Sacred Life Sunday: Praying the Devil Back To Hell....

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. ~Hindu proverb ...

I got an interesting comment on my last post, reminding me to send metta to the women I was upset with last week. (Was it last week? A few days ago? The time is blurring.)

Sending metta, or good thoughts ~ lovingkindness ~ to someone who has harmed us or tried to harm us is a basic part of the forgiveness process. At least for me.

Taking the comment seriously and realizing it was necessary, I sat down to do it. I sent lovingkindness to each woman, by name.

It was hard. Really hard! Not because I am still angry at them. Not out of a need to be right. Not because it felt like submission or giving up.

It was even more insidious than that.

It was because I'd relegated them to non-personhood. The particular dynamic they engaged as a means of "punishing" me was something I find so repugnant, so destructive, that I couldn't bring myself to forgive them as individuals. They became shells. It's really hard to have empathy or compassion for hollow shells. I was able to forgive in a global sense but couldn't on a person-to-person level.

Still, I sat and kept trying.

Eventually after several full minutes, I began to feel some compassion for people who are in such pain that they would take someone's confidential information, shared in trust, and turn it back ~ turning it into ammunition.

I committed to the universe that I would not do the same thing. At least I would try very hard to not do the same thing.

I began to feel empathy, knowing what it is like to feel that way from the past, to be so wounded and so angry that using anything in my arsenal to "get back" at someone seemed justified.

Our conflict was minor. In fact, it was even a bit petty. No one's life will be changed - not mine nor theirs - by the interaction we shared. However, when you look at it in the bigger picture, it does ripple outward. From stream to river to lake to ocean, it grows and grows and before we know it, nations are doing the same thing.

I sent more lovingkindness. I sent healing their way, to all of them, that the things that hurt them inside will go away, that they can see the world as something other than a nail - and that they don't have to be hammers. And I sent lovingkindness to all of us so that none of us will have to feel like hammers in a world of nails.

It was a good exercise. Even though it is difficult, willingness is a good beginning. Even though it didn't feel "real" for a while, it was still worth doing.

I wish we would all take a few minutes each day to send lovingkindness to each other - globally or individually. That alone could change the world.

Have a good Sunday!

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Weekend: Feathers in the Wind...

One of the things I do after I've found myself in some sort of conflict is to spend some time in quiet thought. It is also when I call in my team of trusted others, those who know me, whom I know and with whom I have a relationship that allows for frank discussion.

One of those people is Ajahn S. I trust his judgment and perception without question.

After Wednesday's conflict, I needed his perspective. I wrote him an email, explaining what had occurred from my perspective, provided him with all the links and relevant data.. and asked him to tell me his thoughts.

He has given me permission to reprint them here. Since English is his second language, I have edited. He has seen it and approved of the changes I made, none of which involve content.

His comments are in italics.

"I don't want to sound like a fortune cookie, but if this roundtable discussion has pushed a button in you that would set you off that severely, then you have been given a great gift. When our behavior is all that we want it to be, we don't learn much of anything about ourselves. You've been given an opportunity to dig into something that gets you right where you live."

It would have been quite a stretch to get me to buy this one on first glance! I didn't feel like I'd been given a gift. It felt more like a sucker punch!

He continues:

"Now, maybe, in order to deal with that, you need to take some time away. Fine. But please don't just turn tail and run. And don't blame it on anyone else. "

It was not and is not my intent to blame anyone else.. or to turn tail and run. What I really want to learn is a way to disagree more effectively, how to use my voice without it getting loud and brash. I want to be heard.. in a gentler way.

"I'm reminded of something someone said to me, many years ago, about mental illness. He said, "Heck, if we could send everybody on an endless cruise -- no stress, no poverty -- there wouldn't _be_ any mental illness." I've always felt that he was exaggerating, but there is a little kernel of truth in what he was saying. It's the things that _stress_ us, that _challenge_ our ideas about ourselves, that teach us most about who we are. I'm not suggesting that you run face-first into an electric fan, but it would be sad and wasteful for you to ignore this opportunity to learn more about yourself. How else can you grow and change for the better?"

This is a good point... but I would like to examine is how we can ALL do this better. I don't mean that in a judgmental sense. What I mean is establishing a way that will give us all the freedom to engage in conflicting opinions without hurting each other. How can we disagree without creating collateral damage? I'm well aware of the fact that I created a bit more than my share. Why do we so often find ourselves in conflict and there are bloody bodies found among the survivors? Others are simply annihilated.

"The way that we can develop compassion for even the people who don't have any compassion is to be able to bear to catch ourselves in the moments when our compassion is missing-in-action or otherwise deficient. If we give into the urge to blame our lapse on the phase of the moon or western technology or whatever, then we miss out on that opportunity, and we'll spend the rest of our lives looking down (however subtly) on others. "

Isn't it true? There is usually something we can manage to find as an object of blame. It would have been different if we'd been in person? It would have been different if the zebra crossed the road at the right time on Tuesday?

That doesn't quite make sense, does it? Not really. We all own our lapses. I own mine.

"So, as I see it, you're at a choice point. Do you scramble madly to distance yourself from your actions and remove any sense of responsibility (that's the clinging-to-the-need-to-be-right part)? Or do you sit down and say, wow, I really did something that I find reprehensible. And you sit with that, literally, in meditation. Poke it, prod it, feel it, feel around it, accept it, reject it, analyze it, fantasize about it, in short -- work through it. Believe me, in the long run, you'll be a far more humane being for doing so. And that is what it's all about, right?"

With loving-kindness,
S******

I think that is what we all wanted. And the further we try to distance ourselves from these issues, the more they repeat themselves. As women, we are not accustomed to conflict or disagreement. We are trained to make nice-nice and never offend. So when the volcano begins to rumble, it can overflow so quickly that it seems spontaneous. During that conflict, I hurt another human being with my words. Words matter. If you don't believe me, take a feather pillow to the top of a mountain, rip it open and let the feathers fly in the wind. Now go try to pick them up. That is what careless speech is like. There is no way to ever take those words back ~ and nothing is ever the same again.

What that does is effectively contribute to silencing all of us ~ making us more reluctant to discuss the important stuff next time ~ even though we have a similar goal, to make the world a better place and to understand and resolve complex issues.

We are all good people.

I believe that. We need to remember that. I need to remember that.

With loving-kindness...

Indeed.

Of course, I would like to hear your views and thoughts on conflict and conflict resolution, how you respond to conflict, how you deal with it.

~*~

** Please take a few moments to go this site and offer Jenn some support. Of course, I send all of my best healing thoughts to her.

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