Everybody Hurts

Posted by Sunni on April 28, 2012 in blog, Uncategorized | 15 comments

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”  — Hafiz

I had an interesting day yesterday.

It began as one of “those” days – you know the kind.  But it was also peppered with some of the loveliest moments I’ve had in my life to date. Which I find very interesting (and encouraging) because I remember a time when I would have just chalked it up to being a “bad day” – something would happen, and I would resign the
entire day to shit.

Believe me, shit still happens. It’s just that now I know that everything that comes to me, is my teacher. So I sit with it, I do my work to see what it’s showing me about myself, about what I am believing, and I come back to love.

So, I woke up in the morning to my first official “mean” comment in the blog queue.  This person used a fake email address, so I couldn’t respond to them directly – and I’m still not entirely sure wether it was a spammer or just a person who was genuinely expressing their disdain for me. So I took the time to write them my honest response, and even though I was afraid of what it would look like or what it would imply about me, I posted the comment and my long response, anyway.

I fully admit that, at first, my heart pounded, and the sadness and hurt and feelings of being victimized flooded in. I wanted to run away from these feelings so badly, I wanted to defend myself and go into victim mode, but I didn’t. I let the feelings be. I let them be, and I allowed them to take me on their course, and show me what they could show me.

I took some time to sit with it, I got out of the house. 

I went out to deliver some prints and cards to the local shops. At one shop, I had put the box on the counter, and the department worker didn’t see that I was there in the isle or that the box belonged to me, and I saw her read off my company name and roll her eyes and mock my company name, as if she either thought the name was ridiculous or my art was ridiculous – I don’t know which. At another shop, I came to deliver some prints, and some people who were in the shop huddled around and oohed-and-awwed and were incredibly kind and supportive and bought 5 prints before they even hit the shelves.

This is life… our human experience — it is at once astonishingly beautiful, and heartbreakingly painful. It is the ride of all rides, no matter what your beliefs are about it, we have all had these moments. We all know the beauty, the incredible love and supportiveness, and we all know the hurt, and the darkness too.

I made a statement the other day on Facebook, something to the effect of that ‘I love life and the world unconditionally’ (but a lot more flowery in my terminology of course). And life showed up to say “oh yah?… let’s put that to the test shall we?”

I love that. I love how the universe is always doing that for me, and I love that I got that chance. What I am here to report is that I learned just as much, and received just as much value from that commenters, and that department workers “un-kindness” as I have from any true kindness. I saw that:

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1.  People are not always kind, people can be “mean” and thoughtless sometimes… I too, am one of those people.

2.  It doesn’t matter how “wrong” I think “unkindness” is, reality IS as it is. Sometimes, we are all unkind.

3.  There is no “ugliness” or “mistake” or “unkindness” that anyone EVER commits, that is not done in order to protect their own hurting heart at the time.

4.  There is nothing that anyone ever does that is not done in order to protect, regain or preserve their own peace, and/or sanity. When we blame and condemn or even just poke fun at other people, it is because we are believing something very painful at the time, and we are defending that belief, and holding onto it like the very thin thread that it is. We’ve all been there.

5.  We’re all doing the best that we can. We’re all doing the best we can RIGHT NOW, for our current state of consciousness. How could we do anything different?  We ARE consciousness, if your consciousness is telling you one thing, you are a believer - because that’s all that’s available to you at the time. How could we do better when we are believing these painful thoughts completely? How could we act any differently with such a heavy burden to carry in our minds?

6.  The only reason we ever feel the need to defend ourselves to someone, is when we too, are believing what they are saying. Notice how even when you know what someone says is not true, your mind still starts to believe it anyway. You second guess yourself, you feel “bad” and “guilty” even if the circumstances do not dictate this – this person has just showed you what you are still believing about yourself. And what you can still become free of.

7.  It is only my job to set my own mind and heart free. It is only my job to find and speak my own truth. It is not THEIR job to like it, to accept it, or to approve of it. It is my job, and until I get that all the way… I will continue to be dependent on others approval and I will suffer terribly every time that approval is not delivered. (and as we all know, it’s not always delivered!!) and besides, even when it IS delivered, we don’t accept it fully, until we know it for ourselves.

8.  Being “unkind” has it’s place.

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This last one was the hardest one of all for me to see and accept.  My mind was dead-set against it, it screamed “hell no, people should be kind!! people shouldn’t be mean!!”  but I found it.

Since the reality is that people ARE mean sometimes, that people ARE unkind, and since I know that arguing with reality hurts, I turned it around and tried to find genuine examples of how it could be just as true that people “shouldn’t” be kind, that they “should” be mean – as hard as that was, just to see what was possible – and the most profound reason that I found for that turn around was that people should be mean because:
it teaches us to love ourselves.

If we do not love ourselves, and all of our flaws, and all of our past and all of our mistakes – unconditionally – we will continue to lean on others and seek their approval and comfort. And the problem with that, is that they don’t always have that to give, and people are impermanent, even if they never disappoint you or leave you, they will pass away someday, and you will be left with yourself once more.

So the only option for true freedom, is to become whole. To BE the love that you want to see in the world, instead of needing it from them.  If someone says or does something unkind – what do we do to them in our minds? We react in defense of ourselves, believing that we might somehow deserve this, or defending our position that we don’t deserve this, and we are unkind to them, in turn. Even if not out-loud, in our heads we tear them apart. We dehumanize and separate. We do the very thing we’re accusing them of.

Even if you just shut down and go into victimhood, all you are doing is saying, “you are right about me, I am nothing more than what you say“, and in saying that, you confirm that they are believing something about you that you are believing too!  You want them not to believe that about you, and you can’t even stop YOURSELF from believing it!

I saw how much pain these people must be in, how unkind they must be being to themselves, or else they would not be projecting that outwardly. I felt such incredible compassion for their hurting – because I know from my own experience what that is like. People tell me I have always been kind and loving to them, even when I was in the depth of my pain, but I see my own unkindnesses, where I was so much less than loving in my confusion, and it is such a relief to let that just be as it is – not right, not wrong, just what “happened”. It’s all part of our evolution. We cannot do better, until we CAN.

That’s the way it is.  

So this commenter, and this woman who made fun of my work, are just Love in disguise. Showing up, holding up a mirror, and showing me the defenses I could still drop, how I might come to love and accept my whole-being even more, so that I can accept and love their whole-being even more too. They have come so I can see any place I might still be hiding, and to remind me that I can’t do anything about their current state of consciousness, and it’s none of my business anyway — Grace has a plan for all of us, one that I know nothing about!  My mind, my heart, my clarity – that’s my business. That’s where my work lies, not out there trying to remedy “theirs”.

Each of us is responsible for our own space, no one can do it for us.

So I will not say some snarky remark to those people, nor will I waft-off some spiritualized comment about how I’m sending them healing thoughts of love for their obvious pain – while my mind secretly says “F*** you A** hole” – and then drift out the doorway like I’m all above-and-beyond this… I will simply accept their invitation to further realize that I AM IT – the whole package is right here inside. There is nothing I am looking for out there, that I do not already have, and that I am NOT ALREADY, in the very nature of my being.

And I invite them, quietly and absolutely sincerely, to do the same thing for themselves.

Nobody deserves anything less.