I've recently faced with a huge karmic obstacle, or rather disturbance.
Recently, a Dharma friend of mine which i was close to is starting to have a lot of self denials. He has been doing it all along but it has become more apparent recently. He was unhappy with what i wrote on my blog but say that it is okay. And he would always quote parts of my blog that was talking about him (although i put no names) and then implied that I was accusing him and manipulating him. I was very frustrated about his self denial issues. I can see right through his lies and his real intentions but he keeps denying them all the time. Every time i force him to face it he will break in a fight with me and tell me its just my own projections. When i describe the situation to another friend, the friend tells me its not my projections, its just that he is in denial.
On my side, I reminded him to face his self denial issues as a Dharma brother and gave him advice on some other things but he never took my advice. I did everything out of best intentions and planned everything even from the way i react to him to make him think and make him stop his self denials. But of late i find myself really drained from facing all of his self denials and he never improves.
Other Dharma siblings are telling me to let him be alone, but I just cannot do it because recently he has let go of someone that he used to trust a lot but that person did not treat him good and he discovered a lot of lies he has been let to believe by that person and right now he does need someone and support. On the other hand I am very tired of all the self denials he tells himself and his stubbornness. I don't understand why would someone would continue to lie when everyone else can see it right through?
He gets into depression when he realizes that his self denials are not true. An example would be that he is unhappy about someone, but he will keep telling me he bears no grudges against this person and it is okay when other words about this person and his overall feeling about this person is a negative one. And he will keep repeating that he is okay with it even though his other reactions tell you otherwise. If you try to get him to be straightforward he will just repeat the same thing, or he will change the conversation topic.
Perhaps it is just my hang up about honesty, but what is the use of being friends when you can't even be honest to each other? He claims he trust me but he would tell me half the story, and then tell me he would like to keep the other half of the story to himself when i press him about it. These kind of things tear the friendship apart but I am holding on to it and talking normally and talking only about things he likes because he really has no one else to turn to, even though it is ripping me apart inside but i am willing to go through it because i think of how lonely he is and i would like to take that away from him.
I guess I'm presenting a real life situation that we could apply the Dharma to, although to be honest i would like to know if there are other ways of helping this person.
