Betrayal

 

My friend called me this past weekend expressing problems she has with her boyfriend.  She complaint that her boyfriend is not spending enough time with her and instead with his daughters and other legal issues concerning his first marriage.  She was very angry when he told her that he is not interested in her children nor is he interested in marrying her and raising them with her.  She felt betrayed.  She felt hurt, confused, and angry.  She felt that she has done so much for him including selling her lake house because he didn’t like it.    

 

I asked her if she loves him.  Her response was yes.  But then what’s the problem?  She can’t seem to see.  She insisted the boyfriend is the problem.  He may behave like an asshole, but he is being himself at the time.  He has no problem with the way he behaved.  She has a problem with the way he behaved but nevertheless it is her problem and not his.  I encouraged her to listen to her heart and trust in her decisions to do what’s right for her and her family.

 

I can totally feel for her, that compulsive needs to control our outside environment to conform to the way we’d like for our own comfort and security.  We go as far as betraying ourselves.  And it is very easy to betray ourselves.  All we have to do is to say “yes” when we mean no.  All we have to do is take someone else identity for our own.  Those who have not individuated too easily borrow the identities of others.  The roles they adopt to please us will be just as quickly abandoned when they don’t receive the security from us they expect to find. 

 

True intimacy is not possible when two people spend their lives trying to please each others.  One who seeks may find it for a while, but it is only a matter of time before that approval becomes a prison.  One who gives herself away will have to take herself back sooner or later.  One who looks to another for salvation will blame that other when salvation does not come.  One who says “yes” because she is afraid to say “no” will say “no” in the end but it will not be a gentle, compassionate “no.”  It will be the harsh, unforgiving “no” of one trying to survive, of one who is afraid of suffocating.  It will be the very cry of one who feels betrayed although in truth she has betrayed herself.

 

If you do not wish to be betrayed, do not let another person give herself away to you.  Insist that she honor herself, for in honoring herself she will become capable of honoring you.  When you love someone and he does not know what he wants, encourage him to find out.  Hold a space for him to find out what he wants.  He must learn this before he can come to you as an equal. 

 

People come to you with expectation that you make them whole.  It is very common these days.  But don’t take the bait.  You cannot complete another, nor can another complete you.  You must find your own completeness.  You must know that you are already enough.

 

Don’t think you will find another person who will embrace you unconditionally before you have learned to do this yourself.  It is not possible.  At best you can find someone to learn with you.

 

Separation Awareness

 

Relationship is a mystery.  It is constantly changing.  When I try to analyze it, or try to make it fit to my picture of the way it should be, that is to say not accepting it for the way it is, I feel the separation.  Separation happens all the time.  It is happening every time I want to change my partner or want to make my relationship different than the way it is.  When I move out of the “is” space and focus on the “should be,” the separation feeling is almost inevitable.  Usually I don’t notice until separation builds and hurt triggers.  If I am wise, I’d stay in the present moment and move with it.  But the nature of my ego is to find fault with my experience, to compare it to some unattainable ideal.  It says what happens isn’t good enough. 

 

So my spiritual practice calls me to challenge every unloving thought I have about myself, my partner, and other people.  And as long as these thoughts go unchallenged, I will continue to feel separate from myself, my partner, and others. 

 

 

She won’t give me unconditional love

 

MAN:  I am sad about my wife because she won’t give me unconditional love. 

 

KATIE:  She’s suppose to give you unconditional love, is that true? 

 

MAN:  Yes.

 

KATIE:  Can you absolutely know that this is true?

 

MAN:  Well, not absolutely, I guess.

 

KATIE:  Yes, honey.  “Should” is the story of a past and a future and it’s hopeless to argue with what is.  How do you react when you believe that thought? 

 

MAN:  Sad, disappointed in her, sometimes angry.  I withdraw from her.  I feel depressed and think I deserved better.  Self-pitying.  Sometimes I think I married the wrong person. 

 

KATIE:  Yes, because she isn’t validating your dream of an “ideal wife.”  Who would you be if you didn’t believe the thought that she’s suppose to give you unconditional love?  Who would you be in her presence if you never believe that thought again?

 

MAN:  I’d be someone who didn’t expect unconditional love from her. 

 

KATIE:  What I am hearing is that you would love her unconditionally, however conditionally she loves you.  As long as you believe she should give you unconditional love, you’re not talking about the wife you live with.  You’re talking about the wife in your imagination and not giving your unconditional love to the wife you live with.  So let’s turn this around. 

 

MAN:  I am sad because I won’t give her unconditional love.  But I really do love her.  I believe that you should give love to your partner unconditionally.  That’s what I’ve committed to when we got married and that’s what I do.

 

KATIE:  Look a little deeper sweetheart.  See if you can find three genuine ways that you don’t give her unconditional love.  You don’t sound very loving when you get angry at her and withdraw. 

 

MAN:  Well, that’s true.  I wasn’t feeling very loving then.  Okay, I guess it’s true that I don’t love her unconditionally when I think she doesn’t love me unconditionally.  I get resentful and I close my heart.  That’s true. 

 

KATIE:  Is there another way you don’t love her unconditionally? 

 

MAN:  We have arguments about money.  The other day I got angry at her when she says we couldn’t afford to buy a new boat that I wanted.  She’s right actually.  I acted as though it wasn’t true and was cold and nasty to her. That’s really hurts now. 

 

KATIE:  Well sweetheart, when you go home this evening, admit that she was right.  Apologize from your heart the way you’re feeling now.  Ask her how you can make it right and really listen to what she said without defending a position.  She’ll take you where you wanted to go if you’re serious about this unconditional love that you want in your life.  Humility is the opposite of subservience and the beginning of you stepping in your power angel.  Can you find one more example?

 

MAN:  Yes.  I punished her for not being as attractive as the other woman, for gaining so much weight.  The crazy thing is that I don’t really care.  I love her so much.  She looks beautiful to me.  I criticized what she eats and I am the one who can take a look at that in my own life.  And I see that that’s the other turn around:  I should love myself unconditionally.  And I often don’t.

 

KATIE:  Can you find three genuine ways that you don’t love yourself unconditionally?

 

MAN:  When I eat too much, I see myself in a very cruel way.  I use self-hatred as an appetite controller, not that it works.  Also I sometimes disgusted with myself when I think I have made a mistake and I really give myself a hard time when I forget things.

 

KATIE:  Yes honey.  Feel the violence that you inflict on yourself.  And look at the pain you have caused yourself when you compare your wife with someone who doesn’t exist, the “ideal wife.”  Someone who can’t exist in any marriage.  That’s not giving yourself love.  And you already know it’s not giving her love.  And sweetheart, it’s only in the moment.  It’s not forever.   We don’t love conditionally or unconditionally forever.  It keeps changing.  “I love you.  …I don’t…I do… I do…  I don’t….”  And when you don’t, it’s always going to be you in the way, not your wife.  You can count on that.  Now sit down and inquire and get real with your answer and your sweet innocence self.  It can’t ever be something outside you, a situation or a person that is causing your unhappiness.  It can only be your unquestioned thinking about that situation or person.  There is no exception to that. 

 

I SHOULD BE HIS ONE AND ONLY

 

Below is dialogue between Byron Katie (currently reading above)and a Wife who’s suffering as result of her husband’s infidelities.  Though the post is long, it is definitely worthwhile, especially for those who feel they have been betrayed by their husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, or significant others.  One can learn a lot from this if One spend some time with the dialogue with an open heart (or open mind.)  The dialogue speaks of many things including inquiring our thoughts and especially the freedom to choose.  We all have a choice.  And in this case, the husband’s choice is to be polygamous and the wife’s choice is to leave her husband and find a monogamous partner.   Both can accept each other’s choices and still open their hearts to each other.  (This is unconditional love.)  Both don’t have to leave in anger.  This way, none would have to engage in the destructive emotional cancers (criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing, contending, controlling, manipulating…. ) that eventually matastasize into each other relationships.  

 

WIFE:  I am angry with my husband because he didn’t dump his other women and choose me as his one and only.

 

KATIE:  Your life would be much better if he’d dump them, is that true?

 

WIFE:  Well, it’s pretty obvious to me that it would be better. 

 

KATIE:  And can you absolutely know that it would be better? 

 

WIFE:  No. 

 

KATIE:  How do you react when you believe the thought that he should dump the other women?

 

WIFE:  I try to undermine them.  I try to convince him to be monogamous.  I am always jealous.  I think of them constantly and of him with them.  I constantly compare myself with them.  Am I prettier than this one?  Am I smarter than that one? 

 

KATIE:  That’s a very painful way to live sweetheart!  It’s painful to try to manipulate the man you love,  to spend your time plotting how you can get rid of people he loves, or wondering if you are as good as they are.  Who’s business is it whom he sleeps with? 

 

WIFE:  I hate this question. 

 

KATIE:  You hate it because you’re been holding on to your pain for your dear life.  You’re holding on to your thought of “I’m right and he’s wrong.  I’m the good one and he’s the villain.”  Would you rather be right or be free?

 

WIFE:  I’d rather be free.  I really would.  I’ve had enough of these miseries. 

 

KATIE:  So who’s business is it whom he sleeps with?  

 

WIFE:  It’s his business.  I know that.  It’s his business, not mine. 

                                                         

KATIE:  And who’s business is it whom you sleep with? 

 

WIFE:  It’s my business.

                                                         

KATIE:  He should sleeps with you only, is that true?  What’s the reality of it?  He doesn’t.  He sleeps with other women.  That’s the reality of it.  It doesn’t go along with our morality.  It doesn’t go along with what society would teach us.  It’s what is.  It’s an outright lie that he should sleep with you only when he doesn’t.  What happens inside you when you believe the thought that he shouldn’t sleep with other women?

 

WIFE:  I hate him. 

 

KATIE:  And how does that feel inside you?

 

WIFE:  Awful.  I just want to die.

 

KATIE:  And how do you treat him when you believe the thought that he should be faithful to you?

 

WIFE:  I raged at him.  I cut myself off.  I close my heart. 

 

KATIE:  Is that pretty painful?

 

WIFE:  It’s horrible.

 

KATIE:  The reason you experience pain and loneliness is that you’re mentally in his business and it didn’t leave anyone here present with you.  Of course you’re lonely.  She’s over there with him.  You’re over there with him.  Everyone is over there with him and there’s no one here with you.   You think he’s supposed to be here with you but you can’t even do it.  He leaves you.  You leave you.  What’s the difference?  The way to stay present is to question your thought.  He shouldn’t sleep with other women, is that true? 

 

WIFE:  I would be much better off if he was with me and not her.

 

KATIE:  Can you absolutely know that that’s true?  He’s not responsible for your misery.  You are.  You’re believing a lie and that’s what is causing your pain.  Can you see a reason to drop this thought that argues with reality “he should sleeps with me only?”

 

WIFE:  Yes.  I hate to suffer. 

 

KATIE:  I see we come from the same school.  And please don’t try to drop it.  No one can drop a thought.  We’re just seeing a reason to drop it.  Can you see a reason to believe that thought?

 

WIFE:  No

 

KATIE:  Who would you be without that thought?

 

WOMAN:  I wouldn’t hate him so much.  Maybe I wouldn’t feel so betrayed.  I don’t know if I can open my heart to him again, but at least I would be more understanding.

 

KATIE:  Sweetheart, an open mind is an open heart.  Who knows what you would feel and how you would treat him if you didn’t believe that thought about him.  Who would you be in his presence if you didn’t believe that thought that he should get rid of his other women?  Close your eyes.  Picture him with them.  Look at his face without any belief that he should choose you.  Can you see him?

 

WIFE:  Yes.  He’s beautiful!  He looks happy. 

 

KATIE:  That’s unconditional love!  That’s who you really are.  Now turn it around.

 

WOMAN:  I am angry with me because I didn’t choose me as my one and only.  I carried all those other women around in my head with me.

 

KATIE:  Turn it around again.

 

WOMAN:  I’m angry with me because I didn’t choose him as my one and only.

 

KATIE:  You didn’t choose to love him just as he is.  The one and only person who is him.  And if you want to be monogamous, you can say, “Sweetheart, I love you just the way you are.  I love it that you want 10 women.  I want you to have what you want and I need to leave you now.  I’m monogamous and I want a monogamous partner.”  That’s choosing him as your one and only, the one you love unchanged.  It’s just that you don’t live with him now.  But whether you stay with him or leave him, you never have to close your heart.  And then you may notice the next person in front of you is your one and only, in the moment when he’s with you and that you don’t required him to be anything but what he is.  Unconditional love doesn’t need to dictate the form.

 

Victims

 

People are obsessed about stupid things that they can not change at the present time.  They swap stories with friends, neighbors, and coworkers about how other people mistreat them, how their  exes should or shouldn’t do, how so and so should behave, how the war should be so and so….. and massage one another’s hearts about the things they can do nothing about.  What would this do except strengthens their own ego and weakens their ability to make things happen on the issues and concerns that they can do something about.  Their past holds their present and future hostage. 

 

People who don’t have their own deep internal act together seek their security from sources outside themselves.  When focus outside and believe that their problem is caused by someone else rather than their attachment to the story they believe in the moment, they are their own victims and situation appears to be hopeless.  Then they fall into the trap of codependency and engage in destructive, cancerous behaviors such as criticizing, complaining, comparing, competing, and contending (emotional cancers).  These malignant emotional cancers metastasize their cancerous cells into their relationships and no wonder their world is so polarized, so divided, and so painful.

 

Wealth

 

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about wealth.  Generally, being wealthy means that we have lots of money.  But the real meaning of wealth is knowing how to create richness situations in our lives.  We may have ten dollars in our bank account, but can still manifest richness in our world.

 

One way to create wealth and richness is to appreciate that wealth and richness come from being a basically decent human being.  We do not have to be jealous of those who have more than we do.  We can be rich even if we are poor.  True wealth is appreciating that we can be without money and still feels good because we have a sense of wealthiness already.  The basic richness can be realized under ordinary circumstances.   One way is to learn to project the goodness that exists in our own being, so that a sense of goodness shines out.  That goodness can be reflected in whatever there is in our immediate world.  It could be in the relationships with things, our family, and friends, in the way our hair is combed, in the way our living room looks. 

 

If we are stuck on a small fishing boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, without food and water, even if we have lots of gold in our pockets, we still starved.  This is an analogous to what happens to many people who have money.  They have no idea how to eat and drink it.  People can spend thousands of dollars and still be dissatisfied and in tremendous pain.  Even with all that supposed wealth, they may still be unable to enjoy a simple meal. 

 

“My wife makes too many demands on me ”

 

The following dialogue is between Byron Katie and a man from her book, I Need Your Love, Is That True?  We can all learn something from this conversation. 

 

 

MAN:  My wife makes too many demands on me. 

 

KATIE:  Is that true?  Who lives the life that says yes when he means no?  How does she make you do the things that she demands?

 

MAN: I feel I have to do them. 

 

KATIE:  Another words, you say yes to her.  You lie.  You give her what you don’t want to give.  And you hurt yourself when you do that and then you call it her fault.  If you are honest to her, you might even say, “I want to want to do that for you honey and the truth is that I don’t want to do it yet and I may never want to.  I’m working on it.”  OR “I don’t want to do that.  Can we put our head together and find another solution?”  There are so many kind and honest ways to say no.  But you say yes to her because you believe you need something from her and you do it because you are afraid that she’ll withhold it from you.  Egos don’t love.  They want something.  You lie to yourself and to her when you say yes and you mean no.  You lie in order to get something that you want her to give you.  So who’s more demanding?  Your wife or you? 

 

MAN: I see that. I do demand her approval. 

 

KATIE:  She could make demand of you one hundred times a day and you could say, “I love you.  And no.”  And if she says, “If you don’t do it, I’ll leave you” and you could say, “I understand.”  And then wait to see what happens.  Will she leaves?  Will she stays?  But if you tell her yes and you mean no, you’ve lost your integrity.  You’ve lost yourself.  If you say yes to her and it’s a lie, you loose yourself sweetheart and you may loose her anyway.  My ex-husband could make any demand he wants of me and if it wasn’t right, I would tell him the truth.  I would say, for example, “I love you and I am not able to do that.”  I didn’t have to tell him the part where it wasn’t within my integrity to do that.  Often he’d yell and curse and threaten to leave me and I’d say I understand that.  And he’d say, “You’ll be sorry.”  And I’d say, “You could be right.  I love you and I can’t do what you are asking.”  But if I’d have told him yes when I mean no, I’d have lost myself again.  And I am the one I live with.  If I’d say yes to him and it was a lie, I’d have lost my marriage to myself.  And he would have been living with a façade of a wife. 

 

MAN: My wife has an expectation or wish about what she should get from me and she expresses that and I want her to love and appreciate me so I fulfill her expectation.  If I try to stop that whole cycle, then she could leave me and that’s extremely scary.

 

KATIE:  Yes.  But you’ve lost her anyway.  You’re not living with anything but an illusion.  You’re living with a monster in your mind, the one who will leave you if you don’t do everything she wants.  You haven’t even met your wife yet.  You’re just living with a story of who she is.  It’s the story that scares you, not your wife. 

 

Arrogance

 

Arrogance comes from hanging on to the reference point of me and others.  I may be a wonderful daughter, a devoted wife, a good mom, an understanding friend, a generous giver; I may feed the homeless, give money to various organizations, volunteer for activities I deemed important, and regard these as my personal accomplishment, I am  missing the point.   

 

Being a good person and doing good things for the community is an act of love and humility.   Instead of becoming loving and humble, I could become extremely arrogant.  “I trim-tab is a wonderful daughter because I call my parents every week.  I am a devoted wife because I attend to my husband’s needs. I am a good mom because I am active in my children’s affairs.   I am an understanding friend because I listen with love, kindness, and compassion.  I am a generous giver because I give 10% of my earnings to various organizations.  I am a good person because feed the homeless and do volunteering activities.  I am beginning to accomplish something.  I am good. I am better than most of you. ”

 

The purpose of being a good person and doing good deeds has to do with the concern for others.  Concerning for others does not mean comparing our progress against our spouse, brothers, sisters, friends, and neighbors.  It does not mean keeping a score board of who’s better or more virtuous.  That is not the point.  The point is to provide a better place for existence.  The point is to communicate our respect, love, kindness, and compassion for others. 

 

Are you comfortable giving yourself without conditioned?  Are comfortable giving your time, money, love to your spouse, children, friends, and your community without expecting them to do the same for you?  Without your criticisms that they should be like you?

 

The Love Seeker

 

If I am looking for love by making demands on the other person, I am pushing love away.  The harder I seek and the more I try to control, the more inaccessible I become to the presence of love. 

 

The love seeker doesn’t know how to love because she goes into her head and closes down her heart.  She is concerned with what she is getting.  She doesn’t care to give.  Yet until she gives love, she will be miserable.  Love cannot be withheld without destroying the lover.  And when the lover is destroyed, all that remains is the small-mindedness of the ego. 

 

The question is will you go beyond selfish, conditional love, or will you continue to insist on a love that meets your ego’s needs?  If you listen to your ego, you will meet love in vain.  No matter how many partners you try, you won’t find one who will love you the way you want to be loved because all your seeking is a demand for the love you alone can give. 

 

When it doesn’t feel that my partner is meeting my needs, I call myself back to the heart.  And there I learn to see the sparkle in my beloved eyes that hides beneath his pain.  He did not show me his pain at first, but I knew it was there.  I knew it was there because it is there in me.  It is there in you.  It is there in everyone.  And I am not surprise to find it in my beloved. 

 

Look and see through the pain, to who your beloved really is and what s/he really wants.  That is the true beloved, the one who can lead you home.  Not the one who pretends to have no pain.  Not the one who promise to love you perfectly.  Look at the real person.  The one who is vulnerable, who hurts, who asks for love in convoluted, neurotic, controlling ways.  Look to him (or her) and hear the call for love behind the wound.  That is the voice that will lead you home. 

 

I often experience sadness.  It comes and it goes.  It is not the sadness of feeling sorry for myself or feeling deprived.  It is hard to describe.   It comes with tenderness.  It comes when I experience something that is authentic, especially when I feel alone. 

 

When do you experience sadness and what do you do when it comes?