Midlife Mastery Journal » Spirituality

When It Hurts

admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 14:19:34 +0000

I’m sick. I don’t like being sick: I don’t ‘do’ sick very well. I have a sore throat and, night or day, every time I swallow, it’s like razor blades slicing up and down the inside of my throat. It’s also the 4th of July weekend, we have house guests, and it’s the start of my first vacation since going to back work at an RJ (‘real job’) last March. Yes, as I’ve often observed, guys like me turn into real wusses (or worse) when we don’t feel well. And yet, I’m not alone and, for the sake of those around me, I know I have to buck up and stifle my whining and complaining (at least outside of my most private moments). One of the benefits (and drawbacks) of having a life partner is that you get to say (and, of course, to hear) how we really feel. The rest of the world — in as much as is possible — gets to see my more ‘public’ face. It’s what I believe we do when we have any sort of social awareness: recognizing that, no matter how badly we may feel, the rest of the universe doesn’t really have to join us.

I believe that is one of the great lessons that comes with the midlife transition: the gift of perspective and the recognition that it’s not ‘all about me.’ On the one hand, my fears of imaginary consequences are overblown. I can put my concerns in my back pocket and walk through situations that used to terrify me, knowing that I’ll either survive or not and, either way, it’s OK. On the other hand, the world is not responsible for living up to my expectations of it. I can be satisfied with “progress not perfection.” As I look at myself, starting to heal from several days of feeling (as my grandmother used to say) “lousy!” and look at the ongoing journey I’m engaged in post-midlife and, at the same time, consider the midlife trials that our country is going through on this, it’s official birthday, I see some parallels and some interesting take-aways.

My life (like that of those around me whom I know well) has not turned out as I had ever imagined it would. If it had, I’d be celebrating over thirty-four years of active ministry somewhere in Florida along with the 234th anniversary of the republic instead of nursing a bacterial throat infection in Rehoboth Beach, DE along with my partner of 15 years (next month) and getting ready for a dinner party and trip to see the fireworks this evening. Needless to say, there have been a lot of false starts, a lot of pain, and a lot of missteps between there and here. Yet, I’m confident that, as mundane and ordinary as my life has turned out, it’s exactly where my Higher Power wanted me to be (based on the choices that I made, for good or ill). It’s certainly not a perfect life, but it’s a pretty good one, all in all, and an excellent reminder of how “the perfect is the enemy of the good enough.” It’s a lesson I’ve needed to learn in life, and a lesson that we might all benefit from reviewing from time to time.

This country — like life itself — is going through turmoil. It’s never been any different (and will never be different) no matter how many patriotic stories we tell ourselves. There’s an exhibit currently showing at the Museum of American Art in DC of paintings by Normal Rockwell. The art critic in today’s Washington Post analyzed those works very wisely: they don’t depict our country the way it used to be so much as the way we wish it had been. We’ve never actually been “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” People are currently yelling very loudly (and sometimes violently) about “taking back” our country, without really considering what they might be taking it back to. Only an historic perspective will bring to light the political, social and economic sins that besmirched our political past, and continue to challenge our political future.

Our childhood was never the idyllic place we imagined it to be. Time scours away the experience of the pain we endured, leaving us to imagine, in most cases, that it wasn’t so bad. Yet, for nearly all of us, it was that bad. Growing pains hurt. And what we experience in the midlife transition — that ripping away of our cherished hopes and dreams to be replaced with a more realistic but sometimes starker reality — is hardly an illusion, either. Whether it’s facing an evening of social entertaining with a nasty and energy-sapping sore throat or walking through the fears and disappointments of midlife or dealing with a social and political system that falls far from any ideal, we’re always faced with the same dilemma: what to do when it hurts.

What I love most about my chosen Christian faith is the belief in the incarnation: that the God of my understanding is no deistic watchmaker who simply wound up the universe and disinterestedly set it to unwind on its own. Rather, the incarnation suggests to me that God chose from the outset to assume the for him/herself the limitations that the very act of creation imposes on reality. Faith brings with it the stark and unavoidable comprehension that God hurts. The lesson I take from this is that, as God did not shrink back from creation because it involved suffering, that neither should we. The only way to get beyond suffering is to go through it. We can’t solve any of the problems of our personal or political life by trying to go back to an imagined earlier, more ‘serene’ time. The only way forward is . . . well . . . forward!

Neither form of escapism will work for us as individuals or as a collective: neither hiding ourselves in an angry, fearful, self-interested protectionism, nor simply whining and complaining that things aren’t going our way. Like our Creator, the challenges of each day summon us to get our hands dirty with the work of creation: becoming involved with the process of progress, and never allowing ourselves to become complacent or discouraged by our lack of perfection. When it hurts, we take our medicine, share our pain with those who care about us, and do whatever we need to do to keep moving forward. It works when we’re sick; it works when we’re in personal transition; it works as a body politic. It’s called ‘courage‘, plain and simple: nothing grand, just bucking up, trusting God, and doing the next right thing.

And . . . have a glorious 4th of July!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

Get Me Out of This Dream!

Les Brown — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 15:54:42 +0000

Ever since I watched him on “American Idol,” I’ve been a great fan of Adam Lambert. For the first time in my life, I can listen to his album over and over without tiring of his music. One of the tunes I really enjoy is “I’m a Sleepwalker,” and it ends with the stark phrase, “Get me out of this dream!” So often, when you’re struggling hardest with midlife issues, you want to scream those words to high heaven: Get me out of this dream! What once seemed like the answer to prayer has turned on you and you wake up one day to find that you’re living a nightmare, although nothing as really changed all that much . . . only you have changed.

Why do dreams turn into nightmares, and even your ‘dreams come true’ have morphed into situations that you wish you could escape from, if only you knew how? How did Cinderella suddenly change into the wicked stepmother, and the handsome prince one day show up as the troll under the bridge? The answer to that question lies in the nature of dreams, in human nature, and in the difficulty we all have in changing our minds. Midlife is simply that moment on our journey when the rose-colored glasses are ripped off our faces and we’re forced to look reality in the face without the gauze and soft-focus we’ve become accustomed to seeing it all through. How you navigate the midlife transition is all about how well you’re able to sustain yourself through a big dose of harsh reality. Today, I’d lke to offer a spoonful of sugar to help that medicine go down (thank you, Mary Poppins).

First, the nature of dreams. Your dreams are simultaneously the product of your imagination and a creative stimulus. “I see things that have never been,” says your imagination, “and ask, ‘Why not?’” Life would be incredibly boring and stale if you had no dreams of something different and better. The greatest tragedy that could befall a human would be to live a life of such despair that s/he lost the ability to dream. Dreams are truly God’s gift to you, allowing you to see fresh, creative possibilities where you had never seen them before. Rich dreams bring with them an adrenaline rush that surges within you when you suddenly realize an exciting possibility you may never have seen before. Adrenaline rushes are amazing, but they lead us head-first into a collision with our human nature.

To a certain extent, our human existence is infused with the ‘disease of more.’ Without adequate self-knowledge and self-control, your first impulse after having a delightful experience is to ask yourself, “How can I do more of this? When can I do this again?” Without proper training, we humans tend never to be able to enjoy fully a pleasurable experience and to experience satisfaction. “I can’t get no satisfaction” isn’t about a lack of anything outside of yourself; it’s all about your capacity to live in — and to enjoy — the moment without being concern with what came before or what’s coming afterward. Satisfaction, contentment, and serenity are gifts that only you are able to give yourself by learning to accept that the trials and joys of the moment are enough in and by themselves.

Human nature — our old nemesis the ‘ego’ — wants to spoil the experience by getting you to focus on making the experience last, or recreating it, or even surpassing it as quickly as possible. People tell us that, if you’ve got one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, you’re pooping on the present. If your experience of the present is poop, it’s no wonder you want out of this dream!

As time passes, I come to appreciate more and more the incredible truth that Buddhist monks teach through the practice of the mandala. Creating a mandala takes incredible planning, design, cooperative teamwork, and an attention to detail beyond what most of us can achieve. The incredible colors and patterns, laid out almost one brilliantly-colored grain of sand at a time, take your breath away. Untold hours are spent in creating detailed imaginings, which are then brought to life in a vision-blurring, muscle-cramping execution. And, when it is completed, and every grain of sand is in perfect alignment, one monk sweeps his arm across the whole and, together, they carry the remains down to a stream and pour the formless streaks of colored sand into a flowing stream. Why? What’s the lession?

These monks are teaching us about our dreams. They are beautiful. They are exciting. The stimulate and motivate, and then they are gone! The lesson that you and I must learn on a daily basis consists in this: dreams and their execution are ephemeral. When you’re in the throes of a dream, it can seem to be the most wonderful and most exciting experience imaginable. You get into trouble only when you confuse the dream (the invitation) with the reality. So long as you remain locked in the dream, you deprive yourself of the capacity to see the reality in its fullness: an experience that always surpasses expectations. In terms of the mandala, the gift is discovered in the experience of creation, destruction, and recreation, not in the product.

What, then: should you give up living your dream? Not at all! Your dreams bring you the opportunities that provide life with its motivation, richness, and direction. Your job, however, like the Buddhist monks’, is to learn to let go of the dream and embrace the reality. Sure, you will experience pain as your experiences grow, arise, and depart again. There’s a sadness as what once was a brilliant pattern floats away in the stream. But the pain that you experience as you embrace the ebb and flow of life will be far less than that you will bring upon yourself by clinging stubbornly to a worn-out dream. You don’t need heaven’s help to “Get me out of this dream!” . . . you need only change your mind and accept that the dreams that you’re so tempted to cling to are holding you back from the dreams that are yet to come.

The only skill you need to bring you contentment is to look at whatever is before you — be it a dream or a reality — and to be able to say to yourself with full appreciation: “This, too, shall pass.” Of all the lessons that midlife has to teach you, that one, perhaps, hold the key to your unimaginable future. Embrace it, if you are wise!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

The Devil That You Know

Les Brown — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:23:52 +0000

There’s a familiar old saying that says, “Better the devil that you know than the devil that you don’t know.” Whether you are aware of it or not, midlife provides you with a tremendous opportunity to get to know the devil so much better. Leaving aside, for the time being, the question of whether or not the negativity in the universe has evolved into a genuine persona (personality), there’s no question whatsoever as to whether or not negativity is a force to be reckoned with: it is.

Remember that our characterizations of evil personified (the ‘devil’ and ‘Satan’) are symbolic names, which refer to a ‘tearing apart’ (diabolein) and to a ‘prosecuting attorney’ (ha satan). Prior to the midlife transition, the destructive negativity that we identify as ‘evil’ appears outside us. Our prospects for ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ seem threatened by the external world: natural ‘disasters’, ‘enemies’ (foreign and domestic), bad ‘luck’, and, perhaps most powerfully of all, the judgments and opinions of others. Our collective unconscious has internalized these ‘gaps’ or ‘lacunae’ in our experience of the world into what Sigmund Freud called the ‘superego’. He described it as a scolding, parental ‘voice’ constantly critiquing our thoughts and actions. Others have described that voice in different terms: the ‘gremlin‘ (Richard David Carson, Taming Your Gremlin) or ‘Self 1‘ (W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Work), what A Course in Miracles calls the ‘ego’ or, what one of my mentors (Alphonse Wright) called ‘The Stopper‘. What we learn at midlife is that, as Walt Kelly once wrote in his comic strip, Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

At midlife, what prevents us from becoming the woman or man we so ardently desire to be reveals itself as our own fear. The older I get, the more I realize how nothing but my own lack of trust in myself and my Higher Power has held me back (and it has held me back!). So long as you continue to experience that existential threat as external to yourself, you will continue to find it threatening your present and your future. So long as you seek the remedy to that threat within your own knowledge, experience, and skill set, you will remain powerless before it. You see, the “devil that you know” is your own fearful ego that tells you that you’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not capable enough, you’re not lovable enough, and, at the bottom line, you’re a failure and a fraud. Your devil, your ‘posecuting attorney’ is that part of you that secretly believes, “If you really knew me, you could never love me.” It’s that part of you that is afraid that, at any moment, you’ll be “found out.” Is this the “devil that you know”? Of course it is!

Furthermore, there’s a reason why the devil has been called “the father of lies”: it’s because your self-absorbed, people-pleasing self has forgotten who you really are: a child of God who is perfect and inviolable and lovable just exactly as you are. And that, my dear friends, is the one Great Lesson that midlife has to teach us, and that opens the great doorway into full Maturity. Our fears are groundless. Failure is an illusion. The Grace of God both guides and protects us regardless of the circumstances.

The only failure that we are able to experience derives from a lesson not learned. You can be a failure only if you pretend that you are someone who you are not, that wrong is right, and that you are capable of running your own life absolutely independently of God or your fellows. Listening to the voice of your fearful ego is the only path that will take you to perdition, because your Higher Power will never force you to grow, force you to love, or force you to do what is best. Free will is essentially the freedom to deny your own identity and refuse whatever is in your best self-interest. You can always say ‘No’ to God.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the midlife passage and beyond: “Go for it!” The only stupid question is the one that’s not asked. The only useless proposal is the one that’s not proposed. The only missed opportunity is the one that’s not considered. The only failed plan is the one that’s never tried. The only tragedy is the one from which nothing is learned.

You need not worry about “the devil made me do it” — your worry should be “the devil stopped me from doing it!” Here’s a chance to look back at your life and examine your supposed ‘failures.’ If you can consider any area of your life today a success, can you see how it would never have come about without the “hard knock” lessons? Whatever good that you may have in your life today came through the Grace of God, and seldom without your making some scary, hard decisions. An acient theological truth says, “Grace builds upon nature.” That simply means that the Grace of God cannot reach you unless and until you’re willing and able to make the scary decisions that make that possible.

After only less then three months with my current agency, I saw a position opening up that suited me far better than the one I was hired for. I decided that nothing was gained by wishful thinking, so I actively pursued. Just last week, I transitioned to my new position. It’s new for me and new for the organization. I’m their first hire in the realm of strategic workforce planning. As soon as I came on board, I jumped into learning all about what this position would entail, and my mind quickly filled with new ideas. Prudence suggested that I should keep quiet and listen tuntil I was certain that I had learned all I needed to know. Yet ‘prudence’ means taking care to do the best work, not the safest. It was my fearful ego that urged me to hang back and not take a chance. Midlife grace, however, gave me the courage to speak up, to risk being wrong, to take a chance on not being accepted by my supervisors. Yet, I asked myself, what could they do to me? Shoot me? Fire me? No! The worst that could happen would be that I would learn something. So I took the chance, spoke up, and, at least for today, my efforts helped move me and the program forward.

How about you? What are you waiting for? What reserves are you holding back because you believe that you are weak and vulnerable, rather than powerful in the Grace of your God? What in your history can you point at as proof that God has abandoned you and fails to guide and protect you? What’s the “devil that you know” trying to tell you? More importantly, what strategies do you have in place to confront its nagging voice with a strong, “begone, Satan!” You stand beofre the Mystery of life innocent and beloved, and the challenge to that understanding comes, not from the outside world, but from within. To silence the ‘Stopper’, you need only remind yourself of one thing: “I am a beloved child of God in whom God is well-pleased. There is nothing to fear.”

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

Midlife Milestones: Coping with Evil

Les Brown — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:50:50 +0000

Today happens to be a special personal milestone for me: June 13 marks the day, 24 years ago, that I walked out of the active ministry and into a life of recovery. It was one of the most significant watershed points in my life and, not surprisingly, it came just before my 38th birthday . . . just as I was entering wholesale into midlife. I have focused my writing on the spiritual transformations of midlife because I consider myself to be a poster child for that transition. Relatively few people that I have met can actually point to a date on the calendar and say, “That’s when midlife hit me full-force,” but I think I can!

I usually spend my Saturday mornings with a community of recovering people, and yesterday was no exception. As always happens, I came away from our discussions with new insights and perspectives. I don’t know about you, but my ‘forgetter’ works much more effectively than my ‘rememberer,’ so I need regular doses of reality to keep me from floating away mentally, emotionally, and spiritually into La-la Land. Somebody yesterday mentioned ‘evil’ and it got me to thinking. I have a particular approach to the topic of evil that I’ve developed over many years and many experiences, and I thought that my readers might gain some fresh insights if I were to take this opportunity to explore it a little: What is ‘evil’ and why do we seem to be battling it so fiercely, particularly as we transition to full maturity?

Any student of moral philosophy worth her/his salt should be able to explain to you that there are two types of evil: physical evil and moral evil. Looking at physical evil first will help us to put moral evil into much better perspective. Although we use the same word (‘evil’) to refer to physical and moral failure, the two are only analogous. In fact, physical ‘evil’ is not evil at all: it is simply a set of natural phenomena that cause us humans pain and suffering. Things like natural disasters, disease, and even death itself are only considered really ‘evil’ when they affect human lives. What distinguishes Hurricane Katrina from a similar nameless storm in the mid-Pacific Ocean is only its effect on humanity. But, neither of them in themselves are really ‘evil.’ They’re both just storms.

What we call ‘physical evil’ is simply a characteristic of the natural universe. If we could possibly imagine the universe before the Big Bang, we’d have to conjure up an undifferentiated flyspeck of matter/energy/space/time/consciousness with absolutely no distinction between ‘this’ and ‘that’, ‘here’ and ‘there’, ‘now’ and ‘then’. What creation, expressed in the Big Bang, set in motion was a process of separation and distinction based on limitations. Follow me now: ‘this’ is limited because it’s not ‘that’; ‘here’ is limited because it’s not ‘there’; ‘now’ is limited because it’s not ‘then’; and, ultimately, ‘I’ am limited because I am not ‘you’. In spiritual terms, creation happened when a Higher Power allowed the ‘not’ — the limitation and separation of one entity from another — to intrude into the undifferentiated fabric of all that is.

What we call ‘physical evil’ is simply our human experience of the limitations inherent in the fabric of the universe of creation. No limitations: no universe! Yet, as soon as limitations and boundaries are introduced, simultaneously the reality of destruction and loss appears. Yet, (as far as we are aware) only human consciousness experiences physical limitations and boundaries that way. Only humanity sees limitation and judges it to be disaster and tragedy. From a purely physical (creational) perspective, Katrina was a very, very good hurricane! It expressed the functioning of the laws of the natural world perfectly.

What we call ‘physical evil’ intrudes into our human existence in a particularly emphatic way at midlife. It’s in grappling with the whole spectrum of our own limitations that we come, at long last, to a deeper and much more realistic appraisal of who we are in the context of our world than we had ever had before during our adult lives. We become aware of what happens when our personal beliefs meet life’s limitations head-on. Midlife is our time to grapple spiritually with our human limitations, and to overcome them not by denying them, nor by trying to conquer them, but by coming to terms with them. In the same way that we could never appreciate a red rose by wishing it was any other color, we are given the opportunity to find our own personal destiny by discovering the beauty and magnificence that is revealed only in and through our limitations. We learn (though hard experience) to love who we are, rather than who we wish we were.

When we are able to remember that ‘physical evil’ is simply our experience of the very warp and woof of creation, we can learn that our difficulties are not tragedies or disasters at all; they are opportunities for transcendence. They are invitations to correct our course, to rise to each new challenge, and to go beyond, not our limitations, but our beliefs about our limitations. The challenges of midlife force us to confront and either overcome or succumb to the unreality of our belief system. That is what happened to me 24 years ago. I did not realize that of which I was capable until I was forced by necessity to let go of my own limited worldview and adapt to the one that brought me to my knees (literally and figuratively). It began (but has not yet completed) my transition to full maturity as a “spiritual being having a human experience.”*

What about moral evil, then? How does that relate to the limitations inherent in the universe? Moral evil is simply our recognition that we as human beings are ultimately free. If we are free, then we have real, fundamental choices. At any juncture, we can choose to accept and live within the limitations of the physical world, or not. If we choose the latter, we choose to live in an insane world where our beliefs bear no resemblance to facts. We can choose to ignore our commitments, to disvalue ourselves and others, to deny our spiritual (or physical, for that matter) nature. We can run from and avoid life’s lessons and refuse to grow. We can jam our distorted and dysfunctional worldview into others’ reality by demanding our own way, by perpetrating injustice, by causing sadness, suffering and even death in our world. Moral evil is nothing more or less than our exercising our choice to say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ to our world and to our God.

What about moral evil in our world? What about the “inhumanity of man against man”? We human beings must confront the limitations of our universe on a daily, hourly, even minute-by-minute basis. We are never free from our responsibility to live life on life’s terms. A very real, although unfortunate, aspect of those terms is the fact that some of those limitations come at the hands of other humans. Yet, from our perspective, there is no more ‘blame’ to be placed on another human than there is on the limitations in the physical universe. Responsibility for moral evil (refusal to grow and mature) falls on the heads of the perpetrators. It falls on our own heads when we find ourselves as the perpetrators, and we need to go through the process of apology. Yet, our responsibility as the receivers of injustice is simply to grow beyond it. We are never ‘victims’ of injustice, any more than we are ‘victims’ of a hurricane or earthquake.

“Father,” Jesus prayed from his crucifixion, “forgive them. They know not what they do.” Our job as students of life’s lessons rests in asking, “What is my lesson in this?” and responding appropriately to our nature as spiritual beings. It is not to blame, punish, or exact retribution. Even those, like Viktor Frankl, who endured the Nazi death camps, had the choice to allow the holocaust to destroy their essential humanity or to rise to an incredible level of spiritual maturity. We’ll never know the heights and depths of spiritual experience that literally millions of people encountered during that war.

Was Nazi inhumanity therefore a good thing, because it deepened our spiritual awareness as individuals and as a human family? Of course not. War is always moral evil on stark and pointed display. Yet every time one woman or man confronts moral evil and accepts that experience as an opportunity to rise above it, s/he takes that opportunity to transform it into a moment of spiritual growth for our entire human family — and sadly, we have yet so far to grow.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Because we’re human and we live in a universe defined by its limitations. Without confronting the limitations imposed on us by the universe at large, we would never learn to cope with our own human limitations. We would never discover how powerfully we are led and guided by a Power Greater than ourselves. We would be incapable of ever fulfilling our destiny either as individuals or as a human species. Am I happy that my own limitations brought me down and laid me low 24 years ago today? Happy? No. Grateful? Yes. I had the opportunity to see where my dysfunctional beliefs were threatening me, and I had the opportunity to change my mind and, by the grace of God, I took the chance, rose to the occasion, and did what I had to do. Like the poet, Robert Frost, exclaimed,

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Forgiveness or the Irony of Vengeance

Les Brown — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:40:30 +0000

In this week’s article, I wanted to continue the theme that I’ve been exploring over the past five weeks in regard to cleaning up the wreckage of our poor choices and behavior, only from the opposite perspective: that of the person who has been wronged (the ‘wreckee’). I was going to begin with a sort of theoretical expose explaining what goes on in the mental, emotional, and spiritual background of someone who sees her- or himself wronged (‘disrespected’ or ‘injured’). Then I saw a comment left on one of my articles (“Writing Out the Pain”) on another of my blogs: Midlife Matters, by a fellow named Richard. You can find his comment here: http://midlifemaster.net/2010/02/writing-out-the-pain/#comment-562. With apologies to Richard, his comments can serve as a powerful example to all of us of the temptations that we all face when dealing with life’s vagaries.

Forgiveness is a skill that requires lifelong study and practice to gain any sort of proficiency at all; and yet it is the one and only skill that will infallibly determine whether we experience our existence as a triumph or a tragedy. Since the emergence of human consciousness, people have gone to incredible lengths to discover the so-called ‘secret of (a happy) life’, yet the ‘secret’ is perfectly simple and perfectly obvious to those who have the spiritual eyes to see it: forgiveness. On the surface, it seems way too simple, like the prophet Elisha telling Na’aman the Syran general to wash in the Jordan to cure his leprosy. Yet developing this one little skill plumbs the very spiritual depths of the person who we think we are.

When we feel wronged, what are our choices? In fact, we are faced with only two choices: to forgive; or to exact vengeance. The course of action you choose to pursue will tell you a great deal about yourself: your self image and your beliefs about who you are and your relationship to the world in which you live. If you take nothing else whatever away from this article, I’d like you to consider deeply this one point: forgiveness (or the lack thereof) is all about you and never about anyone else or any external situation.

When you choose to deflect the focus off what’s going on in you, you practice avoidance. This happens when you are too fearful to look inside yourself and to critique the basic belief systems you’re holding on to that make you feel victimized. You are not a victim; you never were a victim; it’s impossible for you ever to be a victim. Sadly, your deepest insecurities (and you’re not alone in this) get in the way of your seeing yourself as the invulnerable spiritual being that you really are.

At this point, I’d like to recommend that (if you haven’t already done so) you spend a year following the 365 exercises in the workbook accompanying the book, A Course in Miracles. The Course teaches many things, but, if I were to distill it down to its essence, I’d have to say that the core message of the Course lies in its understanding of the nature of forgiveness. It’s not something that you can get simply by reading about it. Head knowledge is great, but insufficient. Forgiveness is a skill that requires much practice to develop mastery.

So, let’s say you feel that you’ve been wronged. What then? Once you acknowledge that someone (or something) has hurt you, you have the option of taking your anger out on someone or something. This is what I’ll call the vengeance option. You’ve been hurt, so you want to hurt someone back. How many times have you become enraged and allowed your rage to overcome you? What’s going on with that? Your fearful ego has told you that you’ve been injured and that someone else is responsible for that. You feel the overwhelming need to set things right by “evening the score” and inflicting an equal or greater wound on the other. So long as you feel wounded and believe that the other is responsible for your misfortune, you’ll cling, if not to a desire for outright vengeance, then at least a seething resentment that we call “holding a grudge.”

All you really want to do is stop the pain, and, without a spiritual perspective, you may strike out either at another, or at yourself. Do you drink at your problems? If alcohol or drugs are your first line of defense against pain, there’s a very good chance you may be an addict. People who are not addicted to numbing behaviors do not employ them as their first line of defense/offense. In addition, these self-destructive approaches to dealing with the pain of being wounded are also inhibition deadening. They allow us to do (dysfunctional) things that we would not otherwise do if we were not under their influence. And, once the numbness has worn off, what remains is a searing pain of guilt and shame far worse than the original pain experienced from the (supposed) offense. Addictive behavior is truly self-destructive. That is something that our friend Richard must take a deep, hard look at: why has he chosen the bottle as his first response? If addiction is in play, then, until the addictive behavior has been adequately addressed and dealt with, forgiveness cannot happen. Addictive responses always hurt you.

Whether you choose to get even or to hold a grudge, refusing to forgive another locks you in a prison of your own creation with no possibility of parole. Please consider this Zen Buddhist story for the insight contained within it:

An old monk and a young monk were walking a long distance when they came to a stream. On the bank was a very beautiful young woman wearing a rich and fabulously expensive sari. The woman was weeping. “Why are you weeping?” asked the old monk.

“Because I must cross this stream to attend my favorite uncle’s funeral, but, if I do, I will ruin my best sari,” she replied.

“Here,” said the old monk, “Climb on my back and I will carry you across.” The woman did as he suggested, and the monk set her gently down on the other side. The two monks continued on in silence for a long tim.

“Father,” said the young monk, finally breaking their silence. “I need to ask you a question. How could you, with your vow of celibacy, not only speak to a woman, but even allow her to touch you and to carry her on your back?”

“My son,” said the old monk, “you have much to learn. I put her down beside the stream; you are carrying her still.”

Such, also, is the nature of vengeance. It is truly ironic, because, in your attempts to get back at the one who ‘injured’ you, it is yourself who becomes fixated on the event, very often long after the other has forgotten about it entirely. Whenever you seek to punish another, it is always yourself who is hurt the most. Withholding your forgiveness is a sin, rightly enough, but a sin against your own holiness and perfection. Truly, no one can hurt you without your permission, and, furthermore, you do that very thing to yourself whenever you choose vengeance. Look at the damage that Richard has caused to and for himself by his dysfunctional belief in the power of vengeance.

The refusal of forgiveness always stems from a mistaken belief about yourself: you believe that you have been hurt and that you are a victim. This is a false and self-destructive belief. In fact, regardless of what has happened (and regardless of what it feels like), you have not been injured. In fact, you cannot be injured! Forgiveness — that is, letting go of the pain — is simply an acknowledgement that nothing has happened. Can you wrap your mind around that fact? Spiritually, you are invulnerable! Even if you were to loose your reputation, your livlihood, your freedom, your health or even your life at the hands of another, your essence as an inviolable human being, beloved of God (however you may conceive of God), remains untouched. Your only duty, when faced with this kind of pain, is to ask yourself, “What is my lesson in all this?” Only then, rather than embracing self-destructive and self-defeating beliefs, will you be free to grow and deepen your spiritual awareness.

Which approach do you take to the pain? Which do you want to take from here on out? What do you have to do today to make that happen?