21 days day 3 notes
Click here to load reader
-
Upload
seerelationshipsdifferently -
Category
Education
-
view
58 -
download
1
description
Transcript of 21 days day 3 notes
21 Days, Day 3: Some (brief) additional notes
How often do I have to go back to my past? I’ve done lots of work with it already!
Honestly, I don’t know. What I do know for myself is that new insights continue to be revealed to me over time, and that my desire not to go back there, however far into my journey I am, is usually resistance. I realised recently that my teacher, Duane O’Kane, who lost his father many years ago, is still in relationship with his father, and continues to do his work on him. We go there until we’re done. And all I can tell you is that I’m not done yet, and I personally don’t anticipate ever being. It’s a lifelong journey.
But I don’t want to roll around in my muck all day long!
Neither do I want that for you, or for myself. We do this work precisely so that we don’t have to. But if and when you get triggered, the lessons from ACIM apply: “I am never upset for the reason I think” (i.e. the trigger in front of me isn’t causing my pain, only activating it), “I see only the past,” “I see nothing as it is now.” The roots of our misperception of who we are and what is really going on in this life run deep, a bit like those annoying weeds in the garden – you know, the ones that refuse to be dug or pulled up unless quite a lot of effort is exerted.
What I can share though is that over time, I come to have longer periods of happiness. In my early recovery I felt like the pain would never end. Today, I had an experience of going into my stuff in my relationship and coming out the other side of it into beautiful connection in under five minutes. That to me is a miracle.
You said this isn’t a blame seeking exercise.
No, it’s not – but I’d like to clarify two things.
1. Blame is a natural part of the process. If I have a belief that who I really am – my core self – is somehow flawed, unacceptable or unworthy, you bet your bottom dollar I’ll try to stop other people from seeing that. Becoming a people pleaser or ‘yes person’ is one way of doing that – the pleasing offering what I hope is a substantial enough compensation for my inherent inadequacy. Blaming others is another approach – not better or worse, just part of the ego’s armoury. It kind of puts soap operas, pub brawls and bitchy gossiping into perspective – imagine if underneath it you saw a little child confessing that he or she doesn’t believe they are good enough.
2. I believe it’s important to find or create a safe place to express your blame with the intention of becoming accountable. Try to sidestep owning it leads, in my experience, to ‘leaking’ – sideways comments that have a nasty sting in their tail. On the other hand, simply dumping your stuff on others is not responsible, fair and rips BOTH of you off. They don’t get to see who you really are, and neither do you!
3. Trying to jump straight into forgiveness without fully owning the blame we have apportioned to the people we deemed responsible is, I personally find, insufficient. True forgiveness comes when we understand what the other person or people were going through, and I haven’t yet found a way to do that without owning up about my attack thoughts. Why would I deny them? Because people
might not like me, or it might swallow me up? Again, pushing something away and trying to just logically forgive not only denies me the chance to see the situation through new eyes and transform my relationship with the person, but it also shuts down the qualities that are so present in blame – passion, focus, commitment, presence, and many more.