I grew up in a violent home where my father hit my mother almost everyday, and not because he was drunk either. In fact, he hardly drank. He smoked but he didn’t seem to care for a drink. And he was a morbid Catholic attending every service every day, rolling his rosary beads and known to others as ‘Weeping Lopez’ because he would be on his knees praying with tears streaming down his face.
He exacted a rather vicious form of discipline on his 9 children, of which I am the youngest, often physically and always with language he himself would not tolerate from his kids.
Are you getting a picture of a deeply disturbed human being? Yes, he was and remained so till he passed at the age of 88 some 15 years ago. In contrast, my mother, though deeply abused, physically, emotionally and mentally, somehow managed to remain sane and even preserve a remarkably witty sense of humor.
One of my earliest childhood memories was of my father hitting my mother while unleashing a torrent of vile accusations while an older brother and I listened helplessly. Fortunately for me, I did not understand those accusations at the time but that didn’t stop my little heart from screaming silently and uncontrollably and my trembling little voice pleading with my brother, only 7 years older than me, ‘Stop him. Stop him’.
As a child growing up in this household, I would witness almost daily for at least 17 years, the sad, helpless and fearful look on my mother’s face and in her demeanor. Nothing pained me more.
So you see, the desire to stop the suffering of others was something I felt deeply and constantly for a very long time. It’s a desire that is still very much alive in me.
You see, without even realizing it, you suffer when you see another suffer. You hurt when they hurt. There is this aspect of you that resonates with others whether in a good feeling way or a bad feeling way. And at least as much as we want to stop the suffering of others, we want to stop our own suffering. We are motivated to stop their suffering because we’re wired to feel the relief, the freedom, the joy when their suffering stops. It simultaneously puts an end to our suffering. After all,
this persistent and compelling illusion of separation that we all have, that you and I are not connected because we are not physically conjoined like Siamese twins, is just that – an ILLUSION. On a deeper, non-physical level of reality, we are all inextricably interconnected.
But much as we’d like to see the suffering of another cease, whether by resolving a relationship breakdown, or working through a childhood wound or finding a fulfilling path in life, we know that we cannot do it for them, no more than I could save my mother from my father.
In the end, each person must reach a point when they themselves want to make the change.
They must reach a point when they feel that whatever crumbs of masochistic (and mostly unconscious) rewards they are receiving by remaining in a painful situation is simply not worth it, that there is a whole different world that they can enter if they’re willing to.
So when clients express to me their desire to help another person get through a difficult situation or condition, I do 2 things.
First, I help them clarify their intention. Are they seeking to rescue someone? Do they believe that they will feel good or better about themselves by rescuing someone? Is this how they derive their self-worth? And so on.
The 2nd thing I do is to explain to them how we can be of the greatest help to someone and that is what I’m going to talk about now.
The world of conditionality – Rules and Rewards – and the social conditioning that we are subjected to – the approved scripts of language and behavior that we live by – is a world that creates ‘givers’ and ‘takers’ or ‘receivers’. I give, you take. You give, I take.
So, if I have a friend who is going through a tough time, I seek to give her my love, my caring, my time, my availability, my words, my sympathy etc. In this kind of transacting, I can sometimes feel overwhelmed when a lot of giving seems to be required. Or I can feel drained because I have given too much. Or I can feel resentful because while I am giving and giving, I don’t feel I’m getting, if not from her (which I can probably understand), from anyone else either. So, I can feel that life is unfair. I can decide to drop the ball altogether and just quit and go and ‘give myself some ME’ time and love and attention.
You see, the way I feel is the result of my belief in the transacting nature of what I am doing where there is GIVING and TAKING.
But imagine if there was another model. A model whereby there is NOTHING TO GIVE AND NOTHING TO TAKE.
Instead, there is a space, a state of consciousness that I can get into where I feel deeply at peace, where there is no push or pull to do anything or be anyone, neither rescuer or hero or helper or more experienced other…
In this state, (and my clients will know this as their BLUE SKY state), there is complete serenity, wellbeing, joy, peace and love. And all I want to do is to get into this state. And when I am in this state, and whether I am physically present with my friend who is suffering or whether I am in a completely different physical environment, as long as I remain in this state, I am allowing for the possibility and indeed the PROBABILITY that she will sync into this same state herself. Because like me, she too has access to her BLUE SKY state/nature. This state of perfect wellbeing, whole and complete – our Buddha nature, if you like or our Christ consciousness.
Energetically, this means that when I tune into this frequency of wellbeing, I allow for the phenomenon of resonance to occur wherein my friend can tune into a similar frequency.
It’s like a tuning fork whose frequency is picked up by another object that can vibrate at the same frequency.
Now, in this state of completeness, wholeness and wellbeing, your friend is getting all the goodness she can possibly need, NOT FROM YOU but from within that unconditioned, BLUE SKY STATE that we ALL HAVE ACCESS TO.
By vibrating at that frequency, you allow her to match and resonate with the same frequency. To me, that’s the greatest help you can give anyone. Being in your own unconditioned and unconditional natural state of love and joy and peace and allowing another person to tune into that same state.
Try it, you’ll be amazed at its power to heal and empower – literally.MENTORING
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