Saturday, February 1, 2014

If The Truth Hurts, Then It Can Also HEAL


Mother always said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all", and for the most part, Mother was right.

However, there is a fine line between minding ones own business, and suppressing ones own honesty. I find in this age of political correctness, people are very hesitant to speak their minds, and yet also in this online age of technology and social network relationships when people do speak their minds they can do so in a very passive aggressive and tongue-in-cheek way. I don't see the value, health, or merit in glossing over ones feelings, as it only creates ripples of discord and imbalance in an honest discussion or discourse.

While it is good, and inspiring to only speak positive words to those around us, in an effort to "be the change we wish to see in the world", there is a fine line between being kind, and being a duplicitous enabler. Telling someone what you know they want to hear, in order to avoid confrontation, while suppressing your own truth, values and dignity only makes you feel like a "yes-man", and does nothing to enlighten or illuminate the other person. There is too much head patting going on in the world at large in my honest estimation, and all this type of coddling does is give people the wrong type of encouragement.

I try to speak from my highest place of love and respect at all times, but I will never simply roll over and tell someone what they wish to hear in order to placate them or avoid their negative response. This may cause some to find me harsh, or even arrogant at times. And yet to those who know me very well, it is abundantly apparent that it is love that motivates my honesty. If I did not love people, I would not invest myself in open discourse with them. It would be simple to nod and smile and leave people with a sense of righteousness if I did not care about them.

But I do care. I care for people in such a deep and innate way, and this goes so much further than simply caring for their feelings, or vanity, or insecurities. You see, I care for peoples hearts and souls. I care for the fullness of authenticity within each sovereign person; and as I have been nudged by others at times through catalytic confrontation, I also use my intuitive sense of knowing of others to push them to dig deeper within themselves than they are used to.

This relates to personal growth; something every person on the planet can benefit from. As the Oracle at Delphi's message related: "Know Thyself". And to truly know oneself, one must see through the false layers of persona one builds up over a lifetime; the ego, vanity, the bullish sense of righteousness we develop as we live life in this grand realm of duality.

Our personalities are very much like onions, as a dear animated ogre named Shrek once said. With each layer you peel back, you reveal yet another, deeper layer. And as you peel back these false layers of the self, and the personality, they can cause tears, and yet with each layer another reveals itself. And the analogy of the onion peel is a simple yet poignant way to depict the fullness of a journey of self-aware awakening. While we discover things about our false layers, we can often face things that make us cry, and feel guilty, and experience regrets. The key is to not get caught up in those feelings, but to ardently continue to explore, peel back, and explore the deeper darker recesses of our psyche into order to reach a truer place of self.

Because I feel a deep love, kinship, and sense of empathy towards people and the human condition, and because I myself seek this deep level of self-aware honesty, I find it absolutely counter productive to play at politics with people. I show my love through straight forward relating. Now let me define this, because I don't want to give you the impression that I blunder through life like a bull in an emotional china shop, stepping on toes for the sake of opening wounds that I feel need exposing. It isn't my place to point out the flaws of another person; I have enough of my own flaws to contend with and understand and accept when I cannot transmute them. This isn't about surface level issues such as the physical, but always about something deeper within that compels a person to avoid the truth of how they are feeling.

A few days ago, a very dear person to me said something which was full of bitter projection, and generalized condemnation towards immigrants. This statement caused me pain, because I knew it was misplaced. It wasn't this persons true intent to be seen as racist or intolerant; she simply was feeling poorly about herself and projected that to a faceless nameless entity of external people, to avoid facing her true feelings of dissatisfaction with herself. I weighed my options, and chose brute honesty, because I love her very much. I told her that her statement was general, and somewhat racist. And her response was volatile, full of anger, righteous indignation, and she quickly accelerated and pointed all her anger towards me. I allowed her to vent her rage at me, while I calmly and very honestly attempted to explain to her that she was projecting deep feelings of pain and anger towards me, because she was not willing to just deal with the feelings themselves.

And she chose to play victim, which I was sad to see, yet I know the experience will give her a great opportunity to rise above her own limited perception of herself, and the situation itself. I eventually withdrew, telling her I love her, explaining that we would connect again in the future, and honestly telling her that I will always be here for her, however am not her punching bag. And I'm quite certain she will continue to point her anger at me for as long as it serves her to do so. And eventually the righteous anger will simmer down, and those feelings of sorrow and fear will still sit within her, and she will have to face them honestly, and perhaps even realize that blaming strangers from other countries, or me, was just a smoke screen for her to avoid the truth all along.

This is what people do; it is the human condition at it's most raw and simplistic. We avoid the pain within, because it hurts so god damned much, and instead we channel it into anger, and point it outwards, rather than working on the internal issues where it originates.

And this is why it is so fundamentally important to me that I be as honest as I can be with others. Because I love this dear woman enough to see the truth of her feelings, and to know that she was having a very bad day. Now, wouldn't it be more loving or kind to simply let her have space to vent that frustration, you may be asking?

Let me ask you, if I had said nothing, and let her make her veiled intolerant comments about immigrants, would that have done her any justice? I would have given her the silent message that A: it is okay to hurt others to feel better about yourself, and B: I don't hold higher expectations from or FOR her.

Sure, I could have let it fly, ignored it, chalked it up to a "bad day", but again, this is a very dear person to me, someone who I have seen victimize herself in the past, by disowning her own responsibility for her words, actions, and decisions, and I want so much more for her. I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror if I did not contribute some catalytic emotional pressure towards her; something to help her get through the BS layers in order to find a deeper truth within her. And the deepest truth within any of us is love. The only thing keeping us from feeling, living, and expressing that love is fear. And fear manifests itself as pain, sorrow, loss, longing, and frustration.

So I'll say it again, because I love people so dearly, I will never cow-tow to the ego and the insidious games it plays. I will never pat people on the head and say "there there, you're right, you're very hard done by and life is so hard on you" because I know that experience is simply the bi-product of our previous thoughts, feelings, and actions.

To truly show love, respect, compassion and empathy, we must be willing to be unpopular, to be honest, and to stand up to the most vile manifestations of ego and anger.

And when this very dear person is ready to exhale, and let her anger go, and approach me honestly in her pain, and her sorrow, I will then take her gently in my arms and whisper words of assurance and validation to her. For then she will be in a place to receive my compassion. For now, she only wants to fight, because she is so unhappy within herself and doesn't know how to direct those complex feelings.

And this is the type of love I welcome into my life too. I have learned more through adversity than similarity in my life, and when people in my life have held a mirror up to me and challenged me to see my own hypocrisy and duplicity, I have raged, and become righteously angry and volatile; and then I have gone within, seen and faced the truth they have gifted me with, and grown.

That is all any of us can do; be honest, and grow beyond our previous limited perception, towards a fulfillment of love, and peace, and acceptance.

1 comment :

  1. Free Piano

    Excellent read, I just passed this onto a friend who was doing a little research on that. And he actually bought me lunch because I located it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch!

    ReplyDelete

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