The point of this article is not to say you
shouldn’t have healthy expectations – of course you should, we should all be
entitled to be treated decently. This is about not having unattainable/road to disappointment
expectations. This is about understanding how having great expectations of another, rather
than accepting them as they are is a sure fire route to disappointments.
Expectations
are a killer of all kinds of relationships - the only thing they provide is a
disappointment. Why? Because simply by having set expectations, removes the likelihood
of having the very things you really desire.
One
of them is unconditional love - how can you expect to have that, if you don't actually
give it yourself? The answer is that you can't; expectations arise from
feelings of lower vibration, we have needs which we project onto the other
person in order to feel loved, this means we need them to prove it by
fulfilling our expectations.
No-one
can ever fill the gap that we have created within our wholeness; we disconnect
ourselves from source and then "expect" another soul to reconnect us.
It simply doesn't work like that, unconditional love is taking character, warts
and all, quirks, annoyances, all the things that we are made of as humans and
loving them unconditionally from the source we have within US - not from their
source.
It
is the same with trying to fill that gap within ourselves with ‘things’, not
always the obvious material things but maybe we reach for this or that
spiritual endeavour, we make new friends, join new groups. Again, it simply
doesn’t work like that. The gap within our wholeness has been created by us and
can ultimately only be healed by us. It’s no good just wanting to change, you
have to actually change, be willing to lay out all your unsavoury bits in the
fresh air. Otherwise you could have a 1000 therapies and still remain the same.
Now that my friends, is why change is so hard – dangling our unsavoury bits in
public is dangerous! We might be judged, or we might give away our power or
feelings of safety (substitute any fears you like here)
Take
a long hard look at a person who is always blaming others for their own
problems, look at what traits in others that they moan about the most – it is
sure to be the ones they dislike most in themselves. Probably also the ones
they are most sensitive about too. Does that ring true for you?
Then
there are those who struggle to take responsibility for their own actions, if
a person does something to you to intentionally hurt you, it can make it much
worse than if they were to do the same thing accidentally. If they keep
on hurting you then it is easy to begin to feel that maybe there is something
about you that causes that hurt. Now that isn’t true, when people repeatedly
hurt others (by whatever means and no matter how “nicely” that hurt is dressed
up and delivered, ) It IS most certainly about them!, and the most interesting
thing to learn is that the need to inflict hurt upon another almost always
originates from your own pain.
Have a totally honest look backwards in your
life to the last time you did something to intentionally hurt someone, no
matter how insignificant. Try to remember the feelings you had, I bet it
wasn't about happiness and love, was it?
You
may have been angry, or jealous, or feeling any number of similar emotions.
Those feelings only come from your own pain. The same is true of others… no one
truly does things just because they enjoy inflicting hurt upon others.
(With the obvious exception of the
criminally insane etc, etc)
That
doesn't mean that their (or your) actions are justified, by any means… it's
still wrong to hurt someone with intention, regardless of how badly you've been
hurt yourself. Your own pain just isn't a valid excuse for inflicting
pain on others.
On the other hand, once you realise that the
harm comes from the pain of another, it does make it far easier to forgive
them, and somewhat easier to not take hurt from their actions in the first
place.
Even when those actions are intended to cause
pain; forgiving them takes away their power, because you realise that they
are attacking from a place of weakness, not a place of strength. It’s a phenomenal amount of relief that you
feel when you truly forgive someone as it takes a lot of energy to hold a
grudge.
Also, when we think of others causing us pain,
it doesn’t have to be a big traumatic event, thoughtlessness, carelessness etc,
these are tiny events but if the other person is carrying pain with them, it
can really hurt them.
Try listening, I mean really listening, not with the thoughts of advice
gathering in your mind – for the moment you do that, then you’ve actually
stopped listening. Give them your full attention and listen with your whole
being, they will recognise that on a soul level and that in itself is a form of
healing.
Try this, when you have a chance: Take a
moment to think about someone that hurt you recently, now think about the
person who caused that hurt, and picture them as having done it because they
were lashing out from their own pain (a feeling the vast majority of us are
familiar with!). Let yourself feel that feeling, the conscious knowledge
that you are saying or doing something you don't really mean because of your
own hurt, and then understand that whatever they did came from a similar place,
that they had just as hard a time controlling it.
It changes the way you feel about it a lot when
you look at it that way, doesn't it?
It
then becomes harder to hold onto pain and much easier to forgive. The freedom
that gives your soul is ohhh so delicious! and infinitely more rewarding than
holding onto anger!
So next time someone important in your life
acts in a way that displeases you (and by the way, if they display anything
less than kindness towards you, that’s their issues coming to the fore, not
yours) try to think where they are coming from, why they might be hurting.
Conversely if you are the one hurting, don’t be led down the path of
apologising (or getting angry) for having feelings.
I am not suggesting that you blunder in, naming
what you think is that persons problems – none of us like to hear that, none of
us like to be faced with who we truly are in a shocking way. I think a gentle
approach is best, if you can, gently coax out what is the real problem beneath
their hurtful behaviour.
Above all keep your own boundaries strong, keep
a strong sense of self-worth. Don’t forget that some people don’t want your
help, won’t respond to you, no matter how loving/patient/resilient/giving you
are.
If you are already at that stage –evaluating
yourself and your needs would be a very smart idea.
