Abuse
Question: My husband drinks too much. The problem I have with that (aside from it being deadly to his health) is his mean-spirited attitude toward me after he drinks. He says negative things about me that he would not normally say while sober. The crazy thing about it is, the next day he is repentant, telling me how much he loves me and how he would be nothing without me. How do I elevate myself above circumstances that seem to just take me on one roller coaster ride after another? How do I free myself from negativity about his abuse of me? I want to understand the truth about the power this situation has over me!
Answer: Nothing can grow true, strong, and healthy that lives under a shadow… save those creatures that thrive in the dark. Your soul, your heart and mind, are not meant to live in the endless shadow of fear. I cannot and would never tell someone what to do with a situation such as yours, other than to say that I would not tolerate it for longer than two heartbeats. If your description is accurate, then so is the prescription for the condition. If one doesn't become active in helping an addict of any kind, then one is enabling that person, pure and simple. He does not know what he does to himself, or to you. That much is evident. This means he will never know, unless there is an intervention of some sort. And that is up to you to do, or not. It is what you have been unwilling to attend to that is the real problem. Truth, God, never shows us something that needs to be done without providing us with all that we need to succeed with the task, regardless of how intimidating it may seem, but you will have to prove this to yourself.
(Correspondence, 2006)
Question: How does taking responsibility for your role in conflict help you forgive others? Is it that it makes you more sympathetic to people who have hurt you? Should it help you recognize that the other isn't as much at fault as you thought they were?
Answer: We tend to blame others as we do -- a negative act that basically makes any form of forgiveness impossible -- because we believe that we would not do what they did to us, given the same set of circumstances. But as we work to take responsibility for our own interior life -- by becoming increasingly aware of our own reactions and their expression -- we start to see (directly) how often we are made to act against ourselves because of some pain in us that causes us to lash out at others. As we grow to understand our own pain in this way, and assume responsibility for it, we realize that others share in this kind of inner conflict and must be as helpless as we once found ourselves to be. Real compassion is born from this new kind of higher self-awareness, and with it comes genuine forgiveness.
(Correspondence 2006)
Question: Painful episodes help us grow as people and let go of who we've been, but how do you get from feeling victimized to feeling empowered?
Answer: The best way to work through the flood of negative thoughts and feelings that come with having been a victim of something is to stop agreeing to feel that way! And -- seen or not -- the only way we can go back through some bitter moment in our life is reliving it. This we do not have to do; our continuing conflict is by unconscious consent. Which brings me to an exercise I call: "Stop Re-Visiting the Scene of the Crime." Here is how it works: Our attention belongs to us. Nothing in the universe can "make" us think about something that we would rather not think about. So, whenever we find ourselves reliving some terrible memory of how we were once victimized, it's because we have unknowingly been drawn back to relive that scene of our suffering that we now resist! And apart from our unconscious relationship with that dark movie running across the screen of our mind, there is no event to wish hadn't happened. Our task is to wake up and realize what is taking place within us and, for our discovery, "walk out" of the theatre into the sunlight of a mind now awake to itself.
Question: It seems we must always make allowances for those who abuse us. We must accept that they are suffering, but our suffering goes unseen, unheard. Is that how it is? We see the pain of others in their cruelty to us, but those cruel actions leave wounds that are very deep. The cruel acts of the parents must be tolerated and forgiven because for them to have acted as they did they must be suffering even worse… so the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children and the children shall remain silent and learn to accept and forgive. Is that how it is? I am trying to understand.
Answer: We have all been hurt, betrayed, by others. Of this there is no doubt. But ask yourself a very simple question: What is gained by hurting another regardless of what they have done to us? If we can see ourselves at all, be honest about what we see, the answer is inescapable. The only "profit" in returning punishment to the one who punishes us is the livelihood of the negative state in us that drives us to take such an action.
So you see, it isn't a question of standing by -- silently -- and hating that one has chosen to endure another's hatred. It all boils down to our being willing to see that the anger and resentment we harbor for another always sinks our "ship" first. When we really understand the truth of this self-defeating darkness in us that calls itself the light as it calls out the darkness in another, then we are able to let go -- not because we are better than they, or strong or even spiritual, but because we want to have our own life more than we want to belong to the dark states that take us over.
Question: I was sexually abused at a very young age. Its effects have permeated my life. This has affected my self-esteem, my relationships, and is, I believe, the root cause for past substance abuse and a lifelong weight problem. In as much as possible I have forgiven my abuser(s). Now then, how do I forgive myself, improve my self-esteem, my life, and the lives of my children? I no longer choose to remain a victim and wish to fulfill my purpose in life.
Answer: The real problem -- strange as it may seem at first -- is not your past. It's that something in you has formed a life around its revisitation and now that sense of yourself has become the problem. So the healing you need isn't in some way to forgive yourself, but in coming to understand that who you are NOW is not that girl who lost her way. You cannot change the past, but you can change the way in which you choose to live in the present moment; and that new choice changes you . . . which changes everything in the only real way it can be changed.
