When someone speaks painful words

Today I want to talk to you a little bit about how other people's words can affect us, how they hurt us, how they can cause us pain. And just as I'm talking about this, you might want to maybe think back. So suddenly different situations might pop up where other people's words, other people's opinions or ideas of you have triggered you, have hurt you, have caused you some pain. There's a recent example for me, which is why I'm talking about this to you, because it's not something that we necessarily, on a spiritual path or tantric path, stop and think about. But the mind, the ego has really, really got it if we are hurt, if somebody causes us pain, if somebody says something that stings. If you're resonating with that idea of something that stings, for me, the first thing is about bringing compassion to yourself. Whether you are in the right or you are in the wrong at this point, it just doesn't matter.

You see, when people say things, and it hurts us, we can automatically go into what I call a fight response or a flight response. And fight is 'How dare they!' Just a huge volcano of anger and rage comes up at that person and in that situation in my experience, we're not able to see the wood for the trees. We're not able to find that objective place with some distance, because they've really stood on something in us that hurts, that causes pain. And for me, the first thing, is about accepting yourself as a human being and -whether you're right or wrong - that you deserve love and compassion to hold this, that you don't deserve to be attacked or made wrong. And actually for me, we often get confused because we're looking for other people to provide that for us.

I think one of the things that's been quite challenging for me in my life, in my spiritual journey, is about how I bring compassion and love to myself first, regardless of what's going on out in the world, regardless of whose saying what, regardless of whether I'm right, wrong, or any of that stuff. Actually there's this first place where I'm able to bring love and compassion and holding, that I can literally hold myself, hold and love that part of me and soothe myself and talk to myself about, it's okay. It's okay. We're going to deal with this. We're going to get through this. We're going to find a way through.   

And the other thing for me is that when somebody says something that hurts, it's because it treads on something, it knocks something. Maybe, and this is not a comfortable one to admit, is they might be right. There may be a shred of truth in what they're saying, and because you feel vulnerable about it, or because you feel exposed, actually it moves you into that flight or fight. I talked about the fight. The flight is that you hide, you pretend you didn't hear it, you ignore it. You hope it's going to go away, and you're not present with it. And you're just not even thinking about it and just run away with it.

But actually neither of those places is helping you move through and find peace. I think that for me, when there are these situations, what we're looking for, is peace. And actually when people say things that hurt us, it triggers us out of peace. How dare they, who the fuck do they think they are? What do they know? All of that huge anger stuff comes up. And for me, I've got several different ideas or tactics that I use to help deal with this.  

And my number one thing is about space. Really, this is inately possilbe if it's arrived in an email, but also if it's arrived in a phone call or face to face space. Before going back and laying in the next punch or laying in the next attack, actually take one step back and just sit with it. Just sit with it, just breathe with it, and just let it come up. But the trick is not to get involved in it. The minute you start to need to justify yourself, make yourself right, or need to solve it, to take the sting away, then you're already caught back up in that loop again. This is important to me even more when I'm in that place where I can't see the wood for the trees. Because, when people don't know you, they don't know what your intention was. For me, I think one of the things I've really understood in my time of teaching is that as human beings, we are all doing our absolute level best, and we're doing our best based on the situations that have happened in our life, the experiences we've had, the value system that we grew up in. We simply have to adapt and understand that their intention may have been good, and it is our response that needs altering.

All of these painful things are impacting us more and more with news and social media ever-expanding their messages upon us. How we are dealing with the world and how we are dealing with these things in front of us, is becoming more evident. And there are 7 billion different people on the planet with 7 billion different views and ideas of how things should happen. And so for me, when I bring that to myself, when I bring those situations to myself, I'm not out to hurt anybody. I'm not out to attack anybody. I'm trying to do the best I can with the information based on my experiences, based on my conditioning, based on my friends, my family... I'm trying to do the best that I can.  

And I think there's also something about getting to the place of humility, of accepting you might have been able to do something different or there may be a shred of truth, but before you can even begin to get into that place, there's something about sitting in your sovereignty, sitting in your truth, sitting in your compassion for yourself. That actually all in your life, you do the best that you can and that you are really okay. You're not wrong. You're really okay. And you're doing the best that you can. And we're human. We make mistakes. Look at climate change. We make mistakes. We don't listen to stuff. We're trying our best. We're doing our level best.

And there's something here about finding love, finding love that you have for you. And often that is one of the most difficult things that we as human beings struggle with. Not in other people's love, but actually in bringing love to ourselves. And if we're not conscious of that, what happens is we start looking for other people to love us. And if we really are needing that, then we start to make conditions upon that. Or people unconsciously build up their conditions, for example 'well, I'm going to love you if you behave this way', or 'I'm going to love you if you do it that way', or 'this love is conditional'. And the thing is, love has no condition. It really has no condition.  

There was something I saw a few days ago that said a flower is still beautiful and radiates, beauty and smell and looks gorgeous regardless of whose looking at it, regardless if there's a saint looking at it or a serial criminal looking at it. It's still beautiful. It's still there. Love is still all around us every moment, and how do we choose to be in touch with that? And how do we choose to bring love to that?

Now, now one little meditation that I would offer you. And I did this recently, there's something about being able to transmute energy. So one practice that you might choose to do is when you're sitting with the situation, once you've got over the steam, the anger, the pain. The pain, oh my God, the pain of being hurt. The pain of somebody saying something really cuts deep. And for me, what you do is you sit there and you imagine your heart opening up and you put the situation into the centre of your heart and you're breathing in. And you're imagining that love is going into that situation, that pain, that whatever those people said, which is in the centre of your heart, is receiving the love. On the out-breath, you can imagine you are breathing out the pain, the situation. You can also reverse this, and it still works. you can breathe in the pain, in all its horribleness and depth, taking it into your heart, you are able to keep on taking it in. Then you can imagine the love takes it over and dissolves it, breaks it down into it toxic parts. And then, on the outbreath, you are able to breathe out love. So, you have changed the situation around. First, you have stood aside and told yourself you can cope with this situation. Second, you have decide to breathe in all of this love to help dissolve it. Third, you breathe out just love.

Now I did this recently for a week, for an hour would you believe? I was on a retreat as a student. First time in a long time, really good, but this technique worked for me. I took some very painful situations in and I transmuted them into love and my perspective and relationship with it changed. And I was able to feel more love for myself. I didn't necessarily know the answers. I didn't know the way out, but what I was able to do was to bring love and compassion to myself. Imagine what our world would look like if we all loved ourselves and brought compassion to ourselves. Then we don't need anything from anybody else, but that anything else anybody brings us is then a delight, is an unexpected, and is then welcomed. What other people bring is not demanded, needed, or conditional. I do not need to feel this about me to make me feel valid, to make me feel right.

The trick is to learn to get that from yourself so that you then actually don't need that from anybody else. You are the only person that can forgive yourself and the only person that can bring compassion to yourself and love yourself. And once you master that, you are the master of your world. It might be that you get to a point you've apologized to this other person if that's what's required. But actually, there's something about not being dependent upon them accepting, not it being conditional. But also look at the situation, and after 24 hours of just sitting, with just nurturing yourself, just holding yourself, just loving yourself and being okay, then when you'll feel ready to start to unpick, start to unpick what it is that made you feel upset, triggered, hurt, pain.

And the way to do this is through a very, very fragile way, being incredibly gentle with yourself, incredibly fragile. And you don't need to share it with anybody else, but you might admit a few things to yourself that you probably wouldn't say to anybody else. So for me, in my recent situation, it was because I was angry because they didn't trust me. They didn't trust my experience. They didn't trust my knowledge. Actually, what was more important was that they didn't trust my integrity. And I got hugely angry, because I'm passionate about the things that I do. I'm passionate about wanting to do them right. Okay. I make mistakes. Everybody does, but actually, I'm here to do the best that I can. But what I noticed I'd done was I'd given my power away to the other person and I made their opinion metter to me about my integrity, I gave them that power.   

Now I know in the main I do really good work. I help a lot of people. And the part of me that wants to do that is about love. And the love that I have for the people that come to me. But I also have experiences to show in tantra, counselling and other therapies of the pain and the suffering and the bits where I don't feel good enough. The shame, I have for my performance when I don't or can't provide the best solution I can. There is a bit of truth in what I was told. Yet I know that I help people face up to their own pain, insecurities, problems and I help them to heal that, and to work through that. And for me, I know the integrity of my work. And the people that come to me, they know that this is going to help them and I have thusands of success stories. So why did I give my power away to somebody else to challenge my integrity? Why did I do that? And that's a really interesting question, because that is where I tripped up. I made somebody else's perspective truthful or more true than the knowing that I had inside myself.

I know that what I do is good in the moment. I know it's good. I know it helps. I know these truths, but I tripped up because I gave away that power to somebody I respected in a power position. And the minute I did that, I lost my sovereignty. I lost. And so they were able then to cause me pain. Whereas my angry was like, 'well, you don't know me'. 'You don't know what's happening'. 'You don't know what's going on' and I was moving into the attack. And actually the very simple thing that I've been able to do is to, as I said, unpack and be fragile around unpacking the truth of the situation. Look at the parts that hurt you. Sit in acceptance of the bits that may be true. That's okay. And there's a vulnerability in accepting that and sitting with that.  

But there's also the part of looking at why you got angry and where you gave yourself away to their opinion, and actually looking at the true truth of who you really are as a beautiful, loving, compassionate, human being who is doing their best. And once you start from that place you give yourself space to unpack it, you gently unpick it, you question, maybe use a friend, maybe use somebody that listens to you, to help you get to what's really underneath this. And once you master this, once you master that nobody can hurt you in terms of in this way, then you sit on your sovereign throne of the beautiful soul being of light that you are.

I hope some of these ideas help you. Drop me a message if you want to talk anymore about anything that's come up for you in this blog and I'll be happy to respond. Thank you.