SunAgape's Spot: trustworthy

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Resect Your Secret

I have a few minutes in the morning when my thoughts can go anywhere. This morning I noticed I was thinking about secrets. I won’t go so far as to say that secrets are the opposite of intimacy, but there is a correlation.

There are some secrets that I love to keep; what I got you for your birthday or winter holiday gift, for example.

I also love to keep your secrets. The image I get is that I put your secrets in a box, and lock it up tight.

My secrets are for telling.

I am doing my best to tell all my secrets to at least one other person. This takes trust, something I really stunk at for a long time. One thing that really helped me start to trust was realizing that there were people out there who had jobs where being trustworthy was in the job description. They have to keep secrets, you know, lawyers, clergy, therapists.

It was a good place to start. And there are some really good reasons for telling.

When I am living my natural life, I am relaxed, in my muscles, in my thoughts, in my emotions.

When I am harboring my secrets, I am clenched in my emotions with fear that someone will find out. I am clenched in my thoughts with trying to hold it down. And those things will often clench up my body. Ow.

When I am harboring my secrets, there are usually some big feelings attached, and when the thoughts of those secrets cycle through my unconscious mind, I will often end up feeling crazy because I don’t know why I am feel so bad, or scared, or angry. As I tell my secrets to trustworthies, that feeling of crazy subsides. Not only that, but I get better and faster at noticing when I have a lot of unconscious material whanging around in my head, and can address more effectively.

When I am harboring secrets, I am also disconnecting from my life. Ow. I cannot have a loving and respectful relationship with myself if I am denying my experience. That’s a big and controversial idea there, so give it a moment.

Why do I own my life? How am I responsible for me? What makes me feel connected?

If I am denying my experience, I am putting conditions on loving myself. Dang. I want to love unconditionally, but as long as I say “no” to my experiences, I am putting limits and boundaries on my love.

As I tell my secrets, and feel the feelings, I remove those edges. I can release the fear, or shame, or guilt, or anger I felt, and now I have more room inside for the nice stuff, loving myself, compassion for me, and you, wisdom, insight. My capacity for connecting with me, and connecting with you, grows, and I enjoy more intimacy, sweeter, and more profound, than I could have imagined before.

How have I changed from clamping on my secrets to feeling free?

Monday, April 14, 2014

Forgive Me, Again

One of the greatest blessings of being a grownup is feeling free. Free from resentments, free from fretting, free from being stuck in a bad mood. Free from a whole lotta stuff.

As I take responsibility for my stuff, I have the power to change things. Sometimes I can’t seem to change the outside aspect, but I can always change my inside aspect. One of the things I have the power to do is forgive.

A curious thing about forgiveness; in some cases, I can do it all at once, and it’s done. In other cases, I may have to forgive again and again before I can really let it go. I know I’ve succeeded when the memory of the situation doesn’t fire up a lot of emotion.

I was surprised yesterday to find that I still had some stuff that I needed to forgive, for at least the third time.

In order to forgive, I have to do some stuff.

I need to remember that I am not ‘justified’ in feeling resentment, or anger, or hurt, that those are feelings that eat me up. I need to remember that my natural state is soul-happy, and when I am feeling resentment, or anger,or hurt, for example, I am off-path.

Why do I choose to be free? Why am I happy? What makes me feel uplifted?

I need to remember that compassion serves me and resentment consumes me.

How am I compassionate? Why am I a caring person? What makes me let go?

I need to remember that we all make the best decisions we can make at the time, and that my hating on you for your decision only really hurts me. Unless I think revenge is a good idea, and it never is.

I need to remember that we are all at different points in our growing up, and while I am more grown up than some people, there are also some people more grown up than I. I want to emulate those grownupper grownups, and model good behavior for the others.

I need to remember that I also deserve forgiveness, and might wanna do that from time to time if I find me riding myself about stuff, or feeling crappy and spewing it, or whatever the case might be.

Sometimes, I can find a silver lining in a situation. Not always, but it sure pays to look. Sometimes, that silver lining may be that I learn something about me, or maybe about you. Sometimes, I may learn that you might not be someone whom I can consider trustworthy. Knowing that, I will stop trying to change you and getting hurt, and can accept you as you are, something we really do want to do with everyone.

It will always help when I can accept the how-it-is of a situation, rather than thinking it should be some other way. Once I do that, I am back in a place of my personal strength and power. And I can forgive again.

How have I changed from harboring hurts and resentments to enjoying the freedom of forgiveness?