You and I are not broken or defective. We are merely misinformed.
In moments of challenge, pain, struggle, or fear, we often turn powerful judgmental feelings inward on ourselves. We think bad thoughts about who we are. A mindset of self-contempt sets in.
Or, in those same difficult times, we may project these powerful feelings outward to other people and our circumstances. Here a victim mindset sets in.
Most of us go in and out of these cycles of self-contempt or victimhood regularly. Here’s a story of how we can move beyond this narrative of brokenness…
I talked with a woman who was troubled because she felt a deep lack of peace. She was sure that most other people felt this peace, and that she was doing something wrong - she felt defective. She also felt that “others have more breaks" in life than she did, and she felt it wasn't fair - she felt like a victim.
As we explored the emotions that were stirring underneath these painful thoughts, she quickly named that she felt terribly alone. There was a powerful current of feeling abandoned, running beneath her thoughts. When she tapped into this current, an emotional dam broke. She was flooded with tears. We talked about how scary it is to feel abandoned.
After a time of honoring the feeling, we went back into her thoughts and the misinformation that leads to her suffering. The feeling of abandonment spun out all kinds of painful thoughts, which, upon reflection, were not true.
I then asked her, "what does your spiritual self know about abandonment."
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and laughed. She talked about a recent conversation with a friend in which she lectured the friend on how we are never alone, how we are always “held within a blanket of Divine Love.”
"I'm also held," she whispered with closed eyes.
She was now able to absorb the same wisdom she was able to offer someone else. Deep peace washed over her, and she was for the moment freed from both self-contempt and victim-mind. She was back in balance. She was rightly informed. Rightly aligned.
This is the spiritual journey we are invited to take day after day, moment after moment.
The heart is the organ that knows God. It also is the organ of compassion. When you are troubled, drop into your compassionate heart. If you can’t find it, pretend it’s there. Find the feeling that lies beneath your trouble. Offer up the feeling with care. And trust that the Divine will hold it for you.
It is this simple process of letting go into our a kind heart that moves us from feeling broken to knowing we are blessed.