At the risk of being judged for lack of appreciation for my privileged life, I’d like to dedicate this blog to a direct and possibly an unpopular discussion concerning the terms:
Gratitude.
Forgiveness.
We create our own reality.
This trio of ideas, beautiful in their essence, have been robbed of all meaning from overuse. They’ve turned into clichés, a lazy way of describing beliefs and emotions that are much more complicated than their names suggest.
Gratitude, the first one on the list, can be tricky. Listing the things we're grateful for is a wonderful thing to do to remind ourselves of our good fortune, but it’s not a substitute for dealing with what’s actually happening in this moment. What are we doing about the things that are causing us pain right now? We can’t just write them off and find something more pleasant to think about. Our pain is our pain even if other things in our lives are good. I believe that comparing the intensity of our pain to someone else’s and using the idea of gratitude to bury it, is a diversion from the current situation.
I often turn to the teachings of Stephen Levine, one of the most compassionate spiritual leaders of our time, to explain and understand my point of view. He teaches us not to dismiss any of our feelings. We don't have to be grateful. We don’t have to be happy. We don't have to be anything in particular. We can just choose to bolster the courage to drop into the core of our discomfort, find the resistance inside of us and do our best to soften it. He doesn’t suggest that we list other things in our lives that we feel good about. That isn't the point. The point is that we are searching for a way to comfort ourselves and ease our current suffering. “Let the skin, the flesh and the muscles soften,” he guides us. “Push nothing away and the suffering will lessen. Then you can open to the gentle awareness that this is the healing you took birth for.” And that is something to be grateful for.
The second word in the trio is forgiveness. When we forgive, we feel lighter and better about ourselves, but it isn’t a one shot deal. I wish I could say, “I forgive you,” and have done with it, but it doesn't work that way. No matter how much we think we've forgiven someone, if and when something happens to trigger our pain, it’ll come roaring back in all its ugliness. It’s about repetition and staying aware when the feelings come back to haunt you, being in touch with how you feel about a wrong that has been done to you. This approach is simple: We can't forgive anyone unless we start treating ourselves with kindness. And this teaching in all of its simplicity is one of the most difficult undertakings we will ever face.
A popular spiritual book defines forgiveness as: believing that what your brother did to you has not occurred. That doesn’t work for me because it involves dismissing your feelings and pretending that the truth is not the truth. I was attending one of Mr. Levine’s death and dying workshops when he told us the following story. I paraphrase:
“If you were told you were completely forgiven for everything you have ever done,” he asked us, “what is it in the heart that rejects that self-mercy?” He said, “I was meditating by a flowing river one day, when I heard a voice inside of me say, ‘Stephen, I forgive you for everything, the pain you caused other people and the pain you caused yourself. You are not guilty.’ I breathed deeply, I felt my heart open and I felt relief – until I said to myself, “Yes, but . . . .”
He couldn't give it to himself, but he kept on trying. The work is to have mercy on ourselves with the goal of forgiveness as a motivator. Once we find some mercy in our hearts for us, we can find mercy for someone else.
This brings us to number 3: “We create our own reality.” Granted, we can see how our thoughts and our attitude affects the way we feel, but if we look deeper into the phrase, it feels short-sighted to me. And a little bit arrogant. We can appreciate our circumstances and believe that we are responsible for the good things in our lives, but how do we explain people who are ill, kidnapped, abused or murdered? The idea that they created these things is toxic and has anti-healing qualities as it adds guilt to an already bad situation. In Mr. Levine’s workshop, a woman stood up in tears and said, “I created my cancer but I can't create the cure so I deserve to die.”
Thinking in this way is so cold-hearted. It wounds us deeper than we are already wounded and it gives us permission not to help each other. If you created the painful circumstances in your life, if you got yourself into this fix, why should I bother to help you?
This trio of ideas can be a weapon or a healing balm. They can be boring and overused or they can take you on a journey to the center of things. It all depends on how aware you are when you use them. When I’m writing and I come to a stopping point in my work, I go back and remove repetitions, clichés or sloppy descriptions of things and states of mind. I remove words that feel lazy and I search for a more true and interesting way to communicate, an approach that feels like my own instead of anyone else’s. When we find new and innovative ways to describe our feelings, we awaken our creativity and we are inspired to find new ways to heal and he healed.
Thank you for each of these insights. It is true that "The reality of man is his thought.", but the person who said that 'Abdu'l-Baha, was also very clear that the emphasis was on thought that was complete in its unfolding-not on willy-nilly, capricious mind-bites that offered no consideration of others, and even less consideration of ourselves. Gratitude for the horrible things that happen and forgiveness of those who DO horrible things, also cannot be just knee-jerk reactions, based on chiche' and cannot be of a nature that just encourages perpetrators to continue with their horrible acts.