A friend of mine was on a spiritual\u00a0retreat, facilitated by a guru who claimed to always be happy. He expected\u00a0everyone else to be happy, too, so if a follower appeared to be sad or angry,\u00a0he invited them to leave. One day, my friend was hungry and he headed for the
kitchen. He paused at the door. The guru was making himself a sandwich and my friend\u00a0stood at the doorway, out of sight, and he watched. When the holy man was ready\u00a0to eat, he opened the refrigerator door to get something to drink. He closed\u00a0the door, went back to the counter and his sandwich was gone. A dog had jumped
up and stolen it and he was in the process of chomping it down. The \u201chappy\u201d man\u00a0looked to the right and looked to the left. When he was sure no one was\u00a0watching, he kicked the dog.<\/p>\n
The consensus opinion among people\u00a0who are \u201cseeking enlightenment,\u201d is that choosing the high road, being loving\u00a0and joyful is spiritual and being angry or sad is not. This belief causes
things like the paragraph above. When we\u2019re angry or disappointed, when we feel\u00a0betrayed or belittled, if we think we can overlook these feelings and skip\u00a0straight to joy and acceptance, we\u2019re skipping a step. Forgiveness and\u00a0acceptance are processes. It takes practice and courage to admit we\u2019re feeling\u00a0angry or resentful and accept the truth of how we really feel. Forgiveness is a\u00a0worthy goal. It can lighten your heart and ease your pain. Eventually it\u00a0probably will, but expecting it to show up immediately is not only unrealistic.\u00a0It\u2019s foolhardy, like trying to go from A to Z without dealing with what\u2019s in
between.<\/p>\n
I was visiting with a girlfriend\u00a0who was in turmoil. She found out that her boyfriend had been cheating on her\u00a0repeatedly and she had shown him the door that morning. Initially, she had felt\u00a0relief but now, she was struggling.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must be really angry,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to be angry.\u201d Tears\u00a0streamed down her face. \u201cI know I shouldn\u2019t hold it against him. I should\u00a0forgive him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy? This is only Day One,\u201d I\u00a0said. \u201cYou need to feel your feelings. Give yourself some time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I want to be spiritual.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first of the four noble truths
in Buddhism is that suffering is an inherent part of life. If someone claims to\u00a0be happy and compassionate all the time, they aren\u2019t being mindful and aware. We\u00a0live in a world of duality. While we sometimes have joy and love, we also experience\u00a0pain and suffering. While we sometimes stand in the light, we also find
ourselves in the darkness. When things are hard, we can rest in the knowledge\u00a0that everything keeps on changing.<\/p>\n
When I was six, my father woke me\u00a0up while it was still dark and drove me to a small hill beside the local airport.\u00a0We were about to witness an eclipse of the sun and he explained it to me. \u201cWhen
the sun starts to come up,\u201d he said, \u201cthe moon is going to cover it and it\u2019ll\u00a0get dark again. And then the light will come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked up as a faint glow\u00a0appeared along the horizon, lighting up the edges of the world. It was sunrise\u00a0and my father\u2019s upturned face became a silhouette against the lit up sky. I\u00a0reached my arms up to the sky, stretching out my fingers toward the light but\u00a0in a minute it was dark. And then the light returned. I had just learned that\u00a0we can\u2019t have one without the other.<\/p>\n
According to my understanding,\u00a0accepting what is, is spirituality. It isn\u2019t about being on the high road and\u00a0never wavering. It isn\u2019t about forgiving when you feel resentful or smiling\u00a0when you\u2019re in a rage. It isn\u2019t about pretending you\u2019re in the light when\u00a0you\u2019re surrounded by darkness. It\u2019s about being honest and authentic without\u00a0judgments. It\u2019s about accepting however you are, wherever you are, even if you
don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s uncomfortable to be with our anger.\u00a0We feel like we\u2019re stumbling around with little control over our thoughts. But\u00a0when we turn away from ourselves and repress our real feelings, we get\u00a0depressed and anxious and often, our upset explodes on someone else. When we
block the things that cause us suffering, we also block the love that sustains us.<\/p>\n
When you feel betrayed or\u00a0diminished by someone or something, the high road is not always available. Buddhist\u00a0nun, Pema Chodron, tells us we can start wherever we are. A woman I know has
become rigid and frightened as she ages because she refuses to admit to her\u00a0frailties. She fancies herself a teacher of consciousness but during the years\u00a0I\u2019ve known her, she has let her anger stop her from being vulnerable. Because\u00a0of this, she has distanced most of her friends. She remains stuck because she\u00a0lives in a state of victimhood. It\u2019s always someone else\u2019s fault, and her shame\u00a0keeps her truth hidden. When we have the courage to face the truth about
ourselves, we can find the compassion and strength to breathe, to release, to inch\u00a0our way up the ladder and start and reaching for the stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A friend of mine was on a spiritual\u00a0retreat, facilitated by a guru who claimed to always be happy. He expected\u00a0everyone else to be happy, too, so if a follower appeared to be sad or angry,\u00a0he invited them to leave. One day, my friend was hungry and he headed for thekitchen. He paused at the door. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2736,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2735\/revisions\/2736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}