Today’s journal musings were centered around defensiveness and humiliation. As I opened to seeing what was behind some of my most recent defensive feelings, I realized that there was fear of being misunderstood and humiliation involved. I’ve done a lot of work on both but hadn’t really connected some of these dots in quite the same way before.
There is a long history of humiliation for me, and it got ‘crystalized’ when I was 13 and was shunned by almost all the other girls in the convent I was at because one girl accused me of trying to steal her boyfriend. Teenage girls… what can I say. It was a very challenging time for me and was the culmination of much humiliation as a means of disciplining in the earlier years which was not unique to our family by any stretch. Anyway… I felt very misunderstood in the process and in some personal situations even now that feeling can come up along with the defensiveness.
I was writing about having worked with these feelings a lot over the years and while they don’t defeat me the way they used to they’re still very much part of my psyche. Then the thought hit me, time for some tonglen, a Buddhist practice of breathing in the pain and suffering around an issue, not only my own but that of all those who have felt this pain, then breathing out loving kindness or some loving, healing thoughts. It’s really a beautiful practice that I remember learning many years ago but not doing anything with it. As it has surfaced again in a book my book club is reading by Pema Chodron “Welcoming the Unwelcome”, it is fresh in my mind, so I started doing it this morning. There is something supremely freeing about this process and the way it opens me to bring love and grace not only into my own pain but that of all who have suffered the pain of being misunderstood and humiliated (likely includes almost everyone to some degree or other).
This practice is a great way to turn personal pain into spiritual service and I am truly grateful for the reminder.
Namaste
