It’s breaking point. You’re about to tear your hair out because your partner (boss/friend/family member/community) has said that hurtful thing again which makes you want to scream at the top of your lungs about how they’re making your life miserable.
You’ve done the sitting down and talking it through thing more times than you remember so it’s fair to conclude that it’s the end of the line.
Familiar?
Hang on. Before bolting for the nearest exit let’s break down what appears to be going on from what’s actually happening.
Your rationale may seem water tight. But let’s do a comparison.
Let’s look at this scenario from the perspective that person X can cause you to feel a certain way (I’m going to call this perspective; misunderstanding). Alongside the perspective that you and they are not separate individuals, you and they are one being (I’m going to call this perspective; understanding).
Misunderstanding:
It appears that person X is a separate individual and therefore it appears that their actions can impact you positively or negatively.
This is a misunderstanding about the nature of life. It arises from forgetting who we really are. We all forget. We’re trained to forget.
Conditioning begins at birth, if not in the womb. We’re trained to believe that objects, circumstances, places, other people, nations are separate entities.
This conditioning gets reinforced by our five physical senses which relay information to the brain to support the belief we are separate bodies of matter.
But our physical senses cannot deliver the awakened perception of our sixth sense; our intuition, inner knowing or spiritual sight.
Our spiritual sight works like a lazer beam. It cuts through the misunderstanding that we are separate beings and sees pure Consciousness at the heart of all apparent objects and encounters.
Understanding:
Contemplate this; you and they are not separate bodies. You, they, all of us, are one being of energy/Consciousness.
Consciousness shapes itself into infinite forms; people, trees, tables, cakes, apples. But when it comes down to it, when we really drill down and investigate, no thing is an actual ‘thing’. Everything is energy.
Thus, person X cannot impact your experience. Not because they don’t exist according to your physical senses, not because they don’t do hurtful things but because they don’t exist separate from you.
To state it another way; if you and person X are one being, person X has no power to impact you because person X is not a thing.
Reach inward to remember who you really are:
The more we remember our true nature; Consciousness. The more our nature upwells as unconditional love, compassion and understanding.
Then a cascade of benefits rains down.
Unconditional love gives us the capacity to love person X no matter what. We may dislike them, we may choose to side step or leave them. But when we act from the space within that is unconditional our actions flow as love, not fear or anger.
Compassion gives us the capacity to forgive and feel our common humanity with all humans no matter what they have done or not done.
Understanding gives us the capacity to recognize the state of mind person X comes from; to discern the degree to which they live in a misunderstanding of who they really are. Our understanding helps us communicate from the heart which helps wake up their own understanding.
An upwelling of love in the face of another human who has forgotten their nature makes us immune to hurtful comments. Like water slides off a ducks back we take criticism, blame and disrespect less personally and thus become less reactive.
It’s important to note that a love based response does not turn us into a doormat who rolls over when someone wants to grind us down.
On the contrary.
The more we know who we really are the more we access clarity, fresh ideas and agency that move our life forward.
What do you do when you’re about to quit your relationship with person X?
Ask; “Who is it that I want to leave?”
The more it looks to you that person X is to blame for the way you feel the more you’re moving away from the love, compassion and wisdom of your true self.
When you recognize that you’re in a moment of forgetting don’t fight or try to fix anything. Simply see that this is a human moment of forgetting.
Your attention, untangled from misunderstanding, will automatically turn inward in the direction of who you really are. From here your heart will flow clarity, love, compassion, insight and new possibilities.
What then occurs to you to do comes from love not anger or hate.
If it’s clear to stay the course you’ll be freshly hydrated with love and hope.
If it’s clear to leave you’ll leave cleanly, like the swan that glides across a pond without a trace. Because love and understanding only create ripples of harmony and peace.
