When you find yourself in any kind of difficulties which continue unabated regardless of your attempts to solve it, acting as if you created it all and accepting that responsibility is the only way to fix it.
When you react you create more problems; when you do nothing the problems are still present. From time to time you may find yourself in a calm "zone" where you become the observer; it is wonderful.
You feel separated from it all and safe but you know that the peace is not going to last and are already wondering when the next crisis will occur.
Eventually, you start thinking about the contentious situation. Then, one thought leads to another, and another and eventually (HA!) you find yourself right back in the same shitty situation you were dreading; reacting and being small like everyone else.
Doesn't that suck?!
This is what I discovered with the assistance of the marvelous David Cameron Gikand's A Happy Pocket Full of Money
— Creative Director on the movie The Secret
:The first universal law is the Law of Cause and Effect — for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, what you reap you sow (karma) and so on — and we all have experienced these effects.
No need for examples here — what I am getting at quite simply is that whenever you or I find ourselves in a situation not of our choosing, we must first accept it in order to find a solution.
Follow these two steps to get yourself out of "debt":
Step One: as the wonderful Judith Rich advised in one of her articles ..... you have to choose what you are living Now. It is happening and if you do nothing it will still be there tomorrow (which will still be Now when it gets here).
Say "I choose it" or "I am that" — you must identify yourself with your situation — rejection and resistance is what is creating your suffering!
This is an extremely powerful and self-empowering act.
I did it and it hurts like a bitch to the core but choose it anyway; it liberates you at the same time. No, you do not feel that right away, not in the slightest.
Obstacles come all the time. If you get upset that means the ego is back. When obstacles come if you're not upset and you're still present, you will look at whatever the obstacle is with a penetrating gaze of presence, which is stillness also. You look at whatever obstacle arises, you bring this penetrating stillness to it, and that is like a light that shines on it and dissolves the obstacle or shows you a way around it. That's the power of consciousness. —Eckhart Tolle
The discovery I mentioned earlier about the Law of Cause and Effect is in Step Two: Ask yourself (Gikandi's suggestion) "how am I the cause?" because you are living the effect of a thought, repeated incessantly with strong emotion, which created the effect of disharmony that you are now experiencing.
I know, this is a real toughie but persevere; it is worth more than you know.
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| Image by Geishaboy500 |
The process worked this way for me:
On the first day, I tried but kept falling into the same rut of accusatory and resentmentful thoughts so I tried going a little deeper into my past mental activities, to no avail.
On the second day I got more of the same acrimony I had been living with for a while and that told me that I was not making any progress.
However, on the third day I received my answer — but damn, liberation is so sweet — the "technique" David suggested worked!
My AHA! Moment
I left the house and settled myself on a terrace with a cold drink to read the weekend dailies from cover to cover. Suddenly, I paused for no reason(!) to look at the rain which had been pouring buckets for quite a while.
Immediately, thoughts of my relatives popped into my head. At first I told myself "STOP, leave it". It happened again a few minutes later and my thoughts went something like this:
How could I be the "bad guy", why would they treat me so badly when all I wanted to do was help them? There is so much I could have done because for once in their lives when I was in desperate straits and forced to approach them for help, they were there for me...
And right there people, on that final querying thought is when the answer came — as the next thought — in exactly these words:
Instead of accepting the largesse I was offering, they wanted my help "on their terms".
To say that I was amazed at that response would be putting it mildly — what an AHA! moment!
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| Image by photoholic1 |
I thanked my Inner Being, my Self, the wiser half of me, immediately.
Now, keeping in mind that this is my abuser — the mother I forgave years ago — and a sister who has patterned herself in the same mold, I would be mad to allow them power over me. Wouldn't I... except that that is exactly what ended up happening.
Understanding dawned about why I felt so incredibly resentful and enraged at this duo plus one (sister's husband) who dictated what I must do and how I must do it in their house to "pay my way" or else.
For details (only if you want to) the full story is in Closing the final chapter of my 9-year odyssey.
My resentment was based on the fact that I had moved on — I am new, profoundly changed and more aware — and after twenty-four years absence from the country and these individuals (last seen in 2003), they had not evolved where it mattered.
They still wanted to use me for their own selfish means with no thought of my needs (that is nothing new).
This two-step cause and effect technique is simple as one plus one equals two and the benefits will last you a lifetime, and it can also be used on any difficult situation. As Gikandi says in A Happy Pocket Full of Money:
Do not dwell on the past. Forgive others also. You are not doing them a favor when you forgive them; you are doing yourself the favor. They will still have their cause-and-effect (karmic) debt for all their actions whether you forgive them or not. But when you forgive them, you release yourself from a negative karmic cycle and release your energy for other positive things as well.
Character counts, you know.
I am larger than life, I am brilliant and I am worth it. I accept this now and despite what I allowed my relatives to subject me to, I cannot disown my mother (for years, I wished I could).
I do not particularly like her. I stopped calling her mamie and started using her first name when I was eight years old.
However, I am very grateful to her for giving birth to me — I chose that. And I also forgave the rapist she preferred over me (because he will get his in the same way she is now living her "debt") and so on...
The beauty of my situation is that it brought up all the other unresolved issues I had buried — incredibly unjust actions I had been subjected to which I know they accepted as their right because my mother set the pattern.
They surfaced in my mind — every. single. one. — and kept churning and repeating, adding fuel to the emotional flames.
Wasn't that great? I would still be stuck (somewhere) if all this had not happened. This has been such a fine adventure and my goodness, what a release!
When you get to this stage of release, there is nothing to do, nothing to say. Being and feeling yourself buoyed up by I AM is exquisite. You know that you can deal with anything that happens next.
But why did all this happen now, at year's end?
I had been living this shit since March and it worsened every day so a respite would have been welcomed but I wasn't ready, you see; it is that simple.
Everything had to surface. I had to live it, resist it, suffer through it, see myself reflected in the live mirror of others (anger is ugly but resentment is scalding), and decide that I wanted something better!
My relatives prefer the old, aggressive, uncomplaining, used and abused, take charge and fix it model, you see.
I had to cry my rivers of tears, feel my heart almost literally trampled upon, and I had to see with the eyes of an adult what I understood years ago, that I will never be loved or accepted as I am.
I had to:
— finalise the sentence "I am worth it" by dotting the "I's" and crossing the "T's";
— empty my baggage of the hand-me-down beliefs that were never mine in the first place and ditch the sacrificial lamb suit;
— empty the refrigerator of all the items I "bought" during my formative years spent in that household which had passed their "use-by-date";
— defrost the emotional freezer and clear out all the rotten "nourishment" that I had been preserving; and finally,
— accept that I was the cause of it all and decide to take responsibility.
I worked through all the stages of suffering like an addict; the detox was nine months long; brutal and dehumanising but I made it!
Sunrise via WikipediaIn other words, the old "me" had to die.The first ten years of my life affected the following thirty-eight; can you believe that!
I tell you true, psychological abuse is a terrible, terrible thing to experience!
I am so grateful for this tumultuous year of 2010 HAHAHA...
I am moving on to bigger and better and brighter things now.
Detoxing and defecating is such a fabulous thing to do; I highly recommend it but please, don't do it on anyone okay.
A laughing Buddha recently appeared in my mind and he's constantly going HAHAHAHAHA... existence is hilarious... everything is hilarious and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
Peace to all!
" #642
