Yesterday a friend mentioned to me that the recent medical report had shown haywire vitals, a severe imbalance. I knew what the emotional root cause was, and called immediately. She parked her car on the side and I ran her through a round of EFT over the phone. Just one round.
The self-directed anger, disgust and hatred she had received as a gift from her mother and tortured herself with for decades just vanished. The right timing, along with the right words and insights make EFT work like pure magic, cutting through the need for years and years of therapy.
If you’d like a tip, here’s one. Many of you who’ve worked with me know the importance of surrender. But sometimes in the name of surrender, we tend to suppress what we’re really feeling. You learn the hard way from life, that certain attitudes and actions are painful. So we reverse it, feeling either nothing or by suppressing the action/ feeling. This causes disease. The key is to FEEL what is happening inside, but merely to not let that transform into actions. But the feeling bit it critical. Feel it, and ideally, EFT it.
But more than anything, practice deep listening. I cannot overstate the importance of this. It’ll help you get a much stronger grip on what is really going on inside. And also on what is going on in the hearts of those around you, probably more clearly than they themselves are aware.
We just spent the evening with a brilliant Swiss man who manages business in 55 countries. He’s worked for cancer hospitals and like others we know, he’s quit because he couldn’t take it – couldn’t face the inhumanity of what was going on behind the scenes… bone chilling stories that patients never realise, but that’s for another day.
The really interesting bit was this. At one point as we shared about spiritual practices, he asked us.. ‘but what is meditation?’ And I found it a little bizarre because he ‘looked’ like someone who would know, from his energy field. But I explained, and then he said yes yes, my mother taught me this, and proceeded to explain the meditation, relaxation and the visualisation techniques his mother taught him which he also used to top his class many times. No wonder he had such a beautiful aura.
And it makes me realise I miss it so much, people who know SO much, and whose knowledge empowers them instead of inflating their ego. We’ve become a generation of defending belief systems, instead of being open to learning from each other. What a beautiful reminder this has been, of how enriching conversations can really be.
Here’s a woman who was in pain for many, many years. About 3 days of short chats over Whatsapp and this is what she said. The spiritual path way is not about never having problems. Sometimes there is no light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes it is as if there is nothing but pain.
The spiritual pathway is about choices. When your world is falling apart, can you surrender to the pain? When your life is perfect, can you surrender to the joy? And believe it or not, even that is rarely done. And there’s immense freedom in that state – sometimes it is almost like you’re smiling behind those inconsolable sobs.
One of the most powerful paragraphs I have read recently in Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts sums it up –
It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.
We all tend to think that we’re people that hurt no one. But all the same, we say and do hurtful things to manipulate people who love us.
Today, let us reflect carefully on what we tend to do, to hurt those close to us. Do we tell them they aren’t a good enough.. spouse, son, daughter, parent, employee, anything else? Do you raise your voice or say harsh words when you’re angry? Do you deliberately do things you know will hurt that other person to get back at them? There is no need to judge ourselves for the things we do, but there certainly is a need to change the fact that this happens – There is absolutely no excuse for hurting someone else deliberately.
Not only is there no excuse, but when we open our eyes, we see that we only ultimately hurt ourselves for a short-term bargain or illusion of control. This habit of hurting people ruins our relationships, we lose credibility with the people we love, and lose the capacity to open up and be vulnerable with the other person too because you cannot want to control another person and give your heart to them at the same time. If we want deep and fulfilling relationships, we have to learn to be kind and forgiving, and own our pain instead of blaming or trying to fix the other person.
Let us be more non-violent in our hearts. When we own our pain, it makes it easier to manage the pain as well as our relationship. When we try to change the other person in order to remove our pain, we only create more problems.
I must at the outset, mention that my teacher says ‘Forgiveness is part of the illusion, but it is a part of the illusion which can take you home’. And from one perspective, I agree that it is true. I could never see the point of forgiveness ever since I was little though, and this is just that perspective.
If someone hurts you and then asks for forgiveness, it might make sense, although even that, I feel leaves some open ends, but let’s set that aside for now. In my understanding however, when forgiveness is not sought, trying to forgive someone is extremely pointless. Here’s why.
The idea of forgiveness places you above the other person
I find the idea of forgiveness a little dangerous because a person who is supposed to forgive someone is clearly ‘above’ the other. By placing a victim higher than the oppressor, we can create dangerous emotional patterns where we repeat abusive patterns in our life to feel superior to others.
Forgiveness comes from a false idea of justice
Have you ever tried to analyse why there is a need to forgive someone in the first place – what is the point in holding on to that grudge? If you look at it carefully, you’ll find that somewhere there is this belief that if you forgive them, they won’t be punished. It comes from our childhood where accepting the other kid’s ‘sorry’ meant we don’t hit them out of revenge, or that they don’t have to be punished.
In reality holding on to a grudge or the pain someone caused you hurts no one but you. Their karma will bring them the fruits if and when the time is right – for all you know, the other person hurting you was a balancing of your own karma and the accounts would have been settled if not for you carrying the grudge.
So drop the desire for ‘justice for your pain’. Your pain might have been the justice. (I am not implying that victims must not file a police complaint etc – relevant actions need to be taken. But the idea of seeking justice in the mind, even more so when nothing can be done, is pointless)
The confusion about ‘how to treat the other’
Probably what I get asked the most is ‘how do I treat someone who hurt/ still hurts me after I’ve forgiven them?’ And ‘must I also forget, when I forgive?’ And this is the aspect which I believe makes the idea of forgiveness the most redundant.
Replace Forgiveness with Common Sense
Here’s a simple fact – shit happens in life. It happens. But if you observe, you don’t feel the need to try to forgive in every scenario. Think about a dog barking for 6 hours at night, waking your little baby up again and again and not letting you get any sleep when you’re already sleep deprived for days. You’ll be frustrated with the dog yes, but you will never message me asking how you can forgive the dog – the question does not arise, because you know that it is a dog – it will bark.
When someone hurts us, whether it was personal or not, intentional or not, they are simply acting out their patterns. If we expected different from them, that is our error of judgment and our mistake. When someone hurts us, if we focus on resetting our assessment of them instead of trying to forgive them, it can help to cope a lot better. A compulsive liar for example, is going to lie – whether it is to his wife or children, or boss. If we understand that this is how this person is, we can learn to accommodate this person and work around their traits in a neutral way, just like you won’t try to pet an aggressive dog who just tried to bite someone.
So…
If you like working with forgiveness, go ahead, that’s lovely. But if you’ve been struggling to forgive someone who hurt you – take a step back and get a larger perspective. There’s nothing to forgive, shit happens. Restructure your assessment of that person, learn new and balanced ways of coping with them if they still hurt you, do your best to heal yourself, and move on.
Some time back I was really hurt to realise that someone I liked was saying mean, cheap and nasty things behind my back. But once the initial pain and hurt faded, the wisdom set in.
Energy is energy. When people think about you, they contribute to your success. Look at Donald Trump, look at all these silly artists campaigning against Modi, the tabloids spinning false stories about celebrities – hatred in most cases contributes to a person’s success, because the more energy a person has access to, the ‘bigger’ they become – if you know how to use it.
So I sat down and welcomed everyone’s energy – everyone who was talking nonsense, I said bring it in, breathe it in. It’s not easy, of course, because it also involves allowing the pain and the hurt and the betrayal in. But it is also so far in my experience, one great way of speeding up the good things in your life, because now you have much more than your own energy working for you.
So can you imagine this? Everyone who says shit behind your back is going to contribute to you expanding in so so many ways. Remember this when you gossip about others too though – you are sacrificing your own energy and giving it away to them – so in the long run, you have less and they have more – of everything.
I share this because I’ve recently seen on my timeline, posts indicating people are hurt by gossip about them. There’s a beautiful, beautiful way of turning this in your favour. To put it simply, just request the universe to make this work for you.
Once, a donkey fell into a dry well in a village. Obviously it was terrified and kept braying indefinitely. The villagers gathered around, tried to get the donkey out and realised there was no way. The donkey was going to die a slow horrible death due to hunger and dehydration.
So it was decided that it would be more painless if they simply filled up the well with sand – the donkey would then die much faster. They gathered around and started throwing mud into the well. After a while they realised that every time they shoveled sand into the well, the donkey would take a step up. Eventually they filled the well and the donkey jumped out.
The negativity others send you is like that sand. They’re throwing it at you in order to suffocate you – and you will, if you just stay there and do nothing. But you can choose to step up instead.
So here it is – this meditation will help you transmute the negative energy people send your way, into positive energy which will help you grow and expand.
This works on intent so honestly I’m not sure how deep it will be if you don’t have a strong spiritual practice, but go ahead and try it anyway. Do it daily for a week to 21 days depending on the situation and on how ‘strong’ your energy field is.
One of the biggest themes that came up a lot recently is about how so many people think that ‘spiritual’ people have no problems. Indeed, many step onto the pathway thinking that life will be completely problem-free now, only to so many times find the complete opposite. I’ve said so many times that if the spiritual path was easy and free of pain, everyone on it would already be enlightened.
What does happen is that ‘spiritual’ people tend more to enjoy the moment as it is so they’re probably perceived a lot more as problem-free or pain-free people.
‘Enlightenment isn’t a cure for life’, Jacqueline had said to me once, and I so love that. To me, the pathway has always been about accepting what comes, and letting life flow unrestricted.
One cannot appreciate light without darkness. On the plane of duality, of course you are going to experience both. You WILL experience pain and misery as much as you will experience joy and bliss. But when we are in surrender, we can learn to dance with it, and move on without baggage when the tide turns. That’s all,
The state of the world right now gives us much to worry about, but do not be disheartened, stay strong and ‘tuned in’. We didn’t incarnate here to get lost in the drama.
Jacqueline Maria Longstaff
And I might add that we’re in Mercury Retrograde now which can cause some issues in communication and with electronic devices. Some I know have been experiencing emotional upheavals. and this can happen depending on where Mercury is placed in your chart. Communication issues which have been suppressed can come up for resolution, so if they do, just take a step back and witness it, try to refrain from engaging with it
Most of what I see in the name of the feminist movement is women fighting for the freedom to ‘be a man’. This Women’s Day, I hope at least a few of us choose to celebrate being a woman, and own up to what that really means.
Women and men are two halves of a whole, in a way. Neither is superior or inferior. A desire to celebrate the greatness of being a mother, sister, daughter, etc, these are nothing but a compensation for the lacuna we really feel for being forced to embody those roles. What’s so great about being any of these?
Yes, women have been suppressed for centuries, but then women are suppressing womanhood, more than anything else. When you choose power over love in day to day life, you choose masculine over feminine, everyday. When you choose to abuse, or accept abuse, or tell someone ‘it’s all part of domestic problems’, you destroy femininity. When you allow your heart to be filled with hatred, judgment and anger, you choose to destroy the woman that you are.
We’ve been led to believe that the masculine way is the only way of doing things. That fighting and shouting is the only way of bringing about change. So much that even people asking for peace were busy fighting with people asking for war. Because we’ve completely forgotten the way of the woman. The power of love, the power of peace, the power of compassion.
So this Women’s Day, I hope at least a few of us make that choice. To move from hatred to love, from anger to compassion, and from war to peace. Be a woman who is a celebration every single moment of her life.
