Dealing With Difficult People - Including Oneself

Sometimes we all have progress black-outs. A black-out is what I call those moments when you forget everything you have learned and act very unconsciously. I'll be first to admit I have them. Though they are less frequent these days, they still happen.

At one of my favorite restaurants. Wouldn't it be great if everyone were vegetarian?

Last Saturday I taught some of my students something and the very next day I had a black-out on the same topic. Ouch. The past few days have been a painful process of relearning and rebirth. I talked to a friend who described the doctrine of Christ a little differently, and I love it. She said it is not linear. It is not: Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Holy Ghost, Endure to the Eeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnndddddddddd.

It is more like a circle. As we are enduring, we come to new crossroads where we have to use faith again, repent (change) and then are reborn, not through baptism again but through the sacrament or through the very personal experience of having Christ change our hearts. This will happen again and again as we continue on our journey (endure.)

I remember doing a powerful rebirthing kriya in 2010 and having an ecstatic experience. After that I really thought that was all the rebirth I would ever need. Ha! This is why there are dozens of rebirthing kriyas and not just one. Jesus Christ is always working on my heart.

Wouldn't it be awesome if everyone was a great as your best friend.

The issue that I am still working on is the one that seems to be on everyone's minds right now and that is, how do I get along in this world or in my ward, or in my own family with people who are so different than me? Some words from M. Katherine Thomas's book Spiritual Lightening found me and presented what many of us may already know in a fresh way. Here they are:

... we may have misconceptions about how to be happy and how to establish relationships of at-one-ment with others. We may think these relationships have to be ideal; we may think that the people around us have to be ideal, that they would have to feel and think the way we do in order to be happy, or that we have to think as they do in order to have the spirit of at-one-ment between us. We may feel that many of the people around us do not value what we do, do not meet our hopes and dreams, and we may despair that we will ever experience at-one-ment with some of the people God has placed in our lives.

Here indeed is the reality of telestial living--nearly every day someone will do to us one or more of the following: belittle, be insensitive to needs, show indifference....

She goes on to list a bunch of things such as: ignore, abuse, inconvenience, make us feel unimportant, demand, misunderstand, accuse, threaten, and otherwise mistreat us. To this first part one may answer, as I did: "And?" But read more:

Maybe the purpose for such experiences can be answered with this question: How shall we ever learn Christ-like love unless we have a chance to practice it in the face of the opposites? Every disrupted relationship, whether in our own home or within a particular group or community, is a chance to forge the divine nature in ourselves and prepare for that endless state of happiness....

It would appear that the people in our lives are there are for important reasons. We stand in a sacred relationship to them because we and they cannot be made perfect without each other. Nevertheless, we remember that seldom are they given to us primarily to satisfy us. Rather they are given to us to make possible a much greater love than we would have been capable of in a situation where everybody agreed with us, everybody liked us, everybody saw everything the way we do. These abrasive people in our lives are friends in disguise. They are there to teach us to perfect love in ourselves, not to perfect them. 

Yogi Bhajan was big on this concept. He always said the the worst teacher is one that will tell you you are doing great all the time. He always said that when you meet your true teacher it will be the worst day of your life!  It is true that I got a little spoiled on my tour. I was around so many amazing people who appreciated me and liked me and wanted to learn from me. Coming home was a bit of a let down. And the Father of lies was really trying to work that angle on me.

He (Satan) has only a few strategies, which you can learn about in 2 Nephi. One is flatterey: "You are so smart, so good, so much better than... You deserve xyz..."

He also uses the lulling: "All is well in Zion. Nothing bad could ever happen. You don't have to put on your spiritual armor today." 

All is well in Zion.

The third strategy is to stir people up to anger one with another. He does this in subtle ways sometimes, by trying to hook us into getting offended or irritable or to pass blame. Sometimes it is anger at ourselves, which quickly can be transfered to others.

He was using the first two on me for a few weeks to lay the groundwork, but finally when I got angry I started to pay attention. I felt so awful one day and and I think I offended everyone I met. (Of course that is their choice, but I pushed buttons.)

I finally realized that it was evil spirits and cast them out and felt better, but not as good as new. I still had shame about my black-out had some programming to dismantle and that is still ongoing. But I praise God for the experience and showing me these unhealed parts of me.

And as I have sought to heal these unhealed parts of me I have found that just reading a great quote and pondering it is not enough to actually change my relationships. And since I know you have similar concerns, I'd like to share with you what I am doing.

I know all the typical LDS interventions, such as prayer, fasting, temple attendance, scripture power. I am a regular at these things. But sometimes, for reasons I mentioned in this post, we subconsciously block the healing power of the Atonement and place a hard shell around our hearts. And though it is subconscious, it is still our choice to do that and God honors agency. There are a few things that can break through the wall or knot of the heart. One is prana, which comes in on the breath. It is the light of Christ. I explain it in my book here. 

The power of the Word can also clear and clean the subconscious. And I have been consistently meditating and using the purifying effects of the sound current in every way I can.

Imagine!

I have also been using imagery. The power of the imagination to break through maya (the illusion or veil) is more than we can even understand. I have been going into imagery state to create a peaceful accepting loving feeling and collapse some triggers. Also, with Jesus Christ as my guide, and in a circle of safety, I call in the higher selves of some of the people I wish to make things right with. In some cases they are mere acquaintances. Others are family members or other people close to me. Once I saw all of the other person's pain flash before my eyes and I was able to understand where they came from and have compassion on them.

This has been an amazing experience. Sometimes I think the other person feels it and I can see a change in them, but mostly it changes me.

I think one of the big things I need to come home to learn was that I am not in my current ward to teach them anything but to learn from each of them and to learn all this.

As M. Katherine Thomas so beautiful states;

We do not need ideal relationships to be happy; we can live happily with less than ideal because each relationship can be enriched with that spirit of at-one-ment with so greatly improves the quality of our personal emotional lives.

The truth is that we co-create all of our experiences. Sometimes this is hard to own. But once we own it, God can direct us how to dismantle this programming and heal and become response-able instead of reactionary. The relationships may not change, but our state of happiness and our spiritual development certainly will.

Wahe Guru for all my teachers, known and unknown, past and future, who have shown me the unhealed parts of me.