Tag: suffering

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Be Divinely Empowered

Be Divinely Empowered

Be Divinely EmpoweredI’ve been maintaining a ‘Forgiveness Diary’ and every now and then I revisit it to see if I feel differently about people I’m committed to forgive but the resentments are running deeper than my resolve to forgive. Just as I was contemplating on the fact, I came across a beautiful quote which affected me deeply and has helped me change my perspective. “Heaven and Earth can never meet as long as you hold even one person outside of your heart.” from Devrah Laval, The Magic Doorway into the Divine. So, I began my journey of introspection…..

The first instinct when someone says something hurtful is 100% of the times ‘self-defense.’ Its the mother of all instincts. We tend to immediately wield our sharpest weapon against the offender and bring her down & then feel satisfied (ofcourse, at a gross level). If we’re unable to defend ourselves, the ‘hurt’ lingers on and the itchy feeling of at least detailing her all the reasons as to ‘why she is wrong,’ persists. What is worse is that it can persist life-long if we are unable to ‘give it back to her.’ Our clever mind keeps us busy by engaging itself into schemes of retaliation. At this point, you know that the set path is destructive but who can control the mind? And because you are treading a spiritual path and have read and theoretically understood that to forgive is divine, a deeper conflict emerges. ‘Am I grossly wrong in beating up my offender or in atleast making her realize she’s wrong!’ Vs ‘How do I forgive and emerge out of it unhurt.’ As the conflict rages on, you cannot seem to get it out of your mind and you activate a negative spiral of thoughts which seems to only collect negative impressions of your offender & more your mind is propelled into thinking how you were wronged, the deeper you fall into the resentment quick sand!

What can we do to overcome these strong negative thoughts? How can we relinquish ourselves from feelings conjured up by other’s acts? It set me think on deeper aspects of other’s behavior and motives. Did my offender know that what she said could hurt me deeply? What prompted her to behave as such? Why do I have such an urge to be understood rightly, every time?

Stephen R Covey has laid out seven habits of highly effective people & I’ve lived a part of my life following it sincerely and one of the habits he mentions is ‘to seek first to understand and then to be understood.’ So, I choose to apply it in this analysis because Covey says that we’re in a habit of deciding prematurely what the other person means before he/she finishes communicating. If you’re like most people, you probably seek first to be understood; you want to get your point across. And in doing so, you may ignore the other person completely, pretend that you’re listening, selectively hear only certain parts of the conversation or attentively focus on only the words being said, but miss the meaning entirely because most people listen with the intent to reply & not with the intent to understand. He calls it ‘autobiographical response.’

So, I decided to understand my offender first. Well, it was not an easy decision. It meant that I had to keep my ‘hurt’ aside and wear an objective hat, so that I’m not blinded by my own emotions. On can adopt various available techniques to bring about an objective frame of reference in the conscious realm either through meditative yoga, mantra chanting, breathing exercises or any other means of centering yourself and calming down your mind.

In a calm state of mind when there was possibility for clarity to emerge & objectivity to set in, I attempted to ‘understand’ the words of my offender. As I had drifted deep into this exercise, I realized that it had already provided me relief from the emotional burden (of negative thoughts) that I had been carrying all along. When we seek peace and clarity, we are ultimately creating the space within ourselves for alternative possibilities and healing. Without which, we will remain in a never-ending cycle of unnecessary pain and suffering. As we endeavor to sincerely understand the other person, it opens up the thus far unknown realm of what the other person’s state of mind is and gives us insight into what the other person is feeling & this shift in focus automatically puts us at ease on our own emotional front. If we are successful to break the chain of negative thoughts that
engulf us all the time and are able to bring our consciousness upto this point of peace and clarity, we become divinely empowered to see the ‘Truth,’ which most of the time is covered as we cover ourselves up with the blanket of our own emotions. I understood that to ‘hurt me’ was not the ‘real intention’ of my offender but she was acting on her primal instinct of ‘protecting’ her own sense of self (which is described as false-ego) under the cover of her blinds.

This is how we all act, unwittingly–each precious day of our life–under the spell of our false sense of self, pulling up our cover of emotions, wielding it with the hope that it will protect us, but it actually blinds us from the ‘Truth’ and what’s worse, we expect the other person to understand and respect our emotions, all the while not attempting to understand the other person’s state of mind or emotional being. But when you choose to understand the other person & his action, then you break the negative chain of thoughts and allow something wonderful to happen–the ability to see the ‘Truth,’ then, you have the healing choice of ‘Forgiving’ your offender & thereby ‘Healing’ your hurt. Dear friends, please understand that the only way to permanently heal your hurt is through ‘forgiveness’ and when we are able to truly forgive someone else, the person who benefits the most is ‘you!’ Remember, when we choose to crossover to the other side by attempting forgiveness, we are seeding new impressions that can form new habits. When we collect enough ‘impressions’ through ‘forgiving’ it automatically forms a new habit which means what was an endeavor earlier, now comes easily and naturally to us.

Radhanath Swami says ‘Mind is ones biggest enemy when uncontrolled, but majority of people put full faith on their enemy!’ He further elaborates that there can be lasting peace and happiness only if you keep your mind in captivity.

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman

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Transcendence in Relationships

Transcendence in Relationships

Transcendence in RelationshipsThe couple went into the counsellor’s chambers and both of them were determined that they didn’t want to be in this marriage because they didn’t feel love for each other and there was growing animosity with each passing day. The wife said she didn’t sense his commitment to their marriage from the beginning and the husband argued for hours on how each time he was reminded that love is not just a feeling but it’s a commitment.

The counsellor, ripe with age and wisdom clarified, “I do not agree that feelings are unimportant, and there is only commitment. I do believe, however, that commitment should lead the day. Feelings are an important part of the relationship. But feelings come and go. However, commitment is the glue that holds the relationship together. “Love” is choosing to love someone, not just a feeling. I cannot create emotions, as you note. But I can choose to act lovingly when the emotions aren’t there.”

“Are feelings worthless? Absolutely not! But feelings and emotions are fickle. They come and go. The marriage vows are built on commitment through thick-and-thin. We don’t make a promise to ‘love as long as I feel that emotion.’ We promise to love through good and bad times, up and down times, healthy and sick days! We make those vows because we know the emotion will not always be there, so we promise to work through that.”

Marriage experts point out that one of the several possibilities that gets in the way of loving couples is unaddressed anger and resentment built-up over time.

Let’s look at how resentment builds up in a relationship. At the root of it, resentment stems mostly from childhood hurts or hurts from past lifetimes (as past life regressors put it). When you carry hurts from your childhood such as feeling unimportant, not valued, rejected, accused, guilty, powerless, inadequate or being unlovable–such hurts leave impressions in the unconscious mind that distort your view of current reality. When someone triggers one of your deep set hurt, recognizing the pain it might cause you, you immediately want to escape it and thereby take shelter in blaming the other or getting angry and abusive with the one whose action is hurting you. So, people blaming one another are just trying to relieve the pain of their deep set hurts.

Such deep-set hurts create alongside a deep need. A need which turns into expectation in a relationship i,e the person who is carrying a deep-set hurt expects the other person to treat him/her in a certain manner. When the other person fails to treat him/her in that manner, the deep need is unfulfilled and it leads to resentment. Resentment arises from unfulfilled needs. Note that if the expectation is not connected to a deep-set hurt, it will not lead to resentment.

In a husband-wife relationship, need for affection, appreciation, loyalty are some of the deep needs. When such deep needs are not met, there is scope for blaming, anger, and subsequently resentment. When there is resentment, there is blame. When we blame someone, some part of us feels relieved, isn’t it? Unfortunately, blame does not cure the pain, it only masks it for a while. If we are extremely conscious of our acts, we can know that by accepting our part responsibly and by developing a magnanimous heart to forgive the other person of his faults, can we truly experience relief from the pain that bothers the heart.

In his ‘Life of Total Forgiveness’ seminar, Mahatma Das, a monk & renunciant in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition says, resentment is not about what was done to you but about how you responded to what was done to you. He says anger, blame and resentment are emotions on the surface & mostly we are in touch with only these emotions. But if we dig a little more deeper, they have their root in more difficult feelings such as hurt, sadness and disappointment. He advices the participants that healing deep-set hurts is possible when we do a deep emotional excavation and release the emotional tension that we are holding onto by forgiving the person who hurt us. He says, resentment is about you being right and the other being wrong. As long as you need to be right, you won’t forgive. As long as you need to tell others how wrong your offender was, you won’t forgive. When it
comes to forgiving, being right is wrong!

Different ways help different people. When a spouse feels deeply understood and cared for, he or she is able to release some deep hurts. For some people intellectually understanding the direct negative implications on one’s own physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health helps. It is said that resentment is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person will die. If we are holding onto resentment and are not willing to let go of it, we carry it forward to many more lifetimes until one day we have give it up by forgiving the other person. Healers vouch that what we are dealing with in this lifetime, we did not handle it well in our past lifetime. Karmically too, when you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free. A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said, ‘Don’t be angry with the agent of your karma.’

Sincere forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time. They say to forgive is divine! It is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.

‘As difficult as it seems, you can be sure of this: At the core of the heart, you have the power to move beyond the old issues that are still hindering your freedom. The hardest things–the ones that push you up against your limits–are the very things you need to address to make a quantum leap into a fresh inner and outer life.’ – Doc Childre and Howard Martin

Radhanath Swami in his discourse on forgiveness defines love as the capacity to endlessly forgive. He explains at length how our inability to make the choice to forgive, creates pain suffering and chaos, not only in the lives of others but ours too!    Without forgiveness, no relationship can be satisfying. This is the real secret of successful relationships–the ability to forgive the other unconditionally! He says that this quality of forgiveness is more illuminating than the light of the sun and those who have that ability to forgive are invested with the power to access the mercy and the love of god.

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman


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Ouch, that hurts!

Ouch, that hurts!

Anger in Love

There is no bigger emotion that makes us most indifferent to our own happiness than the emotion of hurt. We keep apart and keep away from acting and seeing our dreams by hanging onto hurt to a point that it hurts our relationships, our dreams, aspirations and the very fabric of our lives. Maybe you feel ignored in a relationship or severely criticized & put down or there are scars of abandonment that simply wishes to stay with you. Hurt is the feeling that allows you to close the doors to opportunities and protect yourself in a shell of negative thinking. The difficulty with hurt is the infection it causes in the mind, your mind is taken over by obsessive negative thoughts that can last for months, decades, sometimes a whole lifetime. Most of us hang onto hurt for a long time because we expect someone else to fix it or heal it in someway by acting toward us in a kind and loving way. You know which is the single most difficult act in the human experience to overcome? To let go of expecting someone else to do the right thing and heal our pain! But it is exactly what is needed if we are to get out of our obscure corner and march forward on the path of realizing our dreams.

In his bestselling book ‘The power of Now,’ Eckhart Tolle talks about the “pain body” that we all have. He says that this is the collection of all hurts, sorrows, anger, and fears in an energetic field around your body. It’s your baggage that you haven’t dealt with and continue to carry around. The pain body requires more pain to expand and therefore we end up experiencing automatic reactions to situations that become even more painful. So, we go on collecting hurt and make ourselves appear bigger and bigger victims.

Radhanath Swami gives an analogy. He says accumulating hurt is like picking up a hot burning ember of coal in our hands and holding it day after day, week after week, year after year. Inadvertently, we are only torturing ourselves and if we keep that burning coal in our heart, it will burn to ashes all our virtues, spiritual qualities and make us simply miserable.

The way out is when we shift our consciousness from a victim to a healer identity. The victim focuses on damage, hurt and the bad things that you’ve suffered. Because you have been hurt and most likely have walked on eggshells in your relationship, you have an impulse to be resentful, angry, critical, blaming, controlling, or abusive, behavior that cuts you off from your core values and your true self. Whereas when you develop a healer identity you will focus on your resilience, strengths and a strong desire to improve your life and relationships and you can draw from your core values and derive happiness by reconnecting with your true self.

Identify Your “Little and Unimportant Hurts” : More people walk around saying it’s not important or it doesn’t matter when it is indeed a very important and a big piece of hurting emotion buried within them. They will describe this hurt as being small and unimportant. Men tend to do this rather frequently. Take 15 minutes time and write down a detailed description of all the “little and unimportant hurts” that somehow doesn’t go away. Every little hurt that you keep remembering, that won’t go away, regardless of when it happened, must go on this list. Many people have many of these little hurts from childhood. These emotions are buried within creating difficulties with their health. Identifying these hurts will tell you a great deal about your buried and unexpressed emotions. Then deal with them one at a time how important it is for you to cling on to this hurt, whether you want to free your heart and experience freedom by letting go of this particular emotion.

Learn to say ‘no’: Men and women go through many situations telling themselves that “it doesn’t really matter” or “it’s not important enough to argue about”, basically buying peace by agreeing to something that deep down they do not agree with. They find themselves feeling unhappy, disgruntled, and angry with the individual involved. This type of situation when what you say and do is not in sync with what you feel creates unwanted tension, hurt and unhappiness in relationships. Buying peace at any price creates negative feelings within you. If you are habituated to saying ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no,’ buy time instead of buying peace. You don’t have to immediately agree to something in which you don’t have your heart. Instead you can gently buy some time. In the meantime, prepare your script which is objective and reasonable that enables you to say ‘no.’

Practice detachment : Michael Yapko, a clinical psychologist in his book ‘When Living Hurts,’ talks about identifying pattern know as the ‘therapeutic metaphor,’ as a clinical approach to healing hurts. Usually hurt is experienced as a metaphor by people eg: I have a broken heart. Some of us may experience hurt like a feeling of being stabbed in the heart or stabbed in the back, or that you have been trampled over. So ask yourself what the hurt feels like inside. Instead of feeling like you were stabbed in the back, step out of your body and see the stabbing and the person doing the stabbing and you will notice that he/she is hurt from a former stabbing. Now ask yourself as you are being stabbed, but watching it from a distance how that person is ever going to heal your hurt when he/she is in too much pain? He/she actually need your healing, but not the other way around. When you practice detachment from this metaphor, the hurt no longer affects you and your mind will automatically become much more positive and optimistic. If you can recognize the other person’s hurt and help them see where they are hurting, it might open up new channels of communication in your relationship.

Learn the art of Forgiveness : Forgiveness is something that occurs as a result of owning and releasing your negative emotions. We often reach for forgiveness without doing the work required to release emotions of hurt and anger & we find the hurt linger on. But when we have worked on identifying the hurt (small and big ones) in the above mentioned manner and released them, then we can truly forgive but if we withhold the free choice to forgive someone, then we simply remain a victim of whoever has hurt us or abused us. As we give the gift of forgiveness, we’re healed. Radhanath Swami says forgiveness means becoming well-wishers of our persecutors, and think for their welfare. He says that one who has the capacity to endlessly forgive the other can truly love the other. Forgiveness is something you can do to open the door to love, to compassion, and to free you own heart and be relieved of the poison of hatred, anger and resentment! If we cannot forgive then there is no possibility of any relationship surviving at any level.

The Power of Prayer : Certain emotions just hang on, regardless what you do.  Prayers have great potency and can enable you to experience deep healing of all your hurts and reconnect you with your original nature of happiness. You can pray to the Lord in all your earnest surrendering the hurt emotion to the Lord. You can also ask someone who you trust to pray for you. There is one thing that you can included in your prayers i,e asking for a grateful heart. Gratitude is the antidote to self pity. Self pity is what we indulge in inadvertently as our anchor when we experience hurt but know that it is a downward spiral and a little bit of gratitude can pull us out of that situation. We can be grateful to the lord in every situation and view the hurt as means of purifying our existence to bring us one step closer to the Lord Himself.

Radhanath Swami says, “Pain may be inevitable but suffering is optional.” It is our free choice, whether we want to suffer or not, though the experience of pain may not be a choice. Even though physically the pain might be hurting, we can find deep fulfillment in the gratitude of having been purified, or we can simply suffer.

– Mrs. Preethi Dhiman


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Love

Stormy Happiness

“We are not made for each other, we are made for God!” – Radhanath Swami.

Happiness in ChoasA king once offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Of the many entries, he shortlisted two. One was of a calm lake, a perfect mirror for the blue sky, fluffy clouds, and the towering mountains all around. The other picture had mountains too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all. But on a closer look the king saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In that bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of rushing angry waters, sat the mother bird on the nest—in perfect peace. The second picture won. The king explained that peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart.

“Material life is about expectations,” Radhanath Swami notes. The more intimate the relationship, the more we expect from it. Marriage is the most intimate relationship. In the beginning it appears that both partners are willing to do anything for each other. They fall madly in love. It’s a romantic affair: “we are made for each other”; “our marriage was made in heaven”. But many times, the spouses expect the other half to be exactly what they want him or her to be. But nobody is what you want him or her to be. Due to unreasonable expectations from each other, the relationship can become stormy. Actually, we are not really made for each other, but we are made for God!

The material aspect of married life can be a source of great suffering. But if we have a higher purpose for being together, the struggle becomes meaningful. The highest purpose is cooperating together to serve and glorify God. Radhanath Swami explains, “Even if we put God in the center, the material aspect of married life can still cause suffering. But, amazingly, if God is in the center of the relationship, the typical relationship struggles will bring the two spouses closer to God”. When that happens, there will be real happiness, spiritual happiness.

Thus, despite occasional storms in the relationship, the spouses can find immense peace and happiness if only they keep God in the center.