In Year of Inquiry we’re ramping it up this month as we ponder what the worst thing is, what’s threatening, when situations occur we don’t like.
Someone had a great situation yesterday in telegroup.
A person being mean, nasty, disloyal, gossipy, critical.
I could see someone in my mind who I’ve worried about being critical. Could they snap at any moment and call the newspapers and start talking about me and what a bad, imperfect person I am?
What if someone’s scheming to take me down? Even if I can’t find anything wrong I’ve done?
It’s a strange, nervous, anxiety-producing feeling that someone could hurt me for no reason, at any moment. It happens in the movies. It happens in Shakespeare plays.
Betrayal. Shock. Mistaken identity. Stabbed in the back.
If you’ve ever been involved in a situation where someone DID surprise you, even way back in childhood, you might have some lingering waves of uncertainty about humans and what they’re capable of. Maybe a sense of needing to be very careful, walk on eggshells, and make sure you don’t disappoint anyone.
The thing is, it’s really difficult being so careful.
You lose your spontaneity, your sense of joy and relaxation. Maybe you react by staying home, hiding in a sense your true feelings, not expressing what you really think, or feel. Maybe you cut that person off and never talk to them.
The best way I know how to work with this sense of impending doom, or someone reacting to you in a disturbing way, is to go to where it already happened in the past.
Even if you observed it, and you yourself weren’t the target of someone’s anger, upset, hatred or fear.
As the group moved through inquiry on the phone together, I distinctly pictured one person who I could imagine feeling angst, disappointment, anger or sadness with me.
But why? What was my evidence? What is my memory, my situation, where I got wind of the possibility of her not being loyal or supportive or caring for me?
It wasn’t so obvious, because there wasn’t a clear “betrayal” moment. Yet, as I stayed in contemplation about this person from my history, scanning the moments of “proof” for why I might feel cautious of her….
….I could see a fleeting sentence written in email come to mind. A sentence she wrote to me after I told her something she didn’t like hearing–that I didn’t want to talk with her and hash out or process further what had gone on between us. I felt like it was said, and said again, and silence for awhile was the next best step. We could revisit it later, regroup after some time went by.
She said something, in reply to my request for letting things rest awhile, like “sometimes actions you take produce karma you may not like”.
I suddenly realized, in that tiny memory of a sentence written, that I worried it was a threat. I better watch out. I better be nicer. I better say “yes” and not “no”. I’m doing it wrong. She’s disappointed with me. Uh oh.
In that awareness, I see I’ve got my moment, my situation.
Good. I can write down my thoughts, starting with the Judge Your Neighbor worksheet. I can stay very close and connected to my experience of reading words. It’s OK if I don’t even remember exactly what the words said. My thoughts and beliefs are alive and present. My feelings are stressed.
I know what to do with them. The Work.
Much love,
Grace