All I See is Part of Me. . .

One day I was searching on-line to buy a children's book to give my grandson-- a book called "All I See is Part of Me," by Chara Curtis.  I found myself saying the title over and over as I did my Google search.  After repeating that phrase in mind my twenty-five or thirty times, I had an “ah-ha” moment when I really “got” how true that title is-- all I see IS part of me.

As a psychologist, one thing I recognize is that I, and people in general, only judge and rail against qualities, actions and situations we aren’t willing to own in ourselves.  For example, my pet peeve for years was ANGER.  I just couldn't understand how people could throw anger around in their relationships and in the world to the degree that they do.  I couldn't “grok” violence or choosing to abuse other people. I judged other people mightily when they expressed their anger or did things I saw as violent.

Then one day, almost overnight, I reached a point in my life when, after participating in a long string of abusive relationships,  I had allowed myself to get so hurt that my anger just burst out of the psychological “closet” in which I had hidden it.  Suddenly I was spewing anger; I was doing and saying hurtful things; I was being violent.  I was appalled at my own expression, but at the time, I really couldn’t stop it.  It seemed beyond my control. (Of course, it wasn’t, but it had grown so large while hidden in my “closet,” it felt too big to control.)

That time has passed for me.  With a lot of self-examination and therapy, I was able to come to terms with that dark place in my psyche.  I am now much more my usual peace-filled, loving, kind self . . . but what I learned from that challenging period of my life has stayed with me.  I realized as I worked through all those feelings, that I had JUDGED other people's anger and violence BECAUSE I had a deep pocket of it inside of me I wouldn’t acknowledge nor have anything to do with, so I was only seeing it “out there.” 

I had had a pretty nasty childhood.  As I grew up, I promised myself I would never be like the people around me, abusing and hurting others.  I decided I would ALWAYS be loving and “nice,” no matter what.  To accomplish that, I simply hid what would have been NORMAL responses to being mistreated and hurt.  I did not even acknowledge that such responses . . . like hurt and anger . . . existed inside of me; which seemed to work in a way. But the choice on my part to ignore those feelings and taking a “blind eye” to the transgressions against me by those who should have been caretaking and loving me,  did not really make the reality of the way I was being treated nor my very human responses to that go away. Instead, those dark feelings inside of me got bigger and bigger over the years, no matter how much of a Light Being I tried to be.  And since I was very busy pretending no abuse and no bad feelings had happened, I continued to repeat relationship patterns that mirrored my primary childhood relationships. Yucky.

Then one day I hit the "tipping point."  An act of true ignorance and insensitivity against me by someone I loved and trusted implicitly released all of it. . . all the anguished hurt and all the raging angry feelings I had hidden, and hidden from, over the years.  And when those feelings poured out of me, they came out somewhat “out of control” and inappropriately.  They definitely came out in hostile, violent ways.

I was surrounded by loving family and friends at the time, who really understood what was happening for me because they had seen me allow the hurt and store the anger over the years.  I also had access to some excellent counselors, who helped me understand the “dark” feelings I was so unfamiliar with.  I learned what I had not learned growing up—that I needed to pay attention to the way people treat me and how I feel about the way they treat me.  I need to notice whether or not, in all honesty, they are doing or saying hurtful things.  If, indeed, their words and/or actions are damaging to me, I need to say “STOP,” tell them what my needs are, and if things don’t change, I need to be willing to leave.  Simple, but effective. By finally seeing and feeling my anger and the hurt beneath it, I finally found a way of BEING in my life that keeps me safe, healthy and happy—so I don’t have to feel and be hurt and angry anymore.

PLUS—BIG BONUS-- I find that when I see people lashing out at other people, or being angry and hurtful as a way of being, or even being violent in their relationships with others and the world. . . I am more forgiving of them.  I now understand the pain they are in.  I know that deep down inside of them, buried under a lot of hurt and twisted reactions, they are essentially good people— Light Beings actually-- simply doing "bad" things out of wounded places inside of them.  And they don't need my JUDGEMENTS.  If anything they need my compassion and understanding-- and if I am in a position to SAFELY do it, I can offer them assistance.

Before I became aware of my own anger and the violent aspects of myself and the damaged places that lay underneath that, I felt frightened of other people’s aggressive actions when I perceived them. I felt the world was a profoundly scary place, and that I had no control over the violence certain human beings express.  Now I find I feel “the Heart of life is good” (to quote John Mayer)—and that everyone here on the planet essentially wants the same things for themselves and others—to love and be loved, to be safe and extend safety, to survive and even to thrive in this place.   And I see that even when people are expressing and acting in ways that seem to indicate the exact opposite.  I know that no one really chooses to live in and from such a Dark place.  Really, they have simply been hurt enough that they forget the place inside themselves that cares, the place where Light lives.  AND the way to resurrect that Light place is not by pretending to be good nor by denying the hurt, but rather by being honest about those feelings and learning to communicate them and to work out ways of being in the world that take care of themselves, and take care of other people too.

Now, knowing all that, when I look out into the world and see a person or a group of people seemingly doing great harm to themselves and/or to others, and I find myself swimming in my self-righteous judgments of them—I have a process I use to move myself back into my Loving and Compassion.

1) When I find myself observing other people and judging them, I remind myself that “all I see is part of me.”

 2) I look hard inside of myself to see if there is a part of me that is like the other person. . . maybe emotionally, maybe behaviorally, maybe just in what I fanaticize about saying or doing, or what I think and feel.  If a similarity is not immediately clear-- I look around inside myself to see if there is a part of me that could be or behave that way, if I were “constructed” differently (psychologically), or if I had been raised the way that person was raised, or if I had lived in the situation that person lived or lives in.  Usually, I can find a place inside of me where I can answer that question YES at the end of my introspection.

3) Then I forgive MYSELF for being that way-- either now or in the past, openly or covertly—now or somewhere in the vast Universe of past or future potentialities.  And I accept that part of myself, I own it.  I extend Loving to it.  (From that position, I may also decide to work on myself to shift it, if it is an actual behavior or attitude that currently going on.) 

4) Finally, I forgive the other person/people for being how they are and doing what they are doing.

5) If there is any action I need to take to insure my own safety, I take that.  If I can contribute anything positive to the other person’s situation, and if that feels appropriate, I do that.  Then I simply let it all go and get on with my life, doing good wherever I can—taking care of myself and helping to take care of others.

A man I greatly admire and a friend,  John-Roger, noted, “When you forgive yourself your own stupidity,
ignorance and lack of knowledge (or your own anger, hurt and violence), you forgive everybody else in the same instant. And at that moment, you're moving into enlightenment.”  He also commented that if we could see into the Hearts of our enemies and experience their deepest hurts and fears, we would have nothing but Compassion and Forgiveness for them.  I have found that it is also important to look into our own Hearts this way, with complete honestly and openness discerning our own deepest wounds.  Once we do that and experience Compassion and Forgiveness for ourselves, having it for others just comes naturally.