less it comes. Something else must replace it -- some deeper knowing that you're finishing out your contract with God, then you will go Home.

If you're constantly bogged down with grief or what should have been or what was not, you'll stunt your spiritual growth. If you're constantly wondering what people think of you, you stunt your growth. Does this make you an uncaring, unfeeling human being? Maybe according to the world's norm, but not in the bigger scheme of life.

Every single one of you is individually alone, making your way on a well-defined path to get back where you came from. You may select partners and companions along the way, but as I've stated before, because of your physical body and because you cannot merge, every single one of you is isolated. We, your spirit guides, are probably closer to you than any human being can ever be.

Don't be so obsessive about the next day, the next year, money problems, and so on. You may reply, "But I have to live." Yes, you have to live, but things are only going to be one way or the other. Believe me when I tell you: Almost everyone survives the money worries, the business worries, the love worries. So much excessive time is spent worrying about what is already predestined by you and the other individuals anyway.

Money is a great deal like love. It's meant to be taken in and given out. If money is taken in and held, it does not reproduce anything. People become too terribly concerned about materialistic holdings.

People have asked me, "Am I too materialistic?" Almost every time, I have reiterated, "No." Very rarely have I seen a person, regardless of their holdings or houses or cars, who I feel is truly caught in material greed. Now, as far as possessions, people can get caught up in materialism by caring too much in almost a self-conscious way what people think of them. That is being caught in matter.

It is so simple. You care for the majority of people. You hope they care for you. If they don't, there are others who will. That's what makes you more spiritual.

This article is excerpted from the book:

The Nature of Good and Evil
by Sylvia Browne.

It is reprinted with permission of the publisher Hay House Inc., www.hayhouse.com

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About The Author

Sylvia Browne is the author of Adventures of a Psychic, Life on the Other Side, and The Other Side and Back, among numerous other works. Visit her website at: www.sylvia.org.

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