Showing posts with label control. Show all posts
Showing posts with label control. Show all posts

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Forgiveness, Sorting Through Your Secrets

"Some harm that people do to themselves or others may appear to 
outsiders to be less grave..." -- Forgiving Yourself by Beverly Flannigan

Many people find it difficult to forgive themselves for the simple, secret reason that they felt some benefit or pleasure from the now regretted experience. It may have been a sense of power, control, emotion, energy or mastery. It may have been a degree of delight in depriving another of a benefit such as needed material items, or the plain truth.

Keeping secrets for these reasons may make a later impulse to self-forgiveness more difficult; self forgiveness is self-confrontation and requires for many, a measure of courage. We don't like what we see in the mirror, yet we live with it day after day. Forgiving Yourself by Beverly Flannigan, discusses forgiveness and includes the issue of secrets.
 "Some harm that people do to themselves or others may appear to outsiders to be less grave than it is to the person unable to forgive himself. You may have been told that you 'did the best you could' or 'didn't know.' You may not have been able to listen to other peoples' condolences because you knew something no one else knew about the situation. For example, you may have felt momentarily good about hurting someone or physically aroused, assaulted, or angry at a person."

If what you know about your situation, you keep 'secret,' it likely is at the center of your inability to forgive yourself. Flannigan recommends to such transgressors that they write down as much as they can remember about the situation, include all the details without fearing the memory; express those parts of yourself in writing that you think or thought then, were unacceptable.
She advises the writing be kept in a safe place; refer to it as often as needed, adding details or feelings which you may have not recalled at first writing. This may take weeks as things surface in your mind.

Concluding this discussion Flannigan notes that, "With each phase of forgiving yourself, you come closer and closer to truth. Eventually you will expose more of your truth to another person."
  For now, the hard work of confronting what you most dislike in yourself takes you closer to the time you feel genuine relief and can say to yourself, "I feel whole, I forgive myself."

Friday, March 20, 2015

Fearing the Beloved

"Most of us go into relationships to find security; we want to be with someone else who makes us feel safe… Spiritually the answer to fear… [is] you are already safe." The Path to Love by Deepak Chopra

Writing about a compelling topic, a concern for individuals and societies the world over, Deepak Chopra in his book, The Path to Love, makes a simply profound observation. That is the simple realization that we are safe, as safe as we can be in any given moment.
If we have suffered previously, we are safe. What has occurred is past and we have survived it. It is spiritually unnecessary to make events "larger than life." Everything as a part of the whole has its place in the world. Traumatized though we may be by events, they are survivable.

It may be part of your life experience that you were left alone together with your mother by your father to fend for yourselves; possibly your experience has been war, or criminal acts; maybe you have experienced the effects of serious illness, possibly ongoing events such as cancer or mental illnesses like serious depression.
But it remains true that you have survived each and all of these events day by day! The worst is not, what is before you, as you fear; it isn't unknown.
 Looking into the face of an assailant or one who abandons you, treats you poorly, may well inspire fears, or it may initiate a 'substitute life,' one provoked by the mind's imagination.

"If you felt truly safe, fear wouldn't arise," writes Chopra. He makes the point that from a position of spirituality, all fears are projections, a term coined by psychologist Carl Jung to state that one's thoughts, feeling and perceptions are outwardly focused or projected away from the self in an effort to defend the 'ego' from jolts.
"As long as these projections continue, you will keep generating fearful situations to accommodate them… the threats you perceive around you now, or coming at you in the future are the long shadow being cast by your past."
In relationships of long time standing, we often counteract this impulse to fear precisely because the lengthiness of the relationship.
In other words, according to this observation made by Chopra, if it was going to happen, it has already occurred, and you have already survived the worst of it. There is nothing more to fear today.

Now in romantic love, we feel protected and loved. But it was love, all along, whose protection we sought. "The love you have for one person is a safe zone and thus a good place to begin.'
'The beloved is like a harbor" in which you may take refuge. In an effort to protect ourselves from pain or disappointment, we may perform many maneuvers, either consciously or unconsciously.

Spiritually it is something like the child who places their hands over their ears. It's good for muffling overly loud noises or frustrating conversations. But it isn't selective; it blocks out most everything. So our efforts to protect our self from what we fear, often also accomplishes the banishment of the possibilities for love.

We can begin to replace controlling with allowing, writes Chopra. "If you can begin to replace controlling with allowing to your Beloved, the effect is to release you from attachment--both of you are spiritually served from the same act."
Examples of allowing are things like letting go of controls such as judgment, impatience, resistance; these may be replaced by allowing yourself and others some tolerance, acceptance, and open, non-resistance. There is a great freedom here; energy is released for other, constructive uses.

"Needing to control life, either yours or your partner, is based on spiritual desperation." When you allow, the self-serving facade of a demanding, critical, impatient, perfectionist partner begins to crumble.
An easy, more comfortable friendliness then may take its place, at least, in increasing amounts. Blame becomes unnecessary, love flows as a heart-felt sensation.
So then, from Chopra's view, the most loving thing one can do is to encourage and support these shifts within our self and our Beloved.