Should I be feeling angry? Should I stop feeling embarrassed? Am I allowed to feel sad?
Clearly, these are questions that suggest there is another authority besides the thing that I call ‘I’ that I am mindful of and that I must accede to and that if I don’t, I’d be in worse trouble than I already am. I’d feel even more guilty, even more unworthy, even more incapable.
There is no other ‘authority’. You are it. The buck stops with you. You decide what you are going to think and what you are willing to believe. And you decide what you will allow yourself to feel and what you will do with your feelings. In the meantime, perhaps the following might help.
We ‘should’ never deny our feelings, for if we did, where would they go? They are messengers and until and unless you hear what they have to say, they’re going nowhere. Sure you can ignore them, suppress them, distract yourself from them, but that will only mean they will lurk around and add to themselves with each successive experience until at some point, having accumulated to such a level, they become uncontainable causing you to erupt.
Such was the case with Mandy who continued to deny her resentment and sense of rejection around her former boyfriend, Tim. Instead, she sought to substitute those feelings as quickly as they arose with her desire to be gracious, to be ‘above it all’, to be in control, to be big-hearted. After all, she was in a mentoring program and immersing herself in teachings from various spiritual masters.
Our feelings are messengers that help us navigate our way through life while providing us with opportunities for insight and enlightenment
She should be able to deal with these unpleasant feelings. In fact, she should not even be having them. Those were her beliefs despite the fact that her mentor had repeatedly advised that all feelings, good and bad, must be allowed to arise and express themselves fully within the mind. That, in fact, these feelings provided opportunities for insight and enlightenment when allowed to be fully experienced.
So, it wasn’t a surprise when she finally cracked. ‘He has been manipulative. I feel used. And he won’t apologize. I need him to apologize’.
Why? Why does he need to apologize? So that you won’t feel so embarrassed for relenting and sleeping with him even when you’d agreed that the relationship wasn’t going in the direction you wanted it to? So that you can convince yourself that he’s a bad sort and not worthy of you even when it’s really you who are feeling unworthy?
And how has he been manipulative? Because he said things that you wanted to hear and which made you willing to sleep with him? By that standard, might you also have been ‘manipulative’ in rewarding him for his words?
So, here’s the thing. This is the ego/conditioned mind doing its best work. It seizes upon any thread, no matter how fine or how short and no matter which side of the fence it is, yours or his, with which it can spin a story.
And when it has exhausted all the things you should have done and said or not done and said, it jumps over to all the things that he should have done and said or not done and said. And then back to you and then back to him, endlessly replaying the offensive scripts and composing the ideal, ‘should have’ scripts. Back and forth, back and forth.
And as long as it does that, it can keep you away from coming to terms with the deeper, embedded storylines –
- That you really want to have a lasting relationship with him despite declaring that you have accepted that it won’t happen.
- That you really, really want to find someone special that you can call your own and have exclusive rights to
- That you really, really want to be a special someone to someone, the one person that they will worship and adore and give up all else for
- That you really want to feel so deeply and unconditionally loved
Is it wrong to want to feel special and loved unconditionally?
Not at all. But to chase after it rather that allow that natural state to arise within us is insane. Chasing after something never gives us what we want. How can it when what we want is what we already are?
What we most want is what we naturally and already are
And to chase after it in all the ways that we typically do is also insane, never giving us what we want and always making us feel even less worthy, less authentic, less loved.
At some point, you are going to have to decide that you’ve had enough story, that you’re done with story-fying and story-fixing your life, that you’re not going to allow your conditioned mind to generate more story, scattering red herrings all over the place.
At some point, you’re going to have to decide to step out of story and step into what is real, story-less, free.
At some point, you’re going to have to decide to finally be you – real, unrehearsed, fresh, unconditioned, unconditional, free, needing nothing, wanting nothing yet having all.
At some point, you’re going to have to decide that more than anything else, you want to experience the ‘power of you-now’ for there is no other ‘you’ than the ‘you’ in the forever now.
And when you do, you’ll know that nothing else is real.MENTORING
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