Trusting Ourselves

I had a lovely conversation with a friend recently about “why things happen”. We agreed there is the possibility that things are just random. Stuff happens – and it is our lot to sort out how we’ll respond, given this or that in our lives.

I lean toward thinking that we may have something to do with our lot in life, though. Not in the pejorative way that many of us were taught to believe; ie: roiling with guilt about what we did wrong to bring this craziness into our lives. But rather, that there is a natural trajectory to the things we think, say and do. There are consequences of the sort that to push a ball in one direction is to increase the likelihood it will move in that said direction. There are other parameters to deal with. The slope of the land. Whether the ball is full of air and so on. But still – our action has an influence.

And so it is in our lives – any given tendency toward which we lean is likely to reap some sort of benefit, for better or for worse.

The secret for many of us, laden as we are by the aforementioned guilt, is to unhinge from the self-splattering we can get into in response to the circumstances of our lives. The same lines of reasoning would inform us that to beat ourselves up is to provoke another whole set of circumstances in which we are the victims of our own brutality. And, I notice, that is what often happens.

In our good-hearted search for the lesson to be learned in the conundrums of our lives, we tend to cast blame. “Why did this happen?” is often construed to mean “What did I (or you) do wrong to get this mess?” To dig deeper in the undoing of the maladaptive messages of our own mind is to question that premise at its base. Forget that sort of figuring out.

Ask, instead, “Given this (and this and this), what is the best/kindest/gentlest response I can come up with here?” What I find is that if there is some awakening to be had in terms of that which I may have done to provoke any given situation, it will most likely be revealed in a useful manner under these conditions. A gentle environment in which to come to revelation.

Let that be our goal, then: to be safe enough with our own selves that we dare to reveal that which we most need to see. Plenty will come out of hiding fast enough when we do this. Because we have proven ourselves to be trustworthy where it matters the most: to our very own selves.

The Original Sin

It was a shock to discover my mother disliked me. I had blamed myself for all our mutual shortcomings from the beginning of time as I knew it. Of course. It was what she taught me was true.

When my mother had her stroke, I was the one who took care of her, mending her as best I could – both as a dutiful daughter and as her physician. It was all I could do to hold myself together – in pieces sewn in the fabric of “never-good-enough”. My efforts to teach her to talk, with the help of the best therapists I knew of, were in vain. It wasn’t until much later that I realized it was her effort lacking. Not mine.

How does this happen? This tendency, especially in women, to denigrate their very own being – and then to pass it on? I think of the Original sin as that time when we first turned against ourselves. When we began to believe – in some part of our psyche – that we were not O.K. When we, in effect, turned against ourselves and therefore against that life we represent.

This begins a war with ourselves that is long-ranging. Brother against brother (Cain and Abel). Mother against daughter. And, most especially, against our selves. We have found fault, because the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” represents our capacity to judge. To decide, in our minds, that some things are good and some bad (“evil”). Ever since that fateful day – and what did that really represent? – we have been in trouble within ourselves. Suffering.

Because the things we judge most represent our very own selves. We decide upfront, based on some external standard, what parts of us are “good” and which “bad”, and then turn against ourselves for those things we wish were not true about us. We designate part of us as off-limits. Unacceptable. Repugnant. To be eliminated. And the flagellation we endure in the name of this judgment can be harsh, indeed.

Many of the so-called self improvement programs on which we embark are really studies in self-punishment. Continually trying to rid ourselves of one thing or another. One characteristic or another. Trying to “better ourselves”.

Buddhist psychology describes this is another way; we crave or hate. The dual functions of wanting what we don’t have and not wanting what we do show up in every religion as the bane of our existence. The cause of all suffering.

When my mother died, I was with her. Rocking her, as her breath became more labored and she could no longer resist. I reminded her: “Right here, God loves you. The Angels are holding you. You did nothing wrong. You are innocent.” She finally began to lighten in the last hour, tears streaming down her face (and mine). As I felt her relax in my arms, I felt a huge chunk of resistance to letting myself be loved melt away, too.

The flash of her exit was also a flash of recognition for me. I know – absolutely know - that coming to a place of self-acceptance is the road back home. It may be arduous getting there, but is instantly easier when that first step is taken. I am also certain that it is not me that my mother hated, but the lot in life in general that she found herself conscripted to. I was but a bit player in that schema.

Amazingly, accepting her more deeply has also expanded my heart in acceptance of myself. Firmly and surely, I know that I am my mother’s daughter. And that is a real fine thing to be.