It's All About Joy!

Cutting Out Conflict

I’ve been thinking about conflict lately, as I’ve witnessed others dealing with various aspects of it. One person asked how much conflict should be let go of and how much should be confronted. My response was to let all of it go. This person didn’t agree. Their take was that they’d spent a good deal of time trying to let it go, but now felt compelled to deal with it head on.

I had to think about that for a moment. I could see how confrontation can offer up the greatest sense of personal freedom, especially in cases where our minds simply cannot rest until we’ve met a conflict directly and engaged ourselves fully in it.

Still, I kept tossing around the idea of “been trying hard to let it go…”  When we hold something in our hand that we want to let go of, we simply open up our hand and release it. Thus, we’ve effectively let it go. Why are our minds so much different?

I think it goes back to our egos -- aka, those pesky mechanisms of our conscious minds that EDGE GOD OUT! When we’re living at lower levels of consciousness or are closed off from our connection to God, our minds will tell us that any time we’re involved in a conflict, we must fight it to the death. After all, our egos love to take offense and have an unquenchable need to be right. (Click here to read: No Offense!)

But how does that serve us? Conflict never feels good and it never bring us into harmony with the Universal life force of love and creation. I don’t care who you are or where you live – conflict is a destructive energy that temporarily stunts us in our quest to become more awakened, creative beings. When we’re in conflict, we’re out of sync with the all-mighty power that lets us create whatever it is we really want. (Subsequently, as we engage our energies and put our attention into conflict, we create, by default, more of what we don’t want)

“But there’s this person who’s constantly trying to undermine me and engage me in confrontations, and harm my reputation. How can I ignore that?”

To begin with, none of us are our reputations. If you think you are, I’m here to tell you to think again. In a group of a thousand people, you’ll have one thousand different reputations because everyone who “sees” us does so through different filters that are shaped by their personal circumstances, upbringing and views on life. Besides, as my high school Spanish teacher used to say, “It’s none of your business what anybody thinks of you.” Amen. Or I mean amén.

On top of that, conflict always needs more than one person to survive. If someone “attacks” us verbally, reputationally, emotionally, what-have-you (note I’m purposefully leaving off physically), and we don’t respond – if we let it bounce right off of our coat of self-assured and loving armor we wear at all times throughout the day – the conflict ends right there! Conflict cannot survive without our participation.

What’s more, those who believe that their lives are guided by a higher power have no business believing that the essence of who they are can be changed by anything anyone else tries to do to them. Conflict, hurt, letdown, frustrations – they exist only in our minds. When we release from us the need to be right, the need to defend ourselves, the need to prove ourselves right and others wrong, then we release ourselves from the gripping claws of conflict.

Lastly, since I believe we create absolutely everything and everyone that shows up in our lives for the purpose of learning, growing, and transcending our human experience, I like asking myself this question: WHAT PART OF WHAT I WANT DOES THIS PLAY A ROLE IN?

Consider this:

“If you were an adult, and you went to a playground and decided to sit down with a three-year old to make sandcastles, and you made all these beautiful sandcastles and suddenly this three-year old stood up and kicked your sandcastle over, what would you do with that? You wouldn’t try to make him wrong, and make yourself right. And you wouldn’t have a fit about it, and you wouldn’t scream and you wouldn’t holler and you wouldn’t say, ‘How dare you do such a thing…’ You’d say, ‘This is what three-year olds do, they knock over sandcastles and it’s just for play.’” Dr. Wayne Dyer, The Awakened Life

For anyone involved in conflict right now, if you can simply look at the person (or people) you’re involved with, set your ego aside and tell yourself, “This is just who they are. They’re just acting like themselves, and I can be at peace with that.” If you can do that, you might find that releasing conflict from your mind – and your life – becomes infinitely easier than you ever imagined.

Here’s to a peaceful, well and joyful life!

Why Forgiveness Isn’t Necessary

It wasn’t long ago that I was hung up on learning how to truly forgive and have compassion for myself, as well as anyone else I deemed had behaved in a way that was damaging to my well-being. I’ve written about forgiveness and welcomed its healing powers into my life on more than one occasion. A few weeks ago, however, as I was listening to one of my spiritual teachers talk about how forgiveness is unnecessary, I couldn’t help but appreciate and adopt a new perspective.

“Forgiveness is unnecessary?” I thought to myself. “But what about when people hurt us? What about when people behave in unconscionable ways?”

Regardless of circumstance, the spiritual teacher said there’s never a need to forgive.

Why? Because if we feel the need to forgive it’s because we have blamed. And if we’ve blamed, it means we have given up our power to someone or something outside of ourselves and thus turned ourselves into victims.

When we’re truly connected to the divinity that we are, it’s impossible to be a victim. When we’re connected to our divine source – to the Universal energy that emanates from God and flows through all things – we recognize that everything and everyone represent perfection. We, ourselves, are perfection and each situation we are part of is a piece of that perfection. Therefore no one can ever do anything to us that is not somehow part of our perfect evolution as spiritual beings*.

We are extremely powerful creatures who had marvelously strong intentions to be born into this lifetime and experience everything that would add to our spiritual evolution. We were so set on bringing the energy of our beings into this world – to live as individual expressions of God’s love in human form – that we incarnated from a tiny drop of protoplasm into the living, loving and thinking individuals we are today. If we were that powerful – if our spirits were able to manifest an entire human existence out of one microscopic drop of cellular material – then that magnificent power must still be ours for the taking today. (Note: I fully believe that we happen to life; life does not happen to us. We create our lives through our intentions. Everything we’ve experienced and everything that is yet to come is the result of thoughts we think, beliefs we hold, and the actions we take. I also believe that we are all sparks of the divine, experiencing life on behalf of God. Therefore our overriding mission while we’re here is to evolve our spirits to the highest level possible by living lives of love. God is love. When we live lives of love, we awaken to the spark of the divine within us, and are able to claim the fullness of our power as spiritual beings that are here on earth having a human experience.)  

* Now, I feel I need to append some of what I’ve said above. In the most extreme circumstances where one human has been physically, mentally or emotionally violated by another, I can still see how this stance on forgiveness holds up. That’s not to say that I ever condone atrocious acts that are clearly contrary to living God’s love. However, I do believe that in such instances people have a choice as to whether or not to label themselves “victim.” What’s more, when we’re able to see beyond the action perpetrated against us into the heart or mind of the perpetrator, chances are we will see someone who is so detached from the divine spark of God within them that all they could do was act from that place of darkness. If we are able to rise above the situation and have compassion for them – live our love – we actually strengthen ourselves, and through this position of power have an opportunity to heal not only ourselves, but another human being.

There are stories of Buddhist nuns and monks who have been imprisoned for their beliefs and tortured mercilessly by their captors. When they regained freedom and shared their stories, they recounted how they held unwavering compassion in their hearts and minds for the very people who so cruelly tortured them. They recognized that rather than considering themselves victims in such situations, they could rise to perhaps what would be the greatest challenge they would ever face as spiritual beings having a human experience and LIVE GOD’S LOVE – regardless of circumstance.

I don’t expect everyone to demonstrate such enlightened thinking. What a wonderful goal, however, to hold in our minds as we ponder how to move past hurts we experience through our interactions with others:
-    the cheating spouse or partner
-    the people who take anything that is not freely offered to them
-    those who betray the trust of another
-    the list goes on…

Forgiveness is never necessary. Reminding ourselves of our own perfection, and the perfection of the Universe, however, is.

Live your love and manifest life beyond your fondest dreams. Trust me when I say, you are that powerful.

Why Love Overrides Forgiveness, Post-Dysfunctional Relationships

I think we all have people in our lives who we feel let us down, or who, after a period of introspection and personal growth, aren't who we originally thought them to be. Sometimes they're the people closest to us, and other times, they're the ones we've chosen to only walk a short portion of our life's path with and that we eventually say goodbye to. Regardless, I've come to accept that it's perfectly natural to form bonds with people that prove to be unhealthy and dysfunctional. After all, we tend to attract those who fit like puzzle pieces with the lessons we most need to learn or who highlight our best opportunities for personal development.

I'm at a point in my life where I'm wondering, though, where to go and what to do after recognizing such dysfunction.  The practice of unconditional love and compassion says we must learn to love people for exactly who they are.  Applying this theory to any unhealthy relationships we walk away from seems easy. After all, loving someone who represents dysfunction from afar is infinitely easier than loving that same person day in and day out, especially if they still affect our lives. If we don't see the dysfunction regularly, it's simpler to look past it in many cases.

There's another interesting point to bring up, though. Sometimes the unhealthy connections we have with people are the only ways we can connect with them. If we cut away our unhealthy emotional connections to them, we may find we don't have any relationship at all. After all, not every unhealthy relationship can be turned into a healthy one, especially when one or more of the participants are unwilling or unable to change.  What then?

1. Keep the unhealthy connection and be ok with it.
2. Keep the unhealthy connection and be miserable about it.
3. Cut the unhealthy connection (and in many cases, cut that person out of our life) and be ok with it.
4. Cut the unhealthy connection (and in many cases, cut that person out of our life) and be miserable about it.

Someone posed an interesting question to me the other day. They asked what would happen if I cut any remaining unhealthy emotional connections to those who I've only ever known in a dysfunctional capacity? Would I be able to relate to them without the familiar hurt and conflict I've been subconsciously or otherwise lugging around with me? I've realized that sometimes the only way we know to relate to others in our lives is through those unhealthy emotional connections. Regardless of how much those connections may have hurt, we find comfort in them because they're what's known. There's no guessing; no wondering what tomorrow will bring. That's probably the reason it takes me so long to remove people and things from my life that no longer serve my soul's purpose. I'd rather be consoled by dysfunction than jarred by change. Or at least, subconsciously that's the case.

That made me wonder if forgiveness plays a role in this at all. What if I could forgive those whose actions intentionally or unintentionally harmed me somehow? Maybe that would allow me to find new ground with them and relate in a new way. However, that raised an even more interesting question: What's there to forgive? If I come from a place of needing to forgive, it's probable that I'll always be able to come up with another thing that needs forgiving. What's more, am I seeking to forgive people who were unhealthy and made unhealthy decisions without recognizing the inherent trait in all of us toward the same tendency? I know I've been unhealthy and made poor decisions. I'd have to forgive myself as much as I'd have to forgive them.

Instead, what if I just came from love? What if I could just love the people who have hurt me for their strengths, as well as for their weaknesses? What if I could love their healthy parts along with their unhealthy parts? We all have those parts, and we've all acted them out in relationships with others.

When we come from a place of love, instead of forgiveness, we're - in a sense - being more loving to ourselves. We're setting aside our critical eye (the one that loves to point out other people's faults) and coming, instead, from a space of acceptance. That's not to say we can't put up boundaries and make it very clear to those we choose to stay connected with that we have boundaries and point out where the lines are drawn. On the contrary, in coming from a place of love, we can (and should) enforce the boundaries. There is nothing saintly about allowing ourselves to be belittled, embarrassed, or mistreated by someone else. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do in such instances is to walk away from a person - to not even engage with them in the unhealthy dance they've asked us to do.

I've spent the better part of my life putting up weak fences and building mesh walls, only to attract people who were experts at invading my space. I've made excuses for them and defended their bad behaviors (thinking that was compassionate), finding justification for actions that otherwise would have been labeled atrocious.

Not any more. I'm declaring an end to it because I've finally reached a point where I can own the parts of me that, up until now, attracted that type of dysfunction. I'm also now owning the parts of me that say enough is enough.

From this point forward, dysfunctional relationships and bad behavior have no place in my life.
I will come from a space of love and wish the purest things for those in my life who represented the unhealthier aspects of my wounded personality over the years. That is, however, as far as I'll go. The future is about honoring myself - my healthy self - and in doing so, living my most joyful life ever.

Joy in Letting People Be

I was re-reading some notes I took a few months ago after a particularly eye-opening conversation I had with a friend of mine. We were talking about the issues that all of us have with certain people in our lives, and how invested we get in those issues; how we define ourselves by them.

For me, one of my major investments has been in the fact that when I was ten years old, my father abandoned me. Subconsciously, the weight I've carried around with me in this regard has been HUGE. It's bogged down all of my subsequent relationships and been a heavy burden that, until recently, I didn't even realize I was carrying. I taught myself (or had been taught) to cast it aside like, "Yeah, it happened, but it's for the best." I never took the time to size up the damage; I never stopped to analyze what I really thought about the situation. Instead, I just took it for what it was, slung it over my shoulder like a knapsack, and kept walking.

Here's the thing, if I came face-to-face with my father now, I'm not sure how I'd feel about him. If he's the same person now that he was back then, would it affect my ability to forgive him? Could I have compassion for or even love him? Would it be easier to forgive and love him if I knew he'd changed in a way that appeased my desire for him to change?

As I learn more about unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness, I have to ask myself these things. Heck, I could ask these questions of anyone in my past who I feel "wronged" me (the cheating boyfriend, the betraying friend, etc.).

In the same conversation I referenced earlier, my friend said something that gave me pause. He said that maybe the best way we can love someone who hurts us is to never expect them to change; to never want them to. Maybe that's how we free ourselves.

Freedom... What would that feel like?

I've been invested for so long in wanting my father to want me; for him to want to be a part of my life. What if I came face-to-face with him and was able to put down that heavy knapsack and actually see him for the man he is? Imagine if I could love him.

I may never know the answers to these questions because there's a good chance I'll never see him again. Any love or forgiveness I foster will likely be done from a distance.

However, what about the others? What about the people I still see on a regular basis - the ones who sometimes grind my nerves, push my buttons, or remind me of painful times? With them, I can't use physical space as my coat of armor. They're right there in front of me, forcing me to examine the many ways I continue to remain invested in my issues with them.

Truth be told, those are the people who stretch my capacity for love without even knowing it. They're the ones who ask me to abandon the age-old thinking, "If they would just change, I could love them better." And this condition that I place on loving them is not always even a conscious thought! But it's there, invisible and powerful, forming the space from which I unwittingly operate.

What if I could just let these people be? What if we could all just let each other be?

True love and compassion rest in our ability to love people where they are right now. Casting aside our conditions, our expectations...the many definitions we've written for ourselves. We free ourselves and allow ourselves joy when we love people for who they are right now. Absent of that, we may never get the chance to.

Joy in Learning How to Forgive and Have Compassion

Last week I wrote about an incident with a former friend of mine that left me feeling badly abused and incredibly hurt. In light of such experiences in life, how can we learn to forgive and have unconditional love for those who so clearly haven't had it for us? Immediately following the incident with my former friend, I felt absolutely betrayed. While I did my best to steer away from thoughts like, "How dare she!" a few angry retaliation conversations did play out in my mind. I'll be honest, immediately after it happened, I wondered how I could forgive her in my heart and ever have compassion for her again. She chose to treat me with contempt and disrespect. How could I bring myself to a place where thinking about her and the incident didn't overwhelm me with bitterness?

In the little bit of Buddhism I've studied, the fact that all humans suffer is an underlying thread that connects us all. Every single person we've ever come across in this life is suffering in some way. Some people wear their suffering like a badge of honor, while others do their best to keep it neatly tucked in a back pocket. When we understand that all of us suffer, and moreover, that all of us want our suffering to end, it's easier to have compassion for one another. After all, we're all in the same boat.

As is the case with so many concepts, putting it into practice can be a challenge. For most of us, it's easy to have compassion for the people we like. Likewise, it's also pretty easy to have compassion for the people we dislike, but don't have a strong connection with. However, having compassion for the people we've been close to who have betrayed our trust somehow...well, that's a whole other ball of wax.

Since I'm knee-deep in this, I figured I'd share some pointers that may be helpful to anyone else who's trying to learn to forgive and have compassion:

1. Take your time. It may not be reasonable to expect to forgive immediately following someone's harmful actions toward us. Sometimes it takes a few days or weeks, or in extreme circumstances, years before we're ready to forgive. That's ok; like everything in life, forgiveness is a process. We honor it by letting it unfold naturally when we're ready.
2. Forgiveness does not excuse the bad behavior. Some people think that forgiveness is a sign of weakness or that it's letting someone who harmed us off the hook. Quite the contrary. When we forgive, we don't deny, justify, or minimize what others have done to us or the pain we've suffered. We simply see it for what it is, and recognize that until we forgive, we are wasting our energy dwelling in a negative space.
3. Forgiveness starts the healing process. When we choose to forgive, we look at the wounds we suffered and make a conscious decision to move forward and begin healing. Forgiveness let's us claim the right to stop hurting. We claim this right when we say, "I'm tired of the pain, and I want to be healed."
4. Those who cause us harm are badly harmed themselves. This is another way of saying we all suffer. People who lash out in anger toward others are fighting their own internal battle. Many times they are in great pain and to distract themselves from it, they try to cast it onto others. Remembering this can help us have compassion for them.
5. Everyone is a spiritual teacher, especially those who hurt us. Everyone we come across in this life has a lesson to teach us about ourselves. As a matter of fact, it's been said that we draw people into our lives specifically to teach us about us. Think about the things you've learned about yourself from some of your closest confidants. Now think about the things you've learned about yourself from the people who caused you the most sorrow, difficulty, or posed the greatest challenge to you. Those are the people who stretched you beyond yourself and forced you to see parts of the whole you may not have known were there. Our adversaries are our greatest teachers, bar none.
6. Practice patience, one of the great virtues. When people cross us, it's easy to snap to anger or treat them the same way they treated us. ("That'll show ‘em!") However, "...since it is impossible to make progress on the spiritual path without developing the strong mind of patience" it's wiser to take a step back. "Patience is a mind motivated by a virtuous intention that happily accepts difficulties and harm from others." In other words, those with patient minds more easily weather the turbulence of life's little dramas. Those with an impatient mind suffer at the hand of every slight obstacle or criticism. A patient mind is an expanded mind, with plenty of space for the love and wisdom that naturally fill it.
7. What goes around comes around. Rather than applying this in the sense of "They'll get theirs," choose to see that when we forgive those who hurt us and practice compassion toward them, we'll get the same energies back. Likewise, refusing to forgive others brings that same fate back on us eventually. If you're anything like me and like to be in control, using "what goes around, comes around" as a means of ensuring a loving, more positive future should sound quite appealing!

The bottom line is that throughout our lives, we will encounter situations that warrant forgiveness. Whether it's forgiving someone else, or forgiving ourselves, developing compassion and learning to forgive are two of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. (And heck, we're in the midst of the season of giving!)

For me, there's great joy in that.