Depending on what we are paying attention to, there are many opportunities to experience substantial duress, yet we don’t have to attend every fight we find ourselves invited. Maintaining a rational sense of composure in the face of emotionally charged ideas, often masking themselves as substantial ‘reasons’ to lose one’s composure, is ever a challenge.
Becoming the very problem we are seeking to ameliorate arises from an over-focus, AKA, Solution-addiction. Ironically, solutions require problems to solve; when the issue fades, the answer does, too.
Let’s take a temporary detour from my argument. Solutions are like forgiveness. For example, a solution (forgiveness) needs a problem (offense), and are both vampires in the relationship. It’s part and parcel of the Blame Game, and if you’ve read my past Blogs, you might remember that I suggest we hang up the Blamethrower. If we are not offendable, then there’s nothing to forgive.
“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend” - Albert Camus
Let’s push the envelope here. If there is no judgment, there’s no judge or jury. If there’s no offense, the court closes. The predators and prosecutors (sometimes one and the same) all go home. Is it a panacea to imagine such a world, one where we have no courts? I believe in natural law & order. Our conscience is our judge. The United States Constitution does not give rights but instead describes inalienable rights that we already have. Government is there to uphold organic, natural law. But frequently, if not always, humans digress when they start passing laws to protect the rules that are already in place. As Tacitus said, “The more the laws, the more corrupt the government.” The comparisons I’m drawing here are an exercise in serving the BEST (God is in control…Let Go, Let God) but does not serve what’s ‘good’ (dictatorial human thinking). The Best is the enemy of the good (in the ‘good’s mind’ perspective or opinion), but not vice-versa.
““There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.”
There is only One righteous Judge, which makes me wonder why, if God allows a thing, could the existing dirty-deed (thing) be part of a Sacred Contract? Could the end-product of joy rise higher than the depth of pain? Doesn’t the dormant seed of forgiveness find its home at the very tip of the knife that painfully plunges into the soil of our soul?
Okay, this perspective is a hard pill to swallow, maybe, and my last Blog Post might bear testimony to as much, but I only lost one subscriber to my List. I knew it was controversial but posted it anyway. Maybe it’s because I’m risking testing people’s sense of self-examination, and I overstep my boundaries in so doing; I hope it’s OK because that’s what risk does. Yet risk is always present when we ask real questions, and the evolution of questioning disproves the so-called virtue of our admission that we know the answers in any absolute way. The facts, answers or solutions, knowledge, whatever you want to call it, leads to killing questions. Knowledge destroys faith, similarly. If someone believes in God but says they KNOW God is real, they’ve just assassinated belief or faith itself. Knowledge is a safe anchor that tethers one dogmatically to ‘their truth.’ Sure, the truth will set you free, but when it’s made into a law, and we beat each other over the head with it, we have lost our way.
““Folks, it’s time to evolve. That’s why we’re troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything’s failing? It’s because, um – they’re no longer relevant. We’re supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right?”
― Bill Hicks”
Here’s my risky proposition: I killed Little Timmy. It was wrong and always will be, right? But what if viewing Timmy and myself in Sacred Relationship or Sacred Contract changes all that? WHAT IF Timmy and I had/have a Sacred Contract? If we do, is there anything for Timmy and me to aggrieve or forgive? Yes, it took me years to love and forgive myself for my actions that dreadful day, but we are supposed to Love God with all our heart, mind, and soul. If we do that, how is there any room for hatred or a lack of forgiveness? If we have turned our will and our life over to the care of God, our problems belong to God and not to ourselves, yes?
If your eye is filled with light, your body is too.
The follow-up to this purity of heart (to will one thing, love) is that with this kind of Love, we are free to love others as we love ourselves (yes, love ourselves, too). With love as our focus (God is Love), we begin to peacefully accept the things we can’t change and acquire Higher Wisdom to know what things we can’t and cannot change. To me, “Serenity” is a Gift. That’s why we ask for it in the Serenity Prayer. Prayer is part of our Spiritual Vision Board or the Intent of our Earthly Vision Board.
I know of many great examples of people who loved those who were hurting them. It seems more challenging to handle when someone we love is hurting us. By starting or continuing to be loving, they didn’t justify the hurtfulness inflicted upon them and label their love as a sure sign of weakness. Instead, they realized they needed to be fully human, accepting both what they ‘need’ to forgive and that getting angry and feeling unforgiving is…human. But someone famously said, ‘Let he who is without fault, throw the first rock. But seething our emotional lives in that anger is a sometimes necessary part of forgiveness, but the longer we stew in the juices of resentment, the more likely we are to start becoming what we hate (hating the haters).
“Often those that criticize others reveal what he himself lacks.”
― Shannon L. Alder
Reputation destruction, innuendo, and gossip are the passive-aggressive themes of modern-day rock throwing. They are the justifications of a Cold Was mentality and is more common among white-collar combatants than blue-collar (blue collar is a bit more physically assaultive). The dark masculine resorts to violence more often than the dark feminine does, and generally, the dark feminine tends toward reputation destruction and the passive-aggressive arts. I bring this up for one central point. It’s to illustrate what I argued earlier in this write: ‘depending on what we are paying attention to, there are a great many opportunities to experience substantial duress.’
Did you read the preceding statement with a peaceful mind and think about healing aggressive and passive-aggressive people? The opportunity to hear seemingly divisive ideas positively will heal many an insomniac night of tossing and turning. I don’t think our culture is rife with security or tyranny, but rather a mixture of the two. Nature or Natural “Law” is neither catastrophizing nor benevolent but can be construed as both. I think Nature should be studied but not controlled, and the same applies to the law. Keeping the peace is fine, but enforcement of the law, not so much.
When someone says a thing that is hard to hear, listen twice as hard.
Success through provocation ain’t my shtick. What propels me most to victory in a debate is to say little or nothing to provoke enforcement of my ideas. Being stress-resistant doesn’t mean there’s no stress, but rather one doesn’t cave to stress and make rash decisions. With a few notable exceptions, most of my life mistakes were impulsive or made in a hurry.
If one is not familiar with one’s detractors’ full argument, one is ill-suited for debate. While I don’t subscribe to the ‘If you don’t have something good to say, don’t say anything’ rule, I do believe it is a useful idea. Say what you mean, m what you say, but don’t say it mean’ is a common reiteration I fall back on, as is to ‘be the more loving one’ with unloving people (they make it easy…lol). Noticing the weakness in others but looking for their strengths takes practice to habituate. Repetition is the mother of all learning.
Consider the possibilities as to why a person is saying what they are saying.
The study of reactions and the people that study them. Reactionarians. There is no such word, and that’s OK with me. It’s none of my business to legislate what others think of me, or vice-versa. It’s none of my business to legislate what I think of or feel about myself, and it’s none of my business to legislate what God (if there is one) thinks of you or me.