Sunday, January 11, 2015
Lesson 11: “My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.”
How would we practically apply such a lesson as this? Suppose we are feeling troubled because we have been doing really nice things for people to demonstrate our love, but the other people are not appreciating us in ways that feel satisfying. Sometimes we can want to hear appreciation because it helps us complete the cycle of giving. When we give in some emotional or practical way, then it can feel really good to hear from that person that the gift was a gift indeed to them. We like it if they see the gift as a blessing and want to send love back in the form of a thank-you (which I believe is all about love).
We can feel triggered and upset because we don’t feel that others are seeing the greatness we bring to the gifts we give to them. What do we do if we find we are hurting? Ideally, this is a great place to stop and look with God’s eye at the appreciation we didn’t feel we got. We can see that in truth this is a meaningless request- so we can have a nudge to not be attached to the outcome of what we think we wanted.
When we see the whole situation and our thoughts as meaningless, it helps to lessen the load of the baggage or upset we are carrying. We get that that in is not in fact what we truly need because we didn’t get it. God must have a different plan for an emotional destination that is more appropriate. Know when we see the interaction as meaningless, often this is enough to simply open up the smallest amount of space for forgiveness when in the moment it seems like a lost cause.
Part of our job is to see that in fact what we see is meaningless and so it has no impact at all on the wellness of our hearts. The appreciation is maybe not what we need to hear right now.
But sometimes what we need more than anything is a colossal dose of self love. If we don’t feel appreciated or it was a regular thing to not get appreciated, this giving love to self is a process where we find peace with the situation. Peace is our ideal outcome. Therefore, let’s first allow the realization of the meaninglessness to soften some hard insistence that this happen. If the response of not being appreciated feels like a hard blow, what we need to do is take a step back from the relationship. One of the ways we can heal ourselves is not being open to need the appreciation. This can help to get us away from the line of fire of the comments we heard which were distressing.
But the biggest and most important part of this process of dealing with what we think are unpleasant responses from people is to above all else love ourselves. This kind of situation is a call for love. We like to be able to receive love from others. But sometimes if we think others are not behaving in overtly loving ways, what we can do is open the channel between us and God and allow the love to flow into us with no reserve.
If we know that this kind of situation is going to upset us, then we must take to heart this is a call for love. If the other person is not in a place of offering love right now, then take the reins and make priority our own needs being attended to with the help of God alone. Make sure the gift of self-love is especially warm and sweet and respectful and all that you might have wanted from the other person.
Then forgive everyone and forgive ourselves. But then go back to giving ourselves love. This is a process that can never be done too much.