=kit047.txt

KIT 47 - On Resentment

I am aware that by challenging people to find room in their heart
for those who have offended them, I am arousing in many an
obstacle to their wholehearted enlisting of the teaching because
many feel that I am asking something which they feel they cannot
do.  This fosters in many an even worse sense of inadequacy than
was already there; so that, instead of helping them, it is placing
them in a bind. Confirming that this is the message of Christ
still does not do it.

A similar situation arises when one is told by religious
authorities that one is a sinner, blowing up one's sense of guilt
beyond the tolerable level. One's self image is already bad enough
- nothing is gained by making it worse. This may indeed aver
itself to be the hitch in spiritual prescriptions: "shoulding"
people and thus making them feel uncomfortable. While the
intention is good, it does not generate realistic help.

In contrast the psychotherapists propose self acceptance - which
would mean that, while one has difficulty with forgiving someone
who has done one serious harm, in particular by wounding one's
psyche, or one is struggling with resentment against a person with
whom one is continually brushing shoulders and who brings out the
worst in one, one feels that one needs to be open to work with it
because one's resentment makes one feel most uncomfortable and
festers like a lingering wound, continually bugging one and
undermining one. Paradoxically, resentment is often
surreptitiously linked with guilt: guilt for having allowed
oneself to be slighted or abused. Add the guilt of failing to
forgive to this, and it becomes intolerable. Most often this guilt
feeling is unjustified and can be dismissed by the conscious mind,
however, the unconscious brooks of no argumentation.

Resentment avers itself here to be written right into the
programing of the psyche because it deters one from being the
enabler that gives license to a person to do one harm, or for that
matter harm somebody else. Therefore with the exception of those
cases where the violence or threats of the aggressor have put one
in a bind, it is more healthy to recognize and admit failure to
having given vent to one's anger, thus unmasking and disarming the
culprit, rather than covering up one's resentment even from one's
own view because one does not like being cantankerous.
Notwithstanding, the crunch is that, bereft of one's defence
system, one is not only vulnerable, but is facilitating
malevolence.

Now to deal with both one's resentment and the guilt is difficult
to substantiate because on one hand, one may be indicting oneself
unjustifiably, and on the other the mind provides every argument
to acquit one. Subliminal feelings need to be unearthed gradually
and with enlightened supervision to avoid overstressing by
disorienting our already precarious self-image. In short, one's
resentment or anger or rage need to be released cautiously from
the unconscious, that means identified, recognized, then
skillfully processed by converting rage into outrage - first
healing, then regenerating. If not, it may erupt dramatically,
leaving the psyche devastated and stymied. 

How does one heal a physical wound? Starting with first aid, one
needs to protect it from further irritants , which includes
infection. Likewise one needs to be sheltered in a protective and
supportive psychological environment, feeling cared for. In these
circumstances, the regenerative process gets on its way, gradually
rebuilding damaged tissues. Similarly, damaged elements of the
psyche need to be rebuilt skillfully and painstakingly and of
course it will take its appointed time.

However, sheltering is only half the battle, the regenerative
forces of the body expend energy and may require an extra boost;
even so with the psyche. Ultimately it is ecstasy that avers
itself to be the energy of the psyche. While it might be more
conservative to spell enthusiasm, ecstasy is the superlative,
enthusiasm quickening itself ad infinitum. There can be no doubt
that it is by admiring something beautiful, or contemplating or
accomplishing a valuable deed that one's bewonderment ardor is
aroused, or glorifying the splendor manifesting as the universe,
whether or not personified as God, that one sparks one's spirit to
ecstasy. How does one bring oneself to be high when circumstance
are disenchanting, at best low key? This is where spirituality
affirms itself to be a tonic for the injured psyche rather than a
sedative, because the act of glorification unveils the divine
status of one's own being - the sense of sacredness that triggers
off self-validation which in turn permits personal creativity.
Since the self-image is an albeit totally inadequate image of the
psyche, a notion and therefore is of the nature of imagination,
one can work with it creatively.

What is more: the infirmities of the psyche can be diagnosed in
their traces in the self image. Pain is the alarm signal that
there is some lesion which manifests as a distortion of one's real
being. Yet, curiously enough our true being can be retrieved out
of this distortion unscathed, exactly as the voice of Caruso, so
badly distorted by the recording technology of his time can be
retrieved from the old records. The difference with the psyche is
that while the record registers the past, the psyche need not just
reinstate its pristine state, but can improve on it. While the
template is impervious to any defilement, the psyche is ever
recurrent.

The hitch is that one often obstructs this regenerative process by
failing to believe that nature has the property not only of
restoring itself, but of mutating, and likewise the psyche. And it
takes a trauma to set the evolutionary process into brainstorming
new ways of being. According to physicist Ilyia Prigogyne, the
evolution from more rudimentary to more sophisticated structures
in nature requires a breakdown of the stability achieved in states
of equilibrium. He calls the structures thus arrived at, thanks to
the disruption of the status-quo, dissipative structures. It is
the vision of how things could be that saves the structure from
irreversible disintegration.

Therefore one needs to not only lend oneself to the regenerative
process, but also welcome the strong, sometimes dramatic pummeling
of the forces of the cosmic drama upon one. Eventually not only
bygones get more and more into bygones even though they may still
linger in the twilight of the lighted up area of consciousness (at
least one develops the ability to live with the scars), but also
one learns to put pain to good use. This is the great art. Many of
the handicapped learn to adapt themselves to their disabilities,
and some even compensate for their inability with enhanced acuity,
as for example a blind piano tuner - or enhanced zeal like Dr.
Stephen Hawking - or capitalize on pain using it as a catalyst to
enhance inspiration like Brahms.

What can meditation propose at this stage? In the first place, if
indeed emotion calls for a conceptualization of the problem and
the conceptualization escalates the emotion into overacting, one
can gauge the wisdom of the Rishis about questioning one's
assessments, thus avoiding that the emotional charge slips off the
handle. The danger is that under the emotional overstress, the
thinking gets awry and the psyche runs amok into unrealistic
fantasies. 

But the crunch of the matter is that by putting conceptualizations
on hold, one releases a whole different dimension of thinking: the
intuitive mode. One substitutes feed-forward to feed-back. One
scans the events from the vantage point of the programming rather
than try to infer the programming from an analysis of the events.

We are talking of a non-commonplace mode of understanding called
transcendent cognizance, not based upon the feed-back of
experience, but upon the properties of our own thinking which
functions on the same principles as that of the thinking of the
universe, except infinitely less adequately.

Some psycho-therapists disentangle their patients from their
conceptualizations by asking them to say how they feel rather than
what they think about their problem. The added advantage here is
that the focus is now in the heart. Of course it is true that
ultimately one is tested in one's love. It is one's love that has
been wounded, violated, desecrated. There has been a betrayal of
the pure love of the early days. The innocence has been sullied.
Love has soured into a paradoxical love-hate syndrome. Here lies
the acid test. Can one love a person whose actions or behavior has
devastated one, or that one condemns, or abhors? Does one have the
strength to scan one's mind to provide excuses for them,
mitigating circumstances to ease one's wrath? Such as: they were
badly brought up, they are spoilt brats, they are struggling for
self esteem, and I am the scape-goat. . . their genetic package
was flawed.

Combining these would require a difficult coordination of left
brain/right brain activity. The danger is that, trying to do this,
intellectually, the left brain takes over right brain functions,
so that one does not really love, but tries to believe one does
because one is enjoined to. The answer would therefore be for the
right brain to take over, so that there is no point in trying to
provide an alibi for a person. This is the unconditional love.
One's love for one's child will overcome any criticism or
admonishing in one's mind. Such is the power of love - it triumphs
over the mind. Where the right brain prevails, one does not have
to provide mitigating arguments, one zooms on the good points of a
person. People who manage this become very charismatic and have
the makings to be successful in life by mastering the art of
dealing with people, rather than dismissing them from one's heart.
And what is more, by dint of some ironical divine wit: here lies
the secret of being high!

Furthermore, it is helpful to grasp clearly the distinction
between struggling to control things or not trying to control but
letting a sense of orderliness and sovereignty operate, where
one's higher self takes over. For example, it is realizing that
Planet Earth feels and thinks through one or rather in one, that
Leonardo da Vinci's inventiveness or Bach's attunement, or
Einstein's insight are features of the thinking and feeling not
just of that being that is Planet Earth, but also that being that
is the Universe and which some call God. Precisely the same is
true of our thinking and feeling and willing except that it gets
limited, sometimes distorted by being funnelled down.

This is why people find it difficult to forgive. No matter how
much one wills, one cannot overcome one's resentment and heal the
pain by one's own personal effort. In fact the will can put one in
a bind by hating oneself for hating another and not being able to
avoid it.

Resentment degenerates into hatred and gets transmuted by heroism.
One cannot "should" oneself or, for that matter, another person to
be a hero.  One volunteers one's heroism when the call for service
is sounded, or one does not. Giving vent to the latent hero in one
is ultimate fulfillment. It elicits one's need to see and fulfill
a purpose in one's life. What is more, in releasing this need, one
is honoring a dimension of one's being that one treasures as
representing a higher value. This is where meditation will
ultimately help one overcome resentment, after processing it.

But it is giving vent to actuating one's role in life in
dedication to service that triggers off the discovery of the more
transcendental dimensions of one's being, heretofore unknown and
latent. This is discovering by doing. The confidence gained by the
discovery of these strata of one's being upgrades one's
performance. Often, dedicating oneself to service will prove to be
therapeutic in overcoming the side effects of resentment.

There can be no doubt that the key to safeguarding one's self-
image from further inroads lies in considering it holistically,
that is including the more cosmic and especially transcendental
dimensions of one's being, where one's self-image is crowned in
something of the nature of the splendor that is behind all
creativity which is trying to manifest and actuate itself in the
universe; then reconciling this aspect which is latently present
in the depths of one's being with the inadequacy born of one's
having the support system of one's personality made of the fabric
of the evolutionary process occurring on Planet Earth. This
confirms Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan's aphorism regarding
reconciling "the aristocracy of the soul with the democracy of the
ego". 

Thus, honoring the divine status of one's being proves to be the
ultimate safety-buoy, keeping one afloat through the crisis in
one's self esteem facing resentment, triggered off by self-pity,
thus rescuing one from sinking into the bitterness of hatred with
its epidemic of violence and the resultant cruelty wreaked upon
one's fellow beings. 

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