Tag: suffering

love and forgiveness, how to stop suffering, how forgiveness can ease the pain, learning to let go, Ho'oponopono, release, allowing, detachment, attachment, emotions, identity, learning to love, loving myself, loving others

Love and forgiveness: how to stop suffering

Beth - blogger, coach, consultant3 Comments

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.

John Greene

As a child, growing up in a Christian environment, I was told to forgive and forget, the same way that God forgave and put our sins on the other side of the ocean. I was told to turn the other cheek and to pray for those who might persecute or mock me.

Be a proud martyr.

Unfortunately, the way I was taught forgiveness did not do me very many favours! It built and perpetrated many misconceptions of what forgiveness was, without in any way stopping the suffering! In fact, we were taught suffering was necessary. It was good.

It was proof of our faith – that your joy may be complete.

Yeah, right.

Some joy.

How I wish Christians would do a better job of teaching forgiveness and everything that it means!

What verses were used?

The following are two of the most common verses I heard as a child regarding forgiveness:

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Matthew 6:14 (NIV)

If you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven. So, now, I made him tell you he’s sorry and you have to say “I forgive you”. Of course, if we didn’t say “I’m sorry” we would have received a paddling. And if we didn’t say “I forgive you” we would equally have received a paddling.

I know they did it with the best of intentions. But this is no way to teach forgiveness! We went through the motions to avoid the physical consequences. I was no more forgiving than the other child was sorry.

Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Colossians 3:13

Misconceptions of forgiveness & love

The way that I was taught forgiveness created several erroneous beliefs around the effect of forgiveness. These were reinforced through social norms and adult behaviours.

I know, they had good intentions. But good intentions pave the road to… well, suffering.

For example, as a kid, we were forced to reconcile with another kid – at least on the outside, going through the motions. I can tell you this strips all your power away. You are instructed to kiss and make up, by adults with authority to make you do so. And then you are forced to have a relationship with this person that hurt you, with disregard for how you might have felt about it.

But this doesn’t teach you how to handle and deal with the emotions that go with forgiveness. As you get older, you try to reason away the pain. I can’t count the times I told myself “I shouldn’t feel this way.” You still feel the anger, sadness and hurt, but now you stuff it down, rather than releasing it because it’s not supposed to be there!

So often I felt worse and hypocritical because forgiveness didn’t work.

Myth: Forgive, and everything goes back to how it was

My experience, even now with having learnt how to forgive, is that things never go back to how they were. When trust is broken, it has to be rebuilt. It doesn’t magically reappear.

Forgiveness does not rebuild trust or magically rebuild relationships. The best apology is changed behaviour.

Myth: Forgiveness means there are no consequences

Another way that we were dis-empowered as children were that when we forgave, we were expected to relinquish any hope of seeing justice. Forgiveness meant that the other got off “scot-free“, excusing whatever actions they had done.

So, for example, in the cases of child abuse, we were expected to forgive an abuser and then not request that any further action be taken. Otherwise, we hadn’t truly forgiven.

Myth: Forgiveness means you can’t have boundaries

One of my hardest life lessons as an adult has been developing healthy boundaries in relationships. I never learnt how to say “this treatment is unacceptable”. If someone mistreated us, we were expected to forgive them.

And then turn the other cheek.

How many battered women are told to forgive their husbands, and go back into a situation of domestic violence, only to have the cycle repeated?

Obviously, we weren’t praying hard enough. (Sorry – not sorry, every once in a while my sarcasm slips in).

Learning forgiveness through Ho’oponopono

As unusual as it might seem, I finally learnt forgiveness through the Huna practice of Ho’oponopono. Many people know this as a simple meditative practice of mantras:

I love you.
I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.

Ho’oponopono prayer mantra

For months, this was all I did: repeating this mantra over and over. With time, however, I changed. I began to understand it differently.

The Huna practice says that whatever comes into your awareness you are responsible for. You are 100% accountable for everything that happens in the world around – as you are part of the problem.

100% responsible

So, you hear on the news that someone was murdered last night – that’s on you. You read in the newspaper that a drunk driver hit a car and killed a family, that’s your responsibility too. Your grandfather beat a man within an inch of his life before you were born: that was you as well.

Everything is connected to everything. That flap of a butterflies wings in Africa that starts the hurricane that hits the Caribbean and then the East Coast of Georgia. It is all connected.

We are all connected.

The anger I feel in my heart and life is merely a connection to the anger that any other person in the world is feeling. The hatred and discrimination that I feel towards any set of people on earth feed hatred in the world. The carelessness that I show when driving feeds the negligence of that young driver that ploughs into the back of another car.

  • If I want less anger in the world: I have to stop contributing to the energy of anger.
  • If I want less bigotry and hatred towards me and “my people”, I must release and relinquish all prejudice and disgust I feel towards any others, so that there is less of it in the world!
  • If I want less carelessness on the streets, I must become present and aware at all times.
  • If I want more understanding in the world and compassion, I must be understanding and compassionate.

In any situation where there is anger, violence or hurt, there is a role that I have played. And I am 100% responsible for my part in perpetuating the violence – whether it is mental, physical, emotional or spiritual abuse!

Learning to break the cycle through forgiveness & compassion

This has not been a comfortable journey, much less one without relapses. I always find myself doing the inner work, recognising what I have overlooked.

Whatever I notice and see in the world around me is simply a call to look within and see how that is reflected in who I am and how I have expressed myself in the world.

An example of forgiveness in action:

Let’s say that a distracted driver caused an accident.

  • How do I forgive them for the hurt and pain that they have caused?
  • How do I recognise my role in participating in this?

I start simply by acknowledging that sometimes I am a distracted driver. I have looked at my phone while driving, eaten in my car, had a sip of my coffee, handed a toy that fell on the floor to my crying toddler, and many other moments of distraction. Maybe my distraction hasn’t lead to an accident, but I also am a distracted driver.

Then, I go through the emotions, thoughts and senses in my body and mind of what is happening within me when I am distracted driving. Am I frustrated? Impatient? Anxious?

Forgiveness is not just about “being distracted while driving” – it’s about allowing yourself to be present with WHY you allowed yourself to become distracted. What was really happening at the time?

This awareness allows me to really do the work of forgiveness and release! Then I forgive myself for the frustration, the impatience, the anxiety. I take the time to release those emotions from my body and bring myself back to love and compassion.

When I turn my attention to the distracted driver, it’s easy to forgive. I can feel empathy and compassion. I can experience the pain and suffering without allowing it to overwhelm me.

Because while I cannot change the world or any other person, I can change how I interact with the world. As I become aware of a situation and how I have participated in this in the world, I can practice forgiveness and release.

Forgiveness starts and ends with forgiving myself

Ho’oponopono practice has taught me that forgiveness is never actually about the other person! When I fail to forgive, my burden is pain and blame.

As I walk around carrying blame towards another, saying that I am the victim, I dis-empower myself. I continue, long after the event is finished, to give that person and the hurt that they caused me, power over my life. You might even say I give them greater importance than I have. They rule my life, my thoughts and my memories.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and realise that prisoner was you.

Lewis B. Smedes

Forgiveness allows me to reclaim my power – to accept that I gave it away and forgive myself for having done so. Many times, forgiveness means to forgive me for having carried the burden for so long, rather than leaving on the roadside years ago.

Only as I begin to love myself do I begin to see that forgiveness is the only way to end my own suffering.

  • I don’t have to “kiss-and-make-up”.
  • There is no need to accept that others mistreat me or abuse me.
  • Living as a martyr is not standing in the power of love and compassion.
  • I will probably feel pain and anger and rage and those are all valid emotions. Acknowledging them is the first step towards letting them go, rather than stuffing them down within me and trying to “hold it all together”.
  • I can ask that justice be served and that someone receive their just deserts and the consequences of their actions.

Forgiveness is leaving the burden and suffering that I carried with me by the side of the road and continuing my life journey full of compassion. It’s a choice that I have to make each day: who do I want to give the power to?

I hope that each day I can choose to give the power to Divine Love within me.

 

the gift of authentic detachment, spiritual bypassing, spiritual ideas, spiritual practices, emotional issues, psychological wounds, unfinished developmental tasks, fake positivity, positive affirmations, prayer, meditation, practising the presence, presence of the Divine, divine presence, spiritually distracted, healthy spiritual path, checking out, avoidance, avoid our feelings, grasping, clinging, letting go, release control, give up control, surrender, attachment is the source of all suffering, defence mechanism, self-care, self-awareness

The value of true detachment, not spiritual bypassing

Beth - blogger, coach, consultant5 Comments

As spiritual beings having a human experience, we get attached and tied to things, relationships and stuff. In fact, we begin to measure our own value by that attachment. And then, when a relationship breaks, or we fail at something, we somehow believe that we are a failure. We are no longer worthy.

Attachment is the source of all suffering.

Buddha

People, places and things can ruin us unless we can learn to live in a state of detachment. Not detachment as “I don’t care”, in a disconnected way. But detached in the sense of no longer needing to have control over the outcome. That place where you can honestly say, I trust that all is well.

Let go and let God.

Can you enter that place where you release your perceptions, beliefs, expectations of how things should turn out? Can you experience life as it is, even when that’s not how you hoped it would be? In some cases, this means feeling your emotions, then letting them go. It might include establishing emotional boundaries, rather than giving away your power to others.

Can you detach from the material world and simply trust that all is well?

The love of money is the root of all evil.

1Tim. 6:10

Take a moment and consider your spiritual practices – whether it’s prayer, meditation, singing, chanting, study or silence. What is the purpose of your practice, and how has it helped you heal?

Contemplate how you can practise healthy detachment from relationships, situations or even thought patterns and habits because of these spiritual practices.

Are they really working for you?

Or are you merely going through the motions of being busy in spiritual practice to avoid doing the deep work of facing your shadows, pain, guilt and shame?

What is spiritual bypassing?

A spiritual bypass is a defence mechanism we use, which effectively distracts us from experiencing the present moment. It’s what we do when we get busy so that we can ignore our feelings.

Do you find yourself using spiritual bypassing to shield you from the ugly truth of what you really feel? Perhaps you keep telling yourself, I obviously need to pray more, because I shouldn’t feel this way. You stuff it or swallow it down so that it doesn’t show.

Are you “checking out” by studying more, reading more, and learning more, instead of checking in with your feelings? How long do you think you can go on saying “I’m fine”, rather than acknowledging that you really aren’t okay?

Perhaps you tell yourself it’s self-care, even, when it’s really just avoidance. You become a Pharisee, busy following all the rules, without ever really experiencing the cleansing flood of tears and true healing.

The reality is that spiritual healing doesn’t typically happen when you are reading, studying, in prayer, singing or in meditation. Healing occurs in the middle of an argument – when you remember to pause before you say something hateful.  Rebuilding yourself comes after a breakdown or loss, walking down the beach, crying silent tears. In the middle of life, you find grace and mercy to cleanse your soul, heal your emotions, and refocus your thoughts.

Bypassing your unresolved trauma, wounds & issues

While you might try to outrun the pain and forgetting it, spirituality is not about “feeling good” or “being positive”. Pain in life is inevitable, and your spiritual practice is not intended to numb the pain but to truly heal it.

Have you noticed that 40% of the Psalms are about pain suffering and lament? When was the last time you read Job or even the book of Jonah?

And yet we tell ourselves:

Don’t be a Debbie Downer.

When we live in a culture that says “just use your positive affirmations”. Claim your power.  All the while, you fail to acknowledge that you are angry, fearful and irritable. Because we hide it, we side-step the healing process for emotional, mental and psychological wounds.

Perhaps you are telling yourself “I forgave them”, but still feel the resentment, hurt and anger. And in your confusion of “I shouldn’t feel this way”, you bottle it up and swallow it down, rather than acknowledging the truth that you haven’t done enough work to forgive and release. Sometimes there is much deeper healing work that needs to take place, but it makes us too uncomfortable, so we settle for the spiritual bypass that lets us off the hook.

shadow work, healing the pain, release the pain, trauma, emotional hurt

The potential harm of false positivity

I believe in positive affirmations. They are intense and influential; they have a fantastic role to play. But you can’t fake healing! It’s like painting over a structural crack in the wall: the paint job just won’t hold the building up!

If you want to grow and flourish, you can’t avoid the painful experiences of life. More often than not, it’s not in deep meditation that you find your growth, but when you’re angry, frustrated and upset – and you breathe for a moment. You recognise that you have space to choose your response. That’s where your growth happens.

Of course, you can only achieve this is you have the awareness to acknowledge that you are feeling angry, frustrated and upset. Have you created a safe space in which you can feel pain, sadness or even depression? Is it okay, in your world, to not be okay? Can you admit and ask for help when you need it, whether it be therapy, coaching or spiritual counselling?

We don’t need to hear any more “you shouldn’t feel like that” – but rather the helping hands that say “I see that you feel this way”, now let’s help you move through this.

I love one of the acronyms I learnt through mBraining (most likely from Vikki Coombes, who probably learnt it from Grant Soosalu):

PAIN =
Please
Acknowledge
Information
Now

When you are feeling pain – what is the information that it is inviting you to acknowledge?

Shadow work and healing

Are you scared of the dark? Are you afraid to face your guilt and shame, hiding from the pain and ugly aspects of your life? Do you tell yourself to move on, without really doing the work? There is a moment when we stop digging and move on. But not by studiously ignoring it when it needs to be addressed. Not through spiritual bypassing.

explore your inner darkness, shadow work, healthy detachment, true detachment, spiritual bypassing

Can you explore your inner darkness, sit with it and then release it?

To start on the healing process, we have to acknowledge it exists. Stop denying a part of yourself and turning a blind eye to those parts of yourself that you don’t want to see.

You cannot heal what does not exist. So, your first step in the healing process is to allow it into your awareness, acknowledge it, feel it. Carl Jung referred to this dark part we deny as the shadow self. It might be anger, lust, envy, pain, sadness, anxiety or depression. Generally, these are emotions we feel and thoughts we have, that we have labelled as “wrong”. We tell ourselves “I shouldn’t feel this way any more”, and so we begin to hide them, even from ourselves.

Detachment is what happens when we acknowledge it, but don’t get caught up in it. Be willing to see it, and see yourself experience it, and then allow it to go, rather than engulfing you.

Allow yourself to ask these questions:

  • What do I feel?
  • When did this start?
  • What were the events that triggered this? Which events in my present life are continuing to trigger this?
  • Why am I ashamed of feeling this way?
  • What part of my identity – who I think I am – requires me to hold onto this? Who would I be if I released this?

Let go and let God

Yes, it’s cliché. But it’s also healthy detachment.

You are not your pain. Or your anger. That is not your identity. It is an emotion you have felt or are continuing to experience. Can you feel it and then let it go?

Can you see yourself disconnecting from that emotion that controls your life? Could you take it one step further and see yourself disconnecting from the people that trigger this response in you and allowing them to control your life?

It’s easy to mistake connection and attachment. Connecting with others is essential. Attachment, however, brings in elements of control and expectations. We get tangled in a web and lose our identity.

Detaching allows you to step back, and see how you can connect with others compassionately, without attachment. With no control or expectations of what should be. It allows you to say “I don’t need you, but I can love you, compassionately“.

In this very same way, can you look in the mirror and see yourself without expectations? Could you acknowledge the shadow self and love yourself just as you are? This is where the healing starts.

Just let go and be with I AM.

Sermon: Rejoicing in Sufferings

Beth - blogger, coach, consultantLeave a comment

READINGS:

  • Romans 5: 1-8
  • Matthew 9:35 – 10:8
  • Psalm 100

REJOICING IN SUFFERINGS

I invite you to think for a moment about that Olympian champion, the one that sat on the sofa every day watching TV, checking their internet, and reading books.  The one that slept in every morning, had a full cooked breakfast, eating anything they wanted, when they wanted, partying with their friends any time they liked, and taking it easy. On the day of the meet, the simply went out and effortlessly won gold because they were just the best.

What do you mean you never heard of that guy?  Apparently it’s not that easy to be an Olympian Gold Medalist! There may be suffering involved on the road to glory: it takes work, effort, consistency, perseverance, and faith to become perfect and complete, lacking nothing! Rapid success stories happen, true. But the reality is that most “overnight successes” come at the end of years of hard work and those witnessing the “success” part too readily assume the “overnight part.”

Joy comes in spite of our pain! To have joy in spite of difficulties and struggles  is not to deny pain; it is to recognize that they can co-exist. The same way a pregnant mother can go through the agony of childbirth and still have joy in thinking about what is to come. She knows that there is a beautiful light and life at the end of these painful hours.

This morning, Paul says that we are to “Rejoice” in Suffering!  And the reason that Paul gives for this is that suffering produces “endurance”: in other words

  • intestinal fortitude
  • grit
  • perseverance
  • stamina
  • tenacity
  • gutsiness
  • resilience

Paul  goes on to say that this endurance will produce character, and character produces hope, and out of hope comes an outpouring of love into our hearts.

James 1, verses 2 to 4 say something similar:

2 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

I want to talk  this morning about cultivating resilience, which enables us to remain positive and focused. Resilience is a quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever – they rise from the ashes, rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve: a basic ingredient for happiness. So, Paul tells us to “rejoice in our sufferings” – note: he doesn’t say you will only suffer once.  There will be sufferings – did you hear the S? And yet, we are to rejoice, because this is how we learn and grow!

Paul says suffering will lead to endurance, and this will, in turn, lead to having character (that is, who you really are, when all the layers are peeled away – when no one else is looking!).  Said another way:  suffering produces steadiness, steadiness produces reliability, and reliability produces hope.  If we prove ourselves to be reliable, even in the face of hardship – there is hope!

How many of you here today have survived every day of your life so far in spite of the ups and downs?

Amazing! You have survived everything that life has thrown at you so far!  Every one here today is a survivor.  But here’s the challenge: it is not enough just to be here – you should be better for it!  Better equipped, greater patience, more understanding, a higher level of emotional intelligence, empathy for your fellow man or woman.  How do you make this happen, faster and easier on yourself and those around you?

For starters, I would say that the first step is acknowledgement: recognizing that you are in a situation that is outside of your comfort zone and that makes you feel that you are under threat.  The reason I say this is that when you are in denial, “this isn’t happening to me”, it’s impossible to actually act!  You can’t make any decisions about something that isn’t happening to you!   So, step one is admitting that you have a situation.

But I invite you to be careful in your choice of words: transform “hardship” into “challenge”, giving yourself the possibility of seeing opportunity and to make this a productive situation. What do you want life to look like on the other side of this adversity? Remember: your success rate so far is 100%: how will you come out of this one?

Step two, is getting a handle on your emotions.  The signs of a resilient person is that when they are in a difficult situation, they keep calm, evaluate things rationally, and come up with a plan, and so they can act.  The biggest emotion we have to face is fear – fight or flight or lizard brain (paralyzed by fear, shutting down).  Imagine how many times the word “fear” is dealt with in the Bible!  John 14: 27 says

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  … Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Or Joshua 1:9

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged…

Or even Psalm 23: 4

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

Our human response is we try to hide our fear – we mask it:

  • with anger (anger feels much more powerful than fear!);
  • with frustration (“I don’t know what to do” sounds better than “I know what to do, but I’m too scared to do it”);
  • with stoicism (I’m bearing this – rather than getting off my butt and doing something about it, because I would hate to make a decision and be wrong).

When you identify your fear or fears, you can then identify the possibilities that lie on the other side: opportunities. Managing  emotions requires that we grow deeply in emotional intelligence – so much to learn from difficult circumstances!

The third step in resilience is a little crazy: you need to be delusional! And by that I mean: you need to set the bar to recovery WAY HIGH! Crazy successful people and people who survive tough situations are all overconfident. And by overconfident I mean… a delusional sense of self-worth.  But wait!! – wasn’t step one and step two about acknowledging where you are and what you are feeling?  Yes. But now I am asking you to go all out in believing:

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me…

Yes, you need to clearly understand and acknowledge the situation, but be overconfident about YOUR ability to get yourself through and out of the situation successfully.  Remind yourself of your strengths and accomplishments. Remember: so far your success rate at making it through difficult days and situations is 100%.What does successful look like this time?

Step 4 in the process is something continual: Preparation.  Whether you are in a difficult situation or not, you should always be in preparation.  Luke 12:35 reminds us:

Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps lit.

And likewise, 2 Timothy 4:2

… be prepared, in season and out of season…

It’s impossible to prepare for the unknown, but we can constantly improve ourselves, practicing good habits and overcoming our bad habits.  Habits are what will come through in times of difficulty.  Think of common habits you have: breathing, walking, putting on your seat belt…

When I was 22, I spent 7 hours preparing and training for the most important 10 seconds of that day.  I arrived at 8 a.m., with a group of about 20 other people, and we trained, over and over and over again, lying on the floor, standing up, hanging from harnesses in the air… and when they felt that we were actually ready, they put us all in an airplane, with parachutes on our backs.  And when we reached an altitude of over 3,000 feet, one by one, we jumped out of the plane.

I have complete amnesia about those first five seconds of the jump – no sense of falling, no sense of the wind rushing past my face, nothing!  All I remember is my security check: arms in position, knees bent, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, Check (over my right shoulder), check (over my left shoulder).  Parachute properly deployed!  We were static line jumping, in our first solo jumps from the plane.  I do remember the last 5 vital seconds of the experience – the landing.  There are really only 10 seconds in a jump that are the most important:  the first 5 and the last 5:  making sure your chute is open (otherwise releasing that chute and deploying the reserve – if that happens, go back to step one!), and landing on the ground.  You don’t want to collapse your chute 3 stories up in the air, otherwise you could break both femur’s as you plummet down straight onto your legs! But we spent 7 hours preparing for those 10 seconds – and hardly any time at all on how to actually control your parachute, turns and having fun.  Just pay attention to your headset and what the instructor is saying and you’ll be fine.

What does your preparation for the hard times in life look like? Does it bring you hope?  I had hope as I jumped out of the plane – not one, but two parachutes on my back, and knowing that I knew exactly what to do if there was a problem with the first one.  I was as ready as I could be.  There is an amazing adrenaline rush on the other side of fear!

Step five, is kind of obvious: hard work! Whatever the situation is that is bringing you suffering, there are things you will need to do! Whether it is the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, a drop in income, or the ending of a relationship, there is work to be done. After acknowledging the situation, and facing your fear or pain or loss, and getting delusional about your ability to survive this, relying on all the preparation that you have brought to this moment in your life: you have to actually stand up and do what needs to be done!

Proverbs 14:23 reminds us:

All hard work brings profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

It’s not enough to talk about what needs to be done and what you are going to do. You actually have to do it! I understand the desire just to stay in bed and pull the covers up over your head and give in to mind-numbing sleep!  I am sure that we have all been there – plagued by the depression.  Step one:  get up!   Take the first step!

“Survivors take great joy from even their smallest successes. That is an important step in creating an ongoing feeling of motivation and preventing the descent into hopelessness.”

It is those small victories that carry you forward – one more step, one more challenge, one more day.

And finally, help: there’s a time to receive help and there’s a time to help others. Having caring, supportive people around you acts as a protective factor during times of crisis. It is important to have people you can confide in. And sometimes, in our most challenging moments, what our souls and spirits need is to reach out and help others. It is when we find a sense of purpose in our lives that we transform the most. For example:

After her 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver, Candace Lightner founded Mother’s Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Upset by the driver’s light sentence, Lightner decided to focus her energy into creating awareness of the dangers of drunk driving.

I’m thankful for her impact – she reached me, as a teenager, teaching me two important lessons: never drive drunk and never, ever get in the car with a drunk driver.  So, I was usually the designated driver.  Candace Lightner will never know me, or the thousands of teenagers whose lives she saved: but she made a difference! Are you making a difference?

This is where we find hope and an outpouring of love in our hearts!