When Things Go Wrong

When Things Go Wrong

When something “goes wrong” in our lives, which is to say, when we either don’t get something we want (which can come to us in a mind dizzying array of possibilities) and/or when we find we get something we don’t want (which, for all intents and purposes essentially means getting some form, some expression, some degree, or some experience of pain) we have a choice about how to respond/react. Many of us however, consistently choose blame as the principal go to response/reaction. So when we either don’t get something we want and/or when we get something we didn’t want…

We can…

1.      Blame ourselves.

2.      Blame someone else.

3.      Blame a group or community of people.

4.      Blame both ourselves, someone else, and additionally blame some group or community of people

5.      Blame some situation, circumstance, or reality that is present in our lives at the time like a recession, or being unemployed, or being diagnosed cancer, etc.

6.      Blame God.

7.      Blame one or more dead people like a parent who physically abused us or a drunk driver who crashed into our car many years ago, causing us to be wheelchair bound for the rest of our life.

8.      Blame some phenomenon that does in fact exists or that we believe exists in the world such as astrology, fate, bad luck, bad weather, “acts of God,” etc.

9.      Blame some single or some collection of social, organizational, structural, governmental flaws, imperfections, and syndromes such as the history of slavery that various groups of people on the planet have a history of being subjected to over the course of human history, structural and generational racism, patriarchy, sexism, homophobia/heterosexism, “Obama Care,” etc.

10.  Blame one or more personal life circumstances, situations, influences, experiences, personal histories, and/or perceived personal limitations or personal traumas, being born into poverty, being abused either as a child or in adulthood or both, or being dyslexic or being born with a congenital heart defect, etc.

11.  Blame some combination of numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

12.  Or we can do none of that and go within and go from there.

We may be very tempted to dismiss #12 as a viable option for us. We may be very highly aware that some of the things that show up on our personal list in terms of #9 and #10 are indeed very real problems, very real difficulties, and very real challenges in the world that can and often do cause very real pain, very real suffering, very real trauma, and very real, tangible grief in the world and that we as individual people can also personally experience and be very hurt, impacted, abused, marginalized, disenfranchised, and/or extremely limited by in certain ways. Because of all of this we may conclude that #12 does not apply to us, is a joke, is unrealistic, is only an option for people who do not have a rational understanding of the world, is only for “suckers,” is only an option for white people, etc. I understand all of this. I have compassion for all of us and for all the pain we have all experienced in this life and that we either may or may not be trying to actively work through or on.

I assure you however, none of that are reasons to dismiss #12 out of hand, as an option for you personally regardless of the pain nor the extent of pain and trauma you have experienced in life. However, it may be true that you simply may not currently be at a place either emotionally, psychologically and/or spiritually to invite into your conscious awareness the level of desire for liberation that is necessary to honestly and seriously do the work that is required when choosing #12. That’s OK. Only you know about that. I do not. I am only the messenger here.

Some more about blame

Social science research shows us that the process of blaming comes about as a result of, among other things, experiencing pain, dis-ease, and discomfort emotionally and physically and also having the experience of understanding that these feelings need to somehow dissipate; that they must go somewhere. There are both functional and dysfunctional ways to dissipate these feelings inside of us. Sincerely and honestly surrendering to what is, is an example of a functional way to dissipate these feelings. So is engaging in some type of compassion practice and/or what we know in Buddhism as “metta practice.” A dysfunctional way of attempting to dissipate these feelings is by blaming—either blaming self, blaming others, or blaming some personal, life, or some societal situation, circumstance or reality.

Blaming also comes about as a result of a fear of being made to feel vulnerable, a fear of confrontation, and an inability to hold oneself accountable for the feelings we experience and/or an inability to hold others accountable for how we perceive them as treating us when that perception is that we have been treated in a way we experience as being negative or counterproductive. 

A.    Fear of being vulnerable: When we have an interaction with another and we come away from that interaction feeling hurt or somehow unappreciated, disrespected, or a whole host of other possibilities, it is our job, when deemed appropriate, to somehow find the courage to tell the person how we are feeling in a way where we are not consciously adding more negativity to the situation. Doing this, among other things, requires the ability to be vulnerable. The reason this requires vulnerability is because there is always a possibility, no matter how lovingly and how gently we express this to the other person, that the other person may reject us and very few of us are truly welcoming of the experience of being rejected.

B.     Fear of confrontation: Telling someone how an interaction we have had with him or her has not gone well for us or has us experiencing some negativity not only brings with it the possibility of rejection, it also brings with it a something less extreme, which is the fear of some kind of confrontation taking place. Many people have a very deep fear of confrontation, chiefly because there is a fear that this will in fact lead to the more extreme experience of rejection.

C.     Holding oneself accountable: When we tell someone how we perceive an interaction with them has negatively impacted us we are holding ourselves accountable for being vulnerable enough and also being emotionally mature enough to be honest with ourselves about having these feelings and with being comfortable enough with our emotional truth to express this to the other person.

D.    Holding the other person accountable: When we tell someone how we perceive an interaction with them has negatively impacted us we are also holding the other person accountable for whatever action they may have engaged in during the interaction that may have been problematic.

Forgiveness

For many of us forgiveness—both forgiving of ourselves and the forgiving of others and possibly even forgiving God or forgiving society—is extremely difficult. One of the reasons we may be so quick to blame is because on some level, either consciously or unconsciously, we have difficulty with forgiving or with forgiveness itself.

How We Perceive the World and How We then hold those Perceptions

You may also find that when you look out into the world, you only see or mostly see “problems.” This may take the form of violence, a lot of pain, or a lot of suffering. All of this and more may collectively create your principal view of the world. When you think a little bit more about all of this, you may have the thought that one of the reasons there are so many problems and so much suffering in the world is because…

1.      People are basically bad.

2.      People are basically selfish.

3.      People are basically stupid

4.      People are basically greedy.

5.      People are too heartless.

6.      People are too self-absorbed.

7.      The world is going to Hell. People have abandoned God and simply need to find Jesus and accept him as their personal savior, and place him front and center in their lives.

8.      Some or most people in the world are simply not as smart as me (you may be very hesitant to admit this is something you think or believe. However, it is very important to be as honest with yourself as possible here).

9.      People are simply not religious or spiritual enough.

10.  People are too conservative.

11.  People are too liberal.

12.  People don’t take enough personal responsibility, for their actions, in their own lives

If anything in that above list serves as something of a “go to” thought for you—a though or set of thoughts you often or fairly often find yourself having, you may be someone who may approach life primary through an external locus of control rather than through an internal locus of control.

Locus of control

Locus of control (whether external or internal), in various branches of psychology, is seen as what points toward how we perceive where power is mostly located, in our lives. In other words, for our purposes here, people who understand the world primarily through an external locust of control tend to look to others, or to other life situations, circumstances, and realities in order to understand and explain their world and their experience of that world. People with a more internally based locus of control tend to look within to understand their world. I am oversimplifying this concept at this point. I will go into more detail about locus of control in later discourses. For now I will give a simple example of both. In these examples there are two people in a classroom situation. Both people recently got their test papers back in their history class. Both students received a “D” on the test. Student A comes from an external locus of control orientation and so when attempting to understand why she received the low test score she comes up with these thoughts: The teacher doesn’t like me. The room was very uncomfortable the day of the test and this was a serious distraction. The instructor framed the questions on the test in a very unclear way, etc. Student B, on the other hand, comes from an internal locus of control orientation when trying to understand his low score on the test. He comes up with these thoughts: I didn’t study adequately enough for the test. I didn’t allow myself to get enough sleep the night before the test. I didn’t understand some of the questions on the test clearly enough, etc.

There is not necessary anything inherently wrong with the existence of either locus of control in our lives. No man or no women is an island in this world after all, people are undoubtedly social beings, and it is impossible to separate ourselves completely from the environments that are around us and that we are also around. The difficulty arises however, when this gets out of balance, when we only view our experience through an external prism or only view our experience through an internal prism.

Some questions for self reflection

Does it feel good when I assign blame?

If it truly feels good when I blame, why does it feel good?

Who or what has control over my life?

Who or what has the power in my life?

Who or what have I given power to in my life?

What is my idea of being truly free?

Am I free?

Do other people understand me?

Do other people like me?

What are the five most common feelings I experience?

Through the Fire

Many of us, in the course of our lives, have had one or more experiences of what I call, going through the fire.

Very often these experiences come about as a result of us going through something we hold as going terribly wrong in our lives. This going terribly wrong experience however, is not at all absolutely required. We can also have the experience of going through the fire being brought about through having many other types of life experiences as well. For our purposes here, experiencing something having gone wrong in our life is simply just another way of saying that we had one or more collective experiences of not getting what we wanted and/or of us getting something we didn’t want although perhaps in a rather extreme way. Often the experience of not getting what we wanted and/or of getting what we didn’t want leads to us suffering in some very clear way or of us feeling an insatiable need to blame either ourselves, others, or life circumstances, situations, and realities for us having this experience. Sometimes however, not getting what we want and/or getting what we don’t want can lead to an experience of us going through the fire and this experience subsequently, can take us directly onto the path of awakening.

All of us typically have many experiences of not getting what we want and of also getting what we don’t want. However, not all of these experiences bring us the additional experience of going through the fire. The additional intensity that is experienced here can be brought on by any number of circumstances. Perhaps it is the severity of the experience. Maybe it is the timing of the experience that adds the additional intensity. Perhaps it is us having multiple very intense experiences of not getting what we want or getting what we don’t want, all within the span of a very short period of time and this is what moves our experience from one of simply not getting what we want or getting what we don’t want to one of going through the fire. Maybe it is a situation where we have some primary wound or injury we are meant to address or heal in this life and we have an experience or set of experiences that triggers this in some sort of essential, deep, traumatic, or visceral way. And as I have already said, it doesn’t have to be a negative life experience that brings us to such a place, although that does often seem to be the case. Still, it can also be a seemingly very mundane, or a very beautiful, or what we hold as a mystical experience we have that brings us to the brink of going through the fire. The point I'd like to emphasize is that something in our lives or some collection of circumstances and events does in fact bring us to the place of going through the fire. What we do with this experience however, could very well change the rest of our lives and in very important ways.

Some people do not physically survive the experience of going through the fire. In other words, it hastens their deaths. Others survive it physically but do not really survive it emotionally nor psychologically intact. Others still survive it on some clear levels but at the cost of becoming social pariahs or monsters of some sort or of essentially becoming the walking dead—zombies, if you will, people who are breathing and whose hearts are still beating in the middle of their chests while going through many of the same motions as other living people but for whom the experience of going through the fire has left them a shell of a person, a hallow vehicle simply marking time until the heart and the breath catches up with the rest of them and they eventually drop their body and move on to whatever is next. I believe it is important for me to state that I do not consider any of this to be an expression of emotional or any other kind of weakness. Dying in the process of going through the fire or becoming a bitter person, or becoming emotionally stunted, or taking on sociopathic qualities, or becoming a zombie for me, is simply what is or what has occurred. I have no need to place any kind of judgment on it whatsoever.

There are many different ways of being someone can embody after one has gone through trough the fire, including being a person who is essentially indistinguishable from whom she/he was before the experience of going through the fire. I however, want to focus my attention on those who have a spiritual awakening experience directly as a result of going through the fire.

I want to first clarify what I mean when I say, spiritual awakening experience.

I believe it is important for me to say that I have come to a place where I do not believe in a single individual arriving at total, absolute, and complete enlightenment or at a state of one being completely and totally awakened spiritually. This places me at odds with perhaps many spiritual teachers and many spiritual seekers as well. So be it. I believe enlightenment, awakening, or what some call self-realization, is always an ongoing process, even if that process is in the zone of the extremes in terms of subtlety. I do not believe there is some endpoint or finite destination one arrives at and then when one arrives at this point one is then “enlightened” or “awakened” or “realized.” The ego loves this idea of finite, complete, and absolutely finished work. I however, do not. So when I use the phrase spiritual awakening experience I am simply speaking of a person having a conscious awareness that he or she is in the awakening process—just like so many other people on the planet. The person may however, not understand anything about the process. That issue is for another post. However, for my purposes here there does need to be a conscious awareness that one is in such a process or at least posses a belief or presumption that one is in such a process. Being consciously aware of being in a process of spiritual awakening is not necessary for the authenticity of the experience itself. I simply prefer to focus on people who are consciously aware that they are in a process of spiritual awakening or in possession of a belief that they are. It simply makes it easier for me to speak to such people directly and for them to understand that I am speaking to them directly.

Historically, I believe there has been a strong correlation between going through the fire and spiritual awakening. And I believe there has historically been an even stronger connection between a very negative experience or set of experiences, going through the fire, and spiritual awaking. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle states this in his book, The Power of Now. Of course his own powerful awakening experience came when he himself was on the brink of suicide. So it makes sense that he would see and understand this connection. However, I still agree with Tolle. I believe he is correct. It’s quite simple, really.

When we have an extremely negative experience or set of experiences or a very prolonged experience of negativity in our life, one of two seemingly opposite experiences seem to be quite common. On the one hand one can be plunged into an extremely deep depression as a result of what is experienced as deep suffering. Or one can have a profound, unplanned experience of extremely intense spiritual surrender which in turn can lead to a profound journey of awakening. One way of understanding intense spiritual surrender is the ego or mind identifying with something very strongly. This is the status quo period. Let’s, for example, say the ego identifies very strongly with the construct of being "a victim" or identifies very strongly with the construct of "suffering" and this identification becomes so strong, so intense that for an instant the ego itself is overwhelmed with the identification and the ego and this identification drops or stops running the show for an instant. If in that instant when the ego identification is dropped or stopped, Divine grace, in the form of awakened consciousness, steps in to take the place of strong ego identifications. When this happens we may have an instant of extremely powerful awareness. If we are able to metaphorically grab that awareness, caress, and hold it even momentarily, what was experienced as intense suffering can instantaneously turn into an experience of pure bliss, or pure awareness, or pure clarity or “the peace that surpasses understanding.” It could be experienced as a fleeting moment. Or it could be experienced as that which morphs into a lifetime journey of awakened consciousness marked by an ever more weakening of the power of the ego and the mind over the person in question.

So you see, consistently not getting what we want and/or getting what we don’t want and us then experiencing intense suffering as a result, which often is exactly what happens, can in fact ultimately lead to a journey of authentic spiritual awakening, especially once this takes us on a journey of also going through the fire. Of course there is also the fact that a genuine journey of spiritual awakening is very often expressly not as an experience of eternal rainbows, unicorns, flowers, balloons, and the constant repetitive singing of Kumbaya. This is what I will address in my next post on this topic.