Being Real

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you really wanted to explain how you feel - but were afraid to? Worried about being judged? Convinced it would lead to an unpleasant outcome? There are certainly times when keeping our opinion to ourselves makes sense. In our society, however, being able to truly tell people how you feel is treacherous territory.

For generations, we have been telling people things like, "stiff upper lip", "boys don't cry", "pick yourself up and get on with it" or, as Frank Sinatra said:

Take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

But don't let people know how you really feel, how hurt you are, how betrayed you feel or even how much you are feeling like giving up.

Imagine you are on a plane, watching a movie that really impacts you - do you let yourself cry? Most people will say no or, if they say yes, they will find some socially appropriate way to downplay it - "Sad movies always make me cry."

In my view, we are at a place were honest emotion is needed rather than emotions that tie to a particular political mantra. We are too much in the you are wrong and I am right dialogue these days. What if we can really connect, instead, to what we feel - people out of work; children injured and suffering; refugees fleeing desperate civil wars; as well as personal tragedies such as a man who I know who committed suicide recently.

The pattern of hiding what we feel starts in childhood and becomes engrained. In my growing up, I learned not to let anyone know if I was not feeling safe or I was afraid - that led to more bullying as then I was seen as weak. These patterns carry on into adulthood distancing us from people even very close.

Meditation offers us a chance to know how we are truly feeling using the body to tell us what's going on and granting permission for our emotions to speak to us. In other words, it allows us to be human especially to our own self. Vulnerability to the self, or as Brene Brown states:

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” 

To find the soul
Reach into the body
Feel the pain
Where fear resides

Look to the place
Where love might bloom
The heart
The centre of existence

Loss is searing
Bursting the gut
Tearing away the strength
Collapsing the legs

Eyes water
Sight fogs
The head pounds
Dizziness abounds

Crawl the pathway
Touch the soul
Caress the life
That you possess

© Peter Choate, 2017

 

Revenge

When we have been bullied, betrayed, abused, abandoned and denied, the thought of revenge is pretty common. Who amongst us has not thought about ways to get even or get back? Many of us may have even done it. It seems a natural reaction.

Yet, stepping back we often see that the revenge made things worse - it typically does. This is because revenge is the externalization of our emotions. The hope is resolution will be found there. It is not. The resolution is found within.

The thinking of, planning and acting out revenge each bring the toxicity deeper into our emotional and physical being. We are the ones who suffer in revenge. The compassionate position is to look inside and see the hurt while supporting the truth of the self. Aggression against us is a reflection of the emotional disturbance of the aggressor. Flailing back accomplishes little as the aggressor must learn to look inside to see the pain that leads to the aggression.

The relationship with self requires we be compassionate to the self. Feel the pain and observe it without owning the cause of it. Let it be. This can be very hard to do at times. These hurts, often very hidden, eat at us and can be hard to talk about. Self compassion and not revenge may not feel right as some confuse not engaging in revenge as a form of giving permission. It is not. It is about living differently from the aggressor.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performs the injury - Marcus Aurelius

To seek revenge, retribution is to throw oneself into the current hoping to avoid the rocks or to be drowned. The seeking of revenge is to become your oppressor.

This is not a mere idle, philosophical discussion. There is some much aggression in our society, much of it condoned, that an internal examination of compassion is needed for our own emotional health.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves - Alexander Pope

Meditation and mindfulness are about finding ways to look inside, observe the hurt, know that it will be impermanent, let it pass as opposed to becoming attached to it, and open up for other emotions to begin also passing through.

 I have carried the hurt with me

Over these many years

The pain is available whenever I choose to touch it

Yet the pain comes without invitation

Creeping up without notice

It comes from a touch, a smell, a sound, an image

I live with the pain

It is a life companion

It accompanies joy, sadness, hope, grief and even love

It overwhelms at times

It dominates like an oppressive power

It demands to be in control and fill me with self doubt

But then I hear the voice

It is tiny and soft

It is persistent

I try to hear it but the pain takes over

That voice will not be dismissed

It insists on presence

I have learned to focus upon the voice

It believes in me

It does not doubt me like I doubt myself

The voice is love

It stays with me

Can I love it

For to love it 

requires

I love myself

The voice is compassion

Acceptance

Love

© Peter Choate, 2016