I’ve often said I prefer to be hit by a terrific natural disaster, like a tsunami or a flood, than suffer pain caused by another human being.
Within the past two days, I have received letters from two friends, both betrayed by someone who once professed they loved them. These women are reeling from the unexpected punches….one close to knocked out by fear. “I am in an all or nothing situation,” she writes, “I cry all the time, even in my dreams, I cry.”
A third friend spoke about her sudden infidelity, and how much she hurt her husband when he discovered what happened.
And this afternoon, a new friend told me of his wife’s unfaithfulness, and the jealousy and rage it has triggered.
How To Make Sense of the Blow?
How do we make sense of such moments of agony, when we receive a blow to the solar plexus from someone we thought loved us dearly, someone we trusted with our lives?
My short answer is, accept the moment as another opportunity to grow and deepen down into self love. Use this stinging reality to wake yourself up to how much your self is waiting for your love.
No one is more deserving of your love than you. When we love ourselves fully and completely and effortlessly, these betrayals aren’t life threatening. If you like, you can spend some time in disappointment and grief, anger or regret. How long you experience misery is 100 percent your choice.
If, on the other hand, you decide to learn all you can from this unwanted lesson, you can end the misery immediately. The fact is, you cannot control another person or what has happened. Crying, screaming, wishing, scheming, retaliating…and all their outraged cousins….will not change what happened.
To change how you live with what happened is to look carefully and thoughtfully for the Truth that you have wanted to discover. What did you pray for? What have you wanted to better understand? The answer will lie in this painful moment. Perhaps you have been wondering why your life feels joyless or what you are supposed to do to earn a living.
Now, in the center of this shakeup, you have an opportunity to review your relationship with the world. How honest have you been? How much have you been ignoring? How long have you been pretending? The betrayal does not come out of no where…it has been growing in the backyard for a long time.
Perhaps you have wanted time to yourself, and not taken it. Now, with this loved one out of the picture, that desire for time alone has been fulfilled.
Perhaps you have been avoiding that awkward conversation about the state of your relationship, and now this explosion has forced the conversation to occur.
Rest assured, that even this extreme moment is here to serve your Highest Good. Yes, your highest. The lies are over. The Truth has emerged, victorious.
Will You Choose Suffering?
How you choose to learn and process this moment is yours. You can accept what has happened for what it is: an announcement of a major change, possibly an end. Unwanted changes and endings happen all the time. Do you think the Kodak Company has been running around crying about how their previous film customers betrayed them for digital, filmless photography?! No, they moved on, creating a niche for themselves with online photo galleries. Copy Kodak…be in creation, not reaction.
In his brilliant book, Power, Freedom and Grace, Deepak Chopra challenges us on virtually every page to break free of our conditioning and delusions and be happy: “How do you break free from captivity? You break free by choosing to identify with your inner self, the REAL you. You break free from the prison of conditioning when you feel neither beneath anyone nor superior to anyone, when you shed the need to control other people, who you create space for others to be who they are and your real self to be what it is.”
Dr. Chopra explains that you feel miserable, angry, jealous, guilty and afraid when facing a situation like betrayal because you have allowed your happiness to be controlled or determined by someone other than you. He calls this, “object referral” rather than “self referral”: “Somebody says, ‘I love you’ and that makes you feel happy. You win the lottery and make a million dollars; that makes you feel happy. This kind of happiness is an expression of object referral: You’re happy because of this, you’re happy because of that. But inner joy is independent of the situation, circumstances, people or things. When you experience inner joy, you are happy for no reason. Just the mere fact of being alive to gaze at the stars, to experience the beauty of this world, to be experientially alive in the miracle of life itself is your happiness.”
Take this moment of unwanted pain and accept all it has to teach you. See that you no longer want to have your joy or sadness be remote controlled by someone else. See that loving yourself is the steady way of life. Spend time communing with yourself, enjoy the beauty of your own company. Let you heal you. Sit quietly. See that you are still whole, perfect and intact. See that you are strong and still able to love. Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Be free.
(Dedicated to all those I know and don't know who are entering a time of unwanted change, who feel unloved, unlovable or unloving. Take heart! You will look back and see this was all for your Highest Good.)
Within the past two days, I have received letters from two friends, both betrayed by someone who once professed they loved them. These women are reeling from the unexpected punches….one close to knocked out by fear. “I am in an all or nothing situation,” she writes, “I cry all the time, even in my dreams, I cry.”
A third friend spoke about her sudden infidelity, and how much she hurt her husband when he discovered what happened.
And this afternoon, a new friend told me of his wife’s unfaithfulness, and the jealousy and rage it has triggered.
How To Make Sense of the Blow?
How do we make sense of such moments of agony, when we receive a blow to the solar plexus from someone we thought loved us dearly, someone we trusted with our lives?
My short answer is, accept the moment as another opportunity to grow and deepen down into self love. Use this stinging reality to wake yourself up to how much your self is waiting for your love.
No one is more deserving of your love than you. When we love ourselves fully and completely and effortlessly, these betrayals aren’t life threatening. If you like, you can spend some time in disappointment and grief, anger or regret. How long you experience misery is 100 percent your choice.
If, on the other hand, you decide to learn all you can from this unwanted lesson, you can end the misery immediately. The fact is, you cannot control another person or what has happened. Crying, screaming, wishing, scheming, retaliating…and all their outraged cousins….will not change what happened.
To change how you live with what happened is to look carefully and thoughtfully for the Truth that you have wanted to discover. What did you pray for? What have you wanted to better understand? The answer will lie in this painful moment. Perhaps you have been wondering why your life feels joyless or what you are supposed to do to earn a living.
Now, in the center of this shakeup, you have an opportunity to review your relationship with the world. How honest have you been? How much have you been ignoring? How long have you been pretending? The betrayal does not come out of no where…it has been growing in the backyard for a long time.
Perhaps you have wanted time to yourself, and not taken it. Now, with this loved one out of the picture, that desire for time alone has been fulfilled.
Perhaps you have been avoiding that awkward conversation about the state of your relationship, and now this explosion has forced the conversation to occur.
Rest assured, that even this extreme moment is here to serve your Highest Good. Yes, your highest. The lies are over. The Truth has emerged, victorious.
Will You Choose Suffering?
How you choose to learn and process this moment is yours. You can accept what has happened for what it is: an announcement of a major change, possibly an end. Unwanted changes and endings happen all the time. Do you think the Kodak Company has been running around crying about how their previous film customers betrayed them for digital, filmless photography?! No, they moved on, creating a niche for themselves with online photo galleries. Copy Kodak…be in creation, not reaction.
In his brilliant book, Power, Freedom and Grace, Deepak Chopra challenges us on virtually every page to break free of our conditioning and delusions and be happy: “How do you break free from captivity? You break free by choosing to identify with your inner self, the REAL you. You break free from the prison of conditioning when you feel neither beneath anyone nor superior to anyone, when you shed the need to control other people, who you create space for others to be who they are and your real self to be what it is.”
Dr. Chopra explains that you feel miserable, angry, jealous, guilty and afraid when facing a situation like betrayal because you have allowed your happiness to be controlled or determined by someone other than you. He calls this, “object referral” rather than “self referral”: “Somebody says, ‘I love you’ and that makes you feel happy. You win the lottery and make a million dollars; that makes you feel happy. This kind of happiness is an expression of object referral: You’re happy because of this, you’re happy because of that. But inner joy is independent of the situation, circumstances, people or things. When you experience inner joy, you are happy for no reason. Just the mere fact of being alive to gaze at the stars, to experience the beauty of this world, to be experientially alive in the miracle of life itself is your happiness.”
Take this moment of unwanted pain and accept all it has to teach you. See that you no longer want to have your joy or sadness be remote controlled by someone else. See that loving yourself is the steady way of life. Spend time communing with yourself, enjoy the beauty of your own company. Let you heal you. Sit quietly. See that you are still whole, perfect and intact. See that you are strong and still able to love. Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Be free.
(Dedicated to all those I know and don't know who are entering a time of unwanted change, who feel unloved, unlovable or unloving. Take heart! You will look back and see this was all for your Highest Good.)
Recently I was hurt by the comments of a close friend, I was taken aback to what was said and like an uncontrollable wave I felt the welt of pain rise in me and manifest as "frustration" and though my reasoning and logical side of me knew that I was being unreasonable and even a bit immature I could not stop the flooding of frustration that continued to dwell within me. I controlled my dialogue with the greatest intention to not hurt the person when they questioned me on my reaction. We have had 2 lengthy discussions over it and both were very productive for both myself and my friend. The most interesting point of this situation is that as I remained open and non judgmental of it's existence and allowed the energy to flow through me and not suppress it, then the discovery of it's origin emerged.
ReplyDeleteI felt a great sense of relief that I saw the path that this rooted emotion had and that this sense of frustration was a manifestation of it. Now with this new info my mediation to assist me with defacing my old rooted emotion shall take one step toward self healing in my journey with myself.
OM Shanti
Parashakti