Everything Nac

Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer

     Not every day is a mountaintop experience….we have to understand each day in terms of the valleys we pass through. We all want help ferreting out what to do, but when we are in a full blown melt down, it is hard to remember all of our smart thoughts that we promised we would have after the last melt down we had. We need to work ahead of time and be able to say to ourselves, “I have confidence that regardless of what it is, I have the intelligence and good nature to do what is most effective and best for all involved. I can be positive that I will be able to deal with all future frustrations in an effective manner.” This kind of homework can be invaluable when we are facing a crisis or a trauma, but we need to work ahead of the curve in order to teach ourselves the ins and outs of our own needs so that we can face reality when it hits us. This kind of emotional work is complete baloney to some people, until they meet their emotional nemesis: Anger.

     “One word. Rage. One question… How do I fix this?”

     Ahhhhhhh….rage…the source…..I have an app for that….Rage follows from our expecting others to listen to us even though they are incapable….we are angry that others are not fitting our paradigm, right????? We have personal rules that everyone should be able to understand us, no matter how cryptic we may actually be, because, to us, we are communicating machines, and we make absolutely rock solid logic sense, and even a complete moron should understand what we are saying and believe absolutely everything we say, simply because we said so, IMHO.

     We are thus angry at ourselves for our putting ourselves in this awful and impossible situation and yet we are blaming others for their inabilities. Our rule, again, is that even a moron should be able to understand and believe what we are saying. Never mind that the research we did was 5,000 hours. Never mind that we had to go through 2 divorces, a bankruptcy, and rehab to gain our ultimate insight. We believe that everyone should now bow to the prowess of our superior understanding. If shame or blame or humiliation is at play, then you are being self-righteous because the reason you are mad at them is that you could not do it for yourself and that seems unfair and so you have loaded them up with the guilt you feel. You know just how tough it is to do this and so your idea of coaching is to batter them into submission, because this is what you felt like when you finally relented, let go, and allowed the truth to shine in on you, mostly. We forget the most important part of the lesson; it only works when you are humble. Otherwise, our actual self-righteousness is called “righteous indignation.” And when we caustically scream at others to be peaceful or tell them to do this or that, they start judging us back, and they do not see someone who is in control and who is an expert. They see someone who is pretending. The real moron is doing all the yelling.

     “And yet you are beautiful and loving and smart and capable…why has God not given you also this one darn power so that you can have this? Why is this above all withheld from you? It is so unfair, darn this is really a bad deal, right? This is called humility and without it you would be a moron. A fool. A liar. A joke. And because of it, you know that God is you and you are God and that being your own best friend and forgiving yourself for being human is the only game in town. This is how God teaches us to sing. And this is why children are geniuses and adults are fools…….Be childlike, and love yourself some more…..” And isn’t that fun when people come at us like this and get all warm and fuzzy, like that fixes what we just broke?

     Tears are okay; they mean that you have a heart. What we find is that what we do is to create situations in life to teach ourselves these lessons, so Love yourself, and give yourself a hug for having such incredible insight as to bring this anger into your life to teach you this lesson; without this hard moment, you would continue as you were and as it is, you have gained a tremendous insight into your very nature, and now you are stronger and more healthy, because you know that now you have a method of knowing; seeing this is a tremendous leap forward, and it will allow you to be able to work with others who are steel cold angry about something…..I know…..and this is how I know…anger nearly destroyed me…..” Oh, and doesn’t that very cathartic transmission of our living lessons just warm your little belly?

     And then we thank them for being so giving. “That’s sweet of you….I’m glad to have been of any help. Sometimes it is a shock to look at ourselves as being the source of our own confusion, anger, frustration…..it seems so counter-intuitive, and yet, what is it that we can expect? It is our own expectations that have put us into these pickles.” Oh, and they just can’t quite while they still have a head!

     “When things go as we expect, we learn from that that all we have to do is have an expectation and everything will go our way. When that does not work so magically well, we are frustrated that our magic thinking did not work so well and so we shake it, smack it, yell at it…anything to make our magic thinking kick back into giving us what we want….this is the state of our not being grateful. Be grateful that anything turns out. Never take things for granted. The truth is that that entire planet could be blown to bits in an instant by an asteroid and we would all be gone, along with all of our beautiful plans and our magical thinking. We are not in control. We work on things, and scrimp and save and work and build and make our lives on nothing more that meringue….little foam bubbles on the top of a pie…pure fluff!” I feel better already!

     “Sometimes, for example, young people will get to feeling self-conscious because our society is ruthless and cruel, and they will feel bad about themselves because they are being coaxed to conform and be like everyone else. This may be, then, the reason to, say, lose weight. Then when you become sleek and beautiful, instead of saying, “Oh, I am healthy and feel good,” you say, “Oh, now I am desirable, and I deserve to get things to get attention. And so the attention comes rolling in and the partying starts and boys will give you free gifts like jello shots and candy and weekends away from your parents and the next thing you know you end up gaining all your weight back and maybe pregnant or maybe end up losing all of that attention because you get worn out looking from partying too hard. You know people this has happened to. They start out being the life of the party but are later on replaced by the next set of younger girls who are healthy!!! This is how our lack of gratefulness occurs….we forget to be thankful for our health and we lose focus….and this makes us angry…at ourselves….”

     And to tell you the truth, you had me at hello; I was already to smack this knowitall.

runningturtle87