The most recent teleclass on Money (called Earning Money) was so powerful for me. One participant identified this stressful belief in her life….a common and very painful belief:
The Universe Is Punishing Me!
For me, this belief can be present in a sort of underlying, secretive way. I can strut around like I don’t believe it, but there is a little seed of doubt….even if I DON’T BELIEVE THIS THOUGHT.
The ways this thought pop in as being possible are with what I call the old One-Two Punch of IF-THEN.
IF – THEN. It starts with a fabulous logical, even mathematical line of thinking. The mind just LOVES analyzing if/then.
- If I jump off this cliff, then I will fall to the bottom down below
- If I sit in sun and my skin is light, then it will burn
- If I take that money, then I will get caught and go to jail
- If I get sick, then I ate the wrong food
- If my partner breaks up with me, then I was too mean/critical/bitchy/nervous (etc)
- If I lose my job or lose my money, then I did something wrong
- If someone opposes my success, then I got too powerful
Since I am experiencing something that feels painful, I am being punished.
Is that true?
The internal karma police can get really nit-picky about events and experiences…the mind very interested in finding out what went wrong, who did it, and how to balance things back to FAIR.
Punishment is defined as an aversive experience, something unpleasant. People locked up in jail are being punished for committing crimes. People who are flogged are being punished for bothering or hurting someone, maybe someone in authority over them. People who are shunned or cast out of a group are being punished for difficult behavior.
Punishment begins to look like anything unpleasant. People will think they are being punished if they get cancer, or lose money in the stock market, or if a friend withdraws contact.
But can you know that this is true?
No, I sure can’t. I can’t know if its true that anyone is being punished when troubling things occur to them, or to me. In fact, with The Work and inquiry, over time, I can’t even be sure if something IS troubling.
I find that when I’m already down the path of “logical” (ha ha) thinking that I KNOW when something wrong is happening, or something right is happening, and I’m 100% in-the-know about it…then I see how fast my mind takes a position without questioning it.
It’s definitely NOT relaxing to believe the stressful thought that I know what’s right and what’s wrong.
Have you ever spent time around someone who is certain that punishment is necessary for someone else? Or that they deserve punishment themselves?
Very painful, very closed and heavy…like cement. Not loving, quite powerless, and an energy-drain.
“As soon as the mind pulls out an agenda and decides what needs to change, that’s unreality. Life doesn’t need to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. Life doesn’t need to know the “right” way to go because it’s going there anyway. Then you start to get a hint of why the mind, in a deep sense of liberation, tends to get very quiet. It doesn’t have its job anymore. It has its usefulness, but it doesn’t have its full-time occupation of sustaining an intricately fabricated house of cards.” ~ Adyashanti
Who would you be without the thought that punishment is happening, or reward, or that someone “deserves” some difficult consequence?
What if the turnaround is true…that YOU are punishing the Universe, by withholding your love for yourself, or your respect and honesty for others, or your mis-interpretations of situations?
I discovered that the moment I believe in punishment, I believe in revenge, suffering, absence of love, the need for control, righteousness, anger, attack. The moment I believe punishment motivates me or anyone else, I believe in a very temporary motivation.
“People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.” ~ Pema Chodron
What if the universe is friendly? Can you imagine this being true, even if that mean person wants you to pay for your evil ways….or you condemn yourself for having made mistakes in the past?
Try imagining it and see who you are without the thought that the Universe is capable of punishment.
Oh wow, I feel a sense of enormous joy, connection and happiness starting to seep in.
Love, Grace