Nothing is Everything

The embrace of nothingness is the way.

There is nothing

The embrace of nothingness is the way.

·       There is nothing we must do or be

·       There is nothing we “know”

·       There is nothing we can say about God that is not a story of our own making

·       There is nothing we can say about ourselves/others that is not a story of our own making

The first story in Genesis is a great illustration.  The story is about how humans, when we just live with what is, and pursue nothing – we are in paradise.  But when we buy in to the lie/ accusation that all is not well and something more is needed (“your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”), we cast ourselves out of paradise. 

The fruit (or the lie) is that the way to be better is to engage in dualistic thinking and judgement -- to know what is good and what is bad and embark in a project of rejecting the bad and pursuing the good.  It’s tempting. It looks good, it sounds good. It seems nourishing and wholesome.

Outside of this lie/accusation we are existing in grace.  Not a grace that says we did something wrong and we are pardoned, but a grace that says, nothing is wrong, all is well just as it is. Nothing is needed.

You might read the story as if God punished them and then cast them out of paradise, but another way to read it is that they cast themselves out. After all, nothing was different before they ate and after they ate - - they were still naked.

What had changed was their mindset, their viewpoint.

Maybe when we read the list of things that would happen to them - which I was always taught was a list of punishments for their sin, what we are reading was simply a description of what life is like when it is lived from ego mind (the dualistic , judgemental mindset).

·       Enmity

·       Pain

·       Power and control between people (especially men and women)

·       Out of harmony with nature

It seems unlikely that the god character in the story would in one paragraph be punitive and increasing their suffering, while in the next paragraph make them garments to cover their shame, and alleviate their suffering,.   

Even the cherubim with the flaming sword that keeps them from the tree of life could be seen as the God character being merciful. Recognizing that a life lived from ego will be filled with suffering and to live eternally would be unbearable, death, in this way is God’s mercy.  Just like the animal skin coverings.

God did not tell them they were naked, he asks  – “who told you that you were naked?”   In other words, “I never said anything about nakedness, who accuses you?”  (it was their own minds).

Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “who condemns you? Where are your accusers?” and when she said her accusers were gone, he said, “Neither do I condemn you.”   (the accuser wasn’t Jesus, it was other people)

In the Eden story grace is not forgiveness or unmerited favor as we sometimes think of grace. Grace is not God foregoing deserved punishment or covering over our sins – grace is the state of being that they were in before they ate the fruit (bought into the lie).  Grace says there’s nothing wrong (we are in paradise), until and unless our minds start to judge and label what is good and what is evil.  Grace is resting in the paradise of mind that knows that nothing more is needed.  Grace is the state in which we recognize that we are not separate from God or anything else unless we believe the accusation that we are. 

When we believe that we are not as we should be and we must improve to become more like God, we move from existing in a mindset of grace to a mindset of judgement of good and evil. What is good and evil about ourselves (we are naked and ashamed!) and what is good and evil in others (and the world). 

This was the first and only lie. The continual lie, the continual accusation.  You need to know what is good and what is not so you can be better, more like God.  You find meaning in life by making things better.

One could say the Eden story is a story about Ego.  The ego-mind is dualistic, it labels things as good and bad, it judges self and others, it likes to exercise power over, it likes to label, categorize and name. It likes to become something, it likes to  “be like God.”

Religion can be very  ego-based. Religiously, the ego believes the path to life is to enact power by engaging in sacrificial “death-acts” defined as turning away from wrong acts and thus obtaining forgiveness (grace). Or by wielding power to put to death what is perceived as wrong in the world.  In this framework, the death act is an act of power to move out of the wrong-state (repentance), and a receiving of God’s power to forgive sins (grace). 

The opposite of Ego is what the Bible calls “kenosis” or self-emptying. Philippians 2 is known as the “kenotic hymn”

5 Let the same mind be in you that was[a] in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he existed in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
8     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

 In kenosis, we become nothing. We turn the other cheek. We resolve to know nothing, we relinquish the power to judge (know good and evil), or to “be like God”. Repentance changes from some idea of turning away from”wrong” and toward “right” to turning away from power that take us from a “wrong” state to a “right” one. This kind of grace is a radical embrace of reality and the inherent lack that exists in ourselves and in all of reality. This kind of grace has no enemy that it fights against. This kind of grace holds everything, including what is missing as paradise. This kind of grace is non-religious, meaning, it is not transactional.  It is disconnected from outcomes and agendas and thus becomes fully and completely grace. In  kenosis, grace is infinite, eternal and unconditional. It includes all of it - good and bad. In its infinitude, it reflects the infinitude of God. Paradoxically, in kenosis, death becomes an engine for life.

Kenosis is at the heart of all creation.  If god is infinite and fills up all space and all time, then god must have pulled back to make space for anything else to exist.  In biology, all things must be biologically kenotic to continue living. If cells don’t die, it’s cancer. “Unless a seed falls to the earth and dies, it remains a single seed.” (john 12)  (kenosis).  Death, by definition is absolute and irrevocable.

For grace to redeem, death must be absolute so that grace can be absolute as well. Absolute death must extend even to our  ideas about good and evil, and our ideas about God. Absolute grace must in some way make space for all things, even evil, just as, in some way, the kenotic nature of God has made space for both good and bad, light and darkness, fullness and emptiness.

Returning to the Eden story as our example, had humans remained in a kenotic, grace-state, they would have embraced their lack of knowledge, and lack of feeling powerful and “god-like.” The temptation for them was to turn away from a lack of power and turn toward power - from a kenotic state to a non-kenotic state. In this framework, grace is a kenotic act and to fall from grace is to fall out of kenosis and to embrace power.

The ego mind likes to feel powerful.  It likes to analyze, solve the problems and have the answers.  It likes to think it knows the what and why of everything.  It narrates our story about ourselves, about others, about the world. The kenotic mind makes no pre-suppositions about things. We don’t really know the story, not even about ourselves.  It accepts mystery, unknowing, uncertainty and what is hidden.

The ego mind even does this with our concepts of God. It makes up stories about who or what god is. What god is like.  But God refuses to be named or described.  God, when asked to be named said, “I am that I am.”   Every description of God we can possibly come up with, is always going to be less that what God is. Is always going to be our own invention, not really God.  

Maybe the closest we can come is that god is pure consciousness, awareness, is-ness, being. But ultimately, God cannot be named, pinned down, categorized or described.  God can at best be experienced in the “I am-ness” of being.  In presence. 

In Luke 10 Mary and Martha are the contrast of ego and spirit.  Martha was  “worried and troubled about many things”  Mary was present.  Jesus said this was the only thing that is needed.  Presence.   

Maybe the path is nothingness.  Meister Eckhart said we find God in a space of silence and nothingness. He asserts that God speaks into a space called “the potential of receptivity” This is created in silence and stillness and God must speak into that space . We must let go of images, understanding, intellect memory, sense perceptions, imagination, and even ideas about God being good or compassionate. To let go to and create a void.  Thomas Aquinas, after writing some of the most prolific theological works, had a mystical experience that left his great work unfinished. He said, ‘The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me. I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.”

Krishnamurti – “This is the secret. I don’t mind what happens”

Zhuangzi - “Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj - “Accept life as it comes.”

Eckhart Tolle - “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”

Meister Eckhart – “There must be a silence and a stillness, and the Father must speak in that.”

Byron Katie – “when I argue with reality I lose – but only 100% of the time”

Good Friday

Good (?) Friday

Isn’t it interesting that we want to call this holiday “good” Friday?  It seems to me this is great evidence of our inability to sit with things that are not good.  We wrap the day up with the eventual outcome of the resurrection so we can call it good, rather than sitting with the darkness that the day was. 

Imagine it, you are part of the Jewish people, living under an oppressive foreign occupation and you are waiting for liberation.  If you followed Jesus, you believed he was it.  He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and you were sure this was the fulfillment of the promise.  You sang, and cheered and laid palm branches underneath the hooves as he rode in.  Your hope was high.  Elated even.  This was it.  The thing your people had been waiting for – for years. 

Then, just a few days later, you go from the heights to the depths.  He is executed. He who was supposed to liberate you from your oppression is defeated by the oppressor.  All hope is shattered. You feel like a fool for believing it. Or you feel stupid for getting your hopes up. Or you feel even more enraged at the oppressive government you find yourself under.

If you were in Jesus’ inner circle, this fall from the heights to the depths might have been even greater.  He was the son of God, or you might have even caught on that he was God incarnate.  How could the blessed of God be forsaken and cursed?  Or even more puzzling, how could God incarnate – die?   How could we go from the heights of “God with us” to the depths of “God is dead” ?

But that is all of life isn’t it?  A vibration between highs and lows, life and death, heaven and hell, good and evil, light and darkness.  Life becomes agonizing if we can only accept the highs, the good, the life, the light.  If we can’t vibrate along with the vibration of the universe.

Regardless of what you believe about it, at least one aspect of the Jesus story is at least on some level a story about that vibration. He was one with God, in heaven and descended to earth, which in many ways is its own kind of hell. Then descended into a tortured death, then we are told descended into hell itself (whatever that’s supposed to mean).  And didn’t bounce right back up but sat with it.

Sat with this life on earth, which we all know can be a kind of hell – for 33 years.

Sat in death for 3 days.

Could’ve presumably “fixed” it – by preventing it from happening (“if you are the Son of God, come down from that cross”) or by resurrecting immediately. 

But didn’t.  Sat with it. Darkness, pain, death, despair. 

I think this Friday is an opportunity for us to practice that.

Not to make it a good Friday by thinking forward to the resurrection, but to just sit with it, descend into it.  It’s half of life after all.    

Pain. 

The pursuit of meaning

When the present is judged as lacking or deficient and the ideal is judged as superior, it creates enmity between the present and the future

Paul Hessert says that meaning is structured around the idea of movement toward an ideal, and the ability to pursue that movement. 

The pursuit of meaning sets the present against the future. We tend to believe that something has meaning when it leads toward a desired goal that we consider to be better than the current condition.

In this way, the making of meaning rejects at least some aspect of the current reality and pursues a better, more desirable one. We can see this in what we so often think of as meaningful pursuits – like the pursuit of justice or peace.

But paradoxically, when the present is judged as lacking or deficient and the ideal is judged as superior, it creates enmity between the present and the future and places the future in a superior position to the present.

Should and should not.

Good and bad

Us and them

Ways of being and thinking are judged and in and outgroups are formed.

Enemies are made. 

Energy is spent trying to do away with those things we judge are bad.

Even inside ourselves.  Self help can be a way to pursue meaning. Self-actualization. And parts of the self can be judged as a type of enemy as we spend time and effort doing violence against it to be rid of it.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to make the world a better place, but what I am exploring is the idea that if we try to improve the world, a situation, our even ourselves because we need to make meaning with and of our lives, we are approaching it from a posture of judgement, power over, and violence against. 

Can we believe that a radical acceptance of the other – be it a circumstance, a person, a situation or an aspect of ourselves – rather than striving toward change is what will actually create a better world?

It’s a paradox, loving the enemy rids us of an enemy, giving up trying to change things changes them, letting go of power over fills us with an entirely different kind of energy called love.   

Give up Meaning for Lent

Give up meaning for Lent

It’s Lent.  What are you going to give up?  Alcohol? Chocolate?  

How about meaning?

King Solomon in his quest for wisdom (spiritual journey?) arrives at a place of meaninglessness and maybe – giving up meaning is the central aspect to the spiritual journey. 

The idea of meaning can be thought of as  something that has direction and moves toward an ideal. Something that is meaningful touches upon the sacred, the pure, and creates purpose - right?

We might then think that spirituality would be intertwined with an embrace of meaning.  It would provide us with a common purpose to move toward such as peace, justice, or redemption. But we may fail to recognize that this pursuit of meaning is built on a background of dualistic thinking, and creates divisions between the present and the future, the innocent and the guilty, in-groups and out groups, religion, and science, and the sacred and secular.

So, the pursuit of meaning may divide rather than unify and may contribute to violence and enmity rather than leading us to love.

As within, so without

Suddenly, the divine had limits. 

On Sundays, I have a group of people over. We meditate, eat dinner together, and have a discussion that centers around prompts someone brings.  The topics are generally spiritual in nature, but they have veered into the psychological, the technological (AI specifically), the metaphysical, the quantum and more.

Tonight, before we even looked at the discussion prompts, the conversation veered into the political and what is going on in the US right now.  The fear we feel, seeing our rights like freedom of speech, and due process eroded.  Watching the rule of law seeming to disappear.  We talked about how everything is us vs. them.  Good guys and bad guys. We spent time wondering (or more accurately worrying) what’s next for our country. 

Our prompts this week were:  

“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you” – Jesus

“Peace comes from within, do not seek it without” - Buddha

“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul” – Trismegistus (Greek philosopher)

·       What goes on in culture today that takes away your peace?

·       What goes on inside you that takes away your peace?

·       What are some types of “talk” that are going on in culture today that you would change if you could?

·       What are some types of “talk” that go on in your head that you would change if you could?

We laughed that before we even looked at the prompts, we had answered the questions. 

We talked about how, if a group can villainize or dehumanize another group, it becomes easy to violate basic human rights, to kill. We can make them into a monster – and justify our desire to be rid of them. We talked about how we can dehumanize the dehumanizers and how one can beget the other.

Then we talked about how we dehumanize ourselves from within with our obsession to be “right". It seems to me that our obsession to be “right” seems to serve as the soil in which the current cultural and political jungle has grown – the fuel to the fire.  I know it’s human nature to want to be right.  The ego thrives on it. But in modern times, the billion-dollar self-help industry and social media have fed into this human characteristic. Not that it’s wrong to want to be the best version of yourself you can be. But the obsession with improvement can be experienced as a type of violence against the self. Hack your body, optimize your performance.  Find the right workout, the right meditation practice, the right supplements, the right make-up technique, the right home décor, the right affirmations and you’ll get life right. Ascribe to right ideology, the right religious viewpoint, the right politics and you will help right the world. 

Wanting to be right has been the nature of humankind for what seems like forever.  But having a device that is in our face all day, every day that is telling us what is right and what is wrong, who is right and who is wrong, showing us images of people who are “doing it right” and doing it so much better than we are - seems to be escalating this aspect of our nature. And if we are constantly feeding an internal dialogue that runs non-stop about what is the right way to be and what isn’t, it naturally follows that this will be the lens we look out on the world with. If they don’t fit the ideal, we must be rid of them.

The amount of unabashed posting on social media that is wishing someone dead is astounding. One side wanting Donald Trump dead because he’s a monster, another side saying that the killing of immigrants or protestors is warranted.

And while I admit that we must be able to say that there are right and wrong ways to treat others, it’s the mindset that becomes problematic. The  idea that surely we have been well informed and know what is right and they do not. The way of being that is centered on what’s right, who’s right, rather than – as one man in the group said, “seeing the divine presence in the face of others.”

“As within, so without.”

But what about the monsters? Can we see the divine presence in them? At the end of our discussions, we always do a little non-traditional communion where we have bread and wine, and anyone can say anything they want.  Several sentiments were shared, mostly about praying for peace in this world, being able to see the divine presence in others.  Then, I shared, “even seeing Donald Trump as the Body of Christ.”   But that took it too far. Suddenly, the divine had limits.  It couldn’t been seen everywhere.  Maybe Christ isn’t everywhere after all. Maybe if I descend into the depths of hell, the divine is not there.   

“As within, so without”

Charlie Kirk and the Great American Shit Show

Fight to let go

I wonder if, rather than fighting with an orientation to preserve life as we know it, or preserve life as we think it should be, we should struggle TOWARDS death.

Look, I don’t have any answers to the current shit show that is going on here in the States.  Most of the time I just want to bury my head in the sand a runaway from it all.  But there are people I love here, and things I love doing, so I stay.

I don’t know what the path is toward a better United States.  There are those who say our democracy is already long gone and I feel that is probably, in many ways true.  And I’m not a patriot.  I don’t feel any particular urge to preserve the United States per se.

I sense we are in some kind of deconstruction of the world as we know it (even though I usually hear “deconstruction” used in religious circles) and that’s kind of scary.  It’s scary to let go.  We don’t know what’s on the other side.  It could be worse than the current shit show after all.   

But I believe strongly that in order for something new to be created, something has to die. 

It’s true in my body, that cells have to be destroyed to keep me alive

It’s true in nature, that in order for one thing to live, another must die.

It’s true in relationships, that for them to remain alive and vital, we have to risk honesty and change – which could bring death.

It’s true in corporations and organization of all kinds, including churches, that if they are not willing to try doing it a whole new way, they will become irrelevant and die.

It’s true in social structures and countries.  No matter how scary it is, we have to let things die.

And death is not some peaceful slipping into the next thing.  At least not usually.

It can be bloody, and painful.  It can be a gasping for breath, it can be starving, it can be fighting against violence.  It is usually a struggle. 

And to me, it seems that’s what we are all experiencing, a painful struggle to hold on to the last shreds of life as we know it.

As biological creatures we fight for survival.  We are seeing that fight. Verbal fighting and any amount of terrible things being said to each other.  Physical fighting, gun violence, shootings, storming the US Capital, riots.  Intellectual fighting and endless social media posts trying to convince the other guy why our way is the right way. 

This ideology shoots Charlie Kirk, that ideology kills Palestinians, another ideology shoots LGBTQ+ folks.  There’s no end to who violence is enacted upon.  Immigrants, children, the innocent, the guilty. Bombs and wars all in the name of the survival of someone’s ideology. 

I’m not saying that all ideologies are equal or deserving of preservation (or destruction for that matter).  I’m not saying we should just sit on our thumbs while the powers that be do whatever they please to oppress the masses, but I wonder if, rather than fighting with an orientation to preserve life as we know it, or preserve life as we think it should be, we should struggle TOWARDS death.  Fight to let go so to speak.

I don’t have any answers as to how that might look or what we might do to enact such a fight, but I think about it. 

Freeze

Martyrdom can step outside of grace

Inside the context of grace, martyrdom and suffering are a “cup” that we may hope will pass, but that we are willing to accept as Jesus did in a “not my will but thine” posture. It is not a heroic act, or something to be sought after in order to attain a standing with God that grace has already provided.

When enduring trauma, freezing is another adaptive response. During trauma, stress hormones cause a loss in executive functioning that make the victim unable to choose a course of action. So we freeze.[1]

Freezing occurs in response to physical threats and also in response to social threats.[2]

One of the problems with freezing is that it can lead to guilt on the part of the victim as he asks why he did nothing.[3] It may also lead to confusion on the part of the victim about what happened.[4] Those who freeze may believe their lack of action proved willingness to participate.

So, when the victim of trauma tells themselves a narrative of guilt or willingness, that narrative gets tied to whether the trauma results in PTSD,[5] and trauma victims may formulate additional stories that help them cope.

It’s interesting to wonder if religious glorification of martyrdom and sacrifice is kind of narrative in response to trauma. Historically, early Christians faced an inability to fight persecution, either through lack of power, out of obedience to “turn the other cheek,” or simply as a freeze response. They may have created a narrative of heroism around their martyrdom as a way of making meaning of such meaningless evil – as a way to deal with trauma. Religion can be used as a coping mechanism labeled “spiritual bypassing.”[6] in the hopes of providing meaning to traumatic events.[7]

As this narrative caught hold in the Christian community, it evolved into an actual desire for martyrdom as a path to God. Ignatius “speaks of his martyrdom with great enthusiasm and begs the Roman Christians to do nothing to prevent it.” [8] He says, “I shall never have a better chance than this of getting to God.”[9] Polycarp makes meaning of martyrdom when he claims the martyrs, “purchased for themselves life everlasting.”[10] But with this claim, martyrdom and suffering can step outside of grace. Grace is a willingness to accept, be present and hospitable to circumstances, people, and ourselves despite the present conditions. Grace is an act of acceptance without forcing our will. Inside the context of grace, martyrdom and suffering are a “cup” that we may hope will pass, but that we are willing to accept as Jesus did in a “not my will but thine” posture.[11] It is not a heroic act, or something to be sought after in order to attain a standing with God that grace has already provided.

[1] Amy Arnsten, “Stress signaling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and

function.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 10:6 (June 2009): 412.

[2] Marret K. Noordewier, Daan T.Scheepers, Leon P. Hilbert “Freezing in response to social threat: a replication.” Psychologists Resources. 84:7 (October 2010): 1890.

[3] Sonya B. Norman, Kendall C. Wilkins, Ursula S. Myers, Carolyn B. Allard. “Trauma Informed Guilt Reduction Therapy with Combat Veterans.” Cognitive Behavioral Practice. 21:1 (February 2014): 5.

[4] Lori Haskell and Melanie Randall. The Impact of Trauma on Adult Sexual Assault Victims. Report Submitted to the Justice of Canada.(2019): 18.

[5] Deryn Strange and Melanie K.T. Takarangi, “Memory distortion for traumatic events: the role of mental imagery.” Frontiers in Psychiatry. 6:27 (February 2015): 3.

[6] Alejandra Motiño, et al. “Cross-Cultural Analysis of Spiritual Bypass: A Comparison Between Spain and Honduras.” Frontiers in Psychology 12:658739 (May 2021): 2.

[7] Kenneth Pargament, Margaret Feuille, and Donna Burdzy, “The Brief RCOPE: Current psychometric status of a short measure of Religious Coping.” Religions 2:1 (February 2011): 53-54.

[8] Andrew Louth, ed. Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers. Translated by Maxwell Staniforth and Andrew Louth London: Penguin Books, (1987), 56.

[9] Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans 2.5 Louth, Andrew, ed. Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers. Translated by Maxwell Staniforth and Andrew Louth London: Penguin Books, (1987), 85.

[10] Polycarp, The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Louth, Andrew, ed. Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers. Translated by Maxwell Staniforth and Andrew Louth London: Penguin Books, (1987), 125.

[11] Luke 22:42 NRSV.

Flight

The very incarnation of Chris steers us away from flight and steers us toward life in all its messiness.

We can also see flight as a response as a trauma response in Christian church history . Some Christians, in a type of flight response, retreated  from society into the desert, into monasteries and isolated communities. For many, this retreat became a lifestyle. Although we see an example of retreating to the desert in both Jesus and John the Baptist, we also see a return to public life and ministry from both. The exodus of Christians into solitude began primarily after the end of persecution and the professed motivation was to keep oneself from being polluted by society’s temptations. But sadly, the flight to deserts and monasteries made by Christians who were worn down from persecution provided scant respite since the monastic life often circled back to a fight response against the self as it went hand in hand with extreme forms of asceticism and self-torture as monastics fought against their sexuality, their appetites, their desires, and their humanity. We still see this flight response in Christianity today, not just in cloistered clergy, but also in more subtle forms such as Christian schools and communities that seek to remove believers from daily life with non-believers in the hopes they will not be polluted by the world. The very incarnation of Chris steers us away from flight and steers us toward life in all its messiness. Jesus not only entered into a human body, but while in that body, ate with sinners and tax collectors, and did not concern himself with being touched by those that religious society considered unclean. He prayed that we remain in the world (Luke 17:15-17, NRSVUE), and in doing so, imitate his kenotic act of descending into the world . (Philippians 2:7, NRSVUE)

Saving me with a lie

You are acting the role of the “savior” but in fact are taking away my agency.

Let’s talk about saving others.  I want to talk about this in the context of those who have secrets to keep from a person they are in a close, intimate relationship with.  Maybe they have cheated or stolen. Maybe they are drinking in secret.  In some way or another they have betrayed their loved one.

There is a popular idea that if the betrayer has quit the behavior and has addressed the problem within him or herself it is somehow selfish for him or her to “unburden” themselves to the person they betrayed.  They are performing an act of kindness and saving their partner from pain by holding guilty secret inside and live with it for the rest of their lives.

This sounds good. I heard Ester Perel, a world-famous, well respected marriage therapist say recently on a podcast that this is the way to go.  But is it? 

I have questions.

First of all, this approach assumes that what a person doesn’t know isn’t hurting them. I question this assumption. If I am in a close, intimate relationship with you and you have betrayed me and are keeping it a secret, I’m pretty sure it is hurting me.  I am wondering why, although everything seems fine, things don’t feel right.  I will feel the distance that the secret creates and will be robbed of the intimacy that honesty brings.  If my intuitions are online, I will doubt myself because my intuitions say one thing and the partner says another. And often, I will shut down my intuitions in an effort to quiet the dissonance I’m experiencing.  Shutting down my intuitions hurts me in a myriad ways.

Second, the dishonesty robs me. It creates a false pretense in the name of saving me from pain. It robs me of the opportunity to make an informed decision about our relationship.  Do I want to be in a relationship with this person - given the truth? You are acting the role of the “savior” but in fact are taking away my agency.  It’s very patriarchal.  If you are the betrayer, you are holding the betrayed hostage in a sense with your dishonesty aren’t you? They are in a relationship under false pretenses. You want the relationship to continue, despite your betrayal and you have made the decision for them. You have not been willing to turn the decision of whether or not they want to continue over to them. 

Thirdly, it robs the betrayer of the chance to be loved fully.  For the rest of his or her life when the partner says, “I love you” the betrayer will be thinking “well, if you only knew about my betrayal, you might not feel that way.”  This leads to all kinds of issues.  The betrayer might become distant, he or she might try to compensate for the betrayal and rather than being able to give to the relationship from a free and unfettered place of intimacy, gives out of guilt, fear, anxiety.  He or she may try to protect the self and the secret, or may try to make up for the betrayal in any number of ways.  I will be an attentive partner or lover.  I will be generous.  To atone. To make it right.  But is love given from this place really love?  Does the receiver feel it as love?  Or do they feel the anxiety behind it?

Finally, the betrayer is telling him or herself a lie.  They are telling themselves that they are protecting the person from hurt and pain, but that’s just not true.  They have inflicted the pain, they are simply trying to anesthetize, cover it up so that it remains below the surface and no one has to see it.  It reminds me a little bit of colonizers who took land away from indigenous peoples, then “saved their souls” to try to justify in some way that what they stole was for the good of the person. 

I’ve been on the receiving end of secrets.  I lived 17 years in a relationship in which I was being betrayed, and it was kept secret.  Believe me, I knew it.  I mean, I didn’t know it consciously, but my soul knew it.  I was lonely, I knew there was not the connection and intimacy I longed for but was gaslighted into thinking it was my delusion. I felt it but didn’t know enough to know what I was feeling.   And when the truth came out – which it very often does - the betrayal was double.  Not only had the betrayal occurred, but the lies and gaslighting were betrayal heaped upon betrayal. 

When we say we don’t want to hurt the other person by unburdening ourselves, we are lying to ourselves because you see, it’s too late - we’ve already hurt them with our betrayal.  At that point it simply a matter of whether we want this truth to be out in the open  if we prefer to keep it hidden even if that means it festers and robs us and them of joy and a chance for real intimacy.  

I guess it depends on the goal.  If the goal is simply survival - to stay together at all costs, and you’ve done something that jeopardizes that, then keeping  secrets might keep things together.  If the goal is something real, honest and intimate, then you’ve got to give it a chance by telling the truth.

It’s like so much of culture.  We prefer not to see or feel the hard, cold truths of life. We take pills to cover over our symptoms rather than get to the bottom of the issue, we have surgery to hide our aging, we smile and pretend that everything is alright even if we are grieving deeply.  We hide our shame and our vulnerability because we don’t want to do the hard work that is required to dig deep and deal with the real issues.  We don’t want to risk failure and rejection. And a lot of people will reject us if we risk honesty, and some relationships won’t survive it to be sure.  But I think it’s worth it to take the risk. It’s like the line from Steel Magnolias, “I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.”

You see, I suspect that love – real love is only possible when we are willing to risk it all.  Willing to be so devastatingly honest that we risk losing it.

That’s the kind of love I want.

Judgement

When I’m in pain, I’d rather be with the one person who isn’t trying to fix it, judge it or reject it - me.

Today I had a conversation that left me feeling judged. To be fair, the conversation wasn’t about me and I shouldn’t have in any way made it about me because it was a conversation where someone reached out to me who was in pain and needed support.  It started out with me listening, asking  some questions to get them talking, offer a suggestion or two, let them know I’m always here to listen and to help however I can.  But at one point in the conversation, out of pain I’m sure, the person told me that I don’t allow myself to feel things.  Which is not true and not fair and left me feeling judged, and to be honest – hurt.

I feel things deeply, but I find that I feel them more deeply and can integrate them better if I process them in solitude and silence.  Because I process my feelings in solitude, people sometimes think I am an unemotional person.  Which is not true.

I spent the majority of my childhood being rejected in one way or another for how I expressed emotion.  I cried a lot as a kid.  This was not acceptable in my family, so I was sent to my room when I cried.  In my young adulthood, I was married to someone who shamed me for having needs and emotions, calling me unstable, needy and demanding, so I shoved it down.  Or at least I tried.  Not successfully I might add.  I spent the better part of the two or three years prior to my divorce angry and the two or three years it took to finalize the divorce crying from grief.  All the shoving it down actually caused me to be pretty emotionally dysregulated.  Like trying to hold a beach ball under the water – it just keeps popping up violently.

Now, years later, I’ve learned to embrace my pain rather than fight against it.  And I find that I’m angry much less.  I cry much less.  When I’m in pain, I try to get some solitude so I can feel the pain fully, open up to it and embrace it.  Sure, I cry, but I have found that the rage and the sobbing were more about the struggle against the emotions, than the emotions themselves.  I’ve learned to make the feelings my friends.  Sometimes dark friends, sometimes not.  But beloved regardless. I find that it is hard to embrace them fully when I’m with others.  I get caught up in their feelings which take me out of my own.  They try to talk about it, fix it for me, give me their analysis of it – and sometimes (as today) judgement of it.  They tell me I haven’t cried enough, I haven’t felt – or expressed feeling – as they think I should.  Sometimes they feel anxious and then need reassurance. So, when I’m in pain, I’d rather be with the one person who isn’t trying to fix it, judge it or reject it. I’d rather be with the person who is not anxious about my feelings – me.

It got me thinking that time and time again I’m shown that we have no idea what is going on inside a person, who they really are, why they are acting as they do. Most of us are doing our best to be the best version of ourselves we can manage - even when all evidence seems to say otherwise. Some people are just trying to stay alive and functioning. I attended a retreat a couple of years ago and over the course of a week, heard person after person’s story of pain and by the end of it my breath was just taken away. I looked around at all these people and thought how amazing it was that they were all still functioning given the burdens of pain they all carried. Life is traumatic, it’s difficult, it’s heavy. We need grace.