“Imagine yourself as a tree.”
Sitting in a guided meditation shouldn’t be difficult. Someone else does all the work. But, for 20 minutes, a face kept showing up in my tree. I put this woman down years ago. What was she doing here?
Noble, high-minded people don’t hold grudges or perseverate on fictional conversations, of course, and, therefore, being of only the purest emotional and intellectual high-test consciousness, I do not do such things. Thus, there is no possible way that this woman could be taking up space in my mind.
So what if she hadn’t paid for my services, and, when reminded to do so, argued and then still refused to pay even when clear explanation was given, and then, and then, when I tried to resolve the issue by opening a conversation in which I began by taking full responsibility for my errors in communication, had the gall to forgive me and offer her blessing!?
For months after this happened, on my long walks, despite having closed any contact with her and believing that I had fully processed my feelings about it, I would find myself imagining dialogues in which she approached me in her infinite cluelessness, and I responded with my experience and explained why I would not receive any future contact from her.
Sitting in meditation, after 20 minutes of arguing that she wasn’t actually in the tree, I had to admit it:
I hadn’t forgiven her.
And why should I? She was in the wrong, wasn’t she? If I respect myself as a practitioner, I don’t tolerate being treated as if my time and expertise are not worth anything, right? I’m RIGHT, dammit!
There’s a lot to forgive at this time. We are creatures of our thoughts and the quantum realm, but we are also creatures of a Newtonian reality as long as we live in these bodies, and these bodies are worthy of respect and endowed with inalienable rights, the transgression thereof constituting an injustice. Shouldn’t we cleave to our rightness?
It depends on how much extra weight we want to carry. If I do not forgive, it is me, not the perpetrator, who bears the burden. This woman is happily bobbing along in her world without a thought for me, why am I suffering the weight of carrying her around? Forgiveness is not carte blanche to the universe to keep feeding you shit-sandwiches. It’s ownership of two things: your inherent autonomy, and your integrity.
In putting this situation through Byron Katie’s Work, I can break it down as follows. In her framework, we start with blaming a specific person who we perceive to be wrong. It might look like this:
Sally should have paid me.
The first question, which is meant to be answered quickly and without deep thought, is:
Is this true?
The answer is either yes or no. Over time, as I have developed facility with these techniques and increasing ease with going beyond the thought, it has become easy to immediately say, “no.” However, for the purposes of this exercise, and because, clearly, until I did this work, I was holding onto this, I will say,
Yes.
There is another part to this question – is it REALLY true? This is where it is easy to get hung up, trying to think through the “correct” response. The more distance and perspective we get on the vagaries of tangible reality, the quicker the answer, “no,” will come, but, until “no” feels true, we should work through “yes.” Yes, she should have paid me.
Here’s where it gets interesting. After this, the question is,
How do I act when I believe this thought?
It is important to answer this in terms of immediate behaviors and attitudes. If I get out of my head, I come to the following:
Entitled, disgruntled, cranky. I perseverate on how I am the victim here, and that projects outward in endless loops of trying to get other people to validate my pain. When I am conjuring up interactions that would elicit a response, and then looping through my expert jibes and answers, I am in an angry and argumentative state that colors my relationships with the real people who are actually in front of me.
Who would I be without this thought?
Light, valued, clear, peaceful. Magnanimous and gentle. Open-minded about conversations as they arise, rather than grafting unrelated conflicts onto them.
In short, easy. Adaptable. All the things I define as “healthy.”
Which means that I am allowing this ongoing thought to keep me unhealthy.
At the end of this process, we come to what Katie calls:
The Turnarounds. These are statements that reverse and invert the original viewpoint, demonstrating ways in which it is untrue, or unnecessary.
Here are a few:
She shouldn’t have paid me.
Can I make the case for that? Well, yes. Since I didn’t bill her in a timely manner, and thus did not act professionally, she had every right to assume that I didn’t wish to be paid.
She did pay me. How? Well, this happened early in my practice, and it forced me to learn to engage in the trickier aspects of being in business for oneself, and in defining my parameters, and in having uncomfortable conversations with clients. It helped me recognize when a client relationship isn’t healthy, and how to extricate myself from it. It alerted me to warning signs to look for before I even take a client on. These are invaluable lessons, and the earlier we get them, the better off we are. This tuition was worth a thousand times the price.
I shouldn’t not pay me. What does that mean? Well, if I am angry that I am not paid, why? It is because I feel that she didn’t treat me with respect, didn’t value my time and expertise, and didn’t behave honorably towards me. If I’m carrying this around, I’m the one who is not paying me, over and over again. I can end that experience, and that cycle, by putting that story down.
I should pay me. This is the corollary to the previous turnaround. Letting go of something that isn’t serving me, but is clogging up my mind, is an act of service to myself. If I want to be valued and respected, shouldn’t I start by valuing and respecting myself ?
There are more and deeper places to go with this. Not only did she show me the problems in my practice management and give me opportunities to grow, but I also got angry, which allowed me to see into a place in myself where there is hurt, and fear. What if I’m not valuable? What if I’m not worthy of respect? What if, out of an inability to see the massive wealth available to me, I am tempted to disrespect someone else in this same way?
What hurt in this situation was so much more than the small amount of money I felt owed. It touched so many tender and fragile places that needed some light and a chance to grow. Staying angry would have kept me from experiencing this.
It stops mattering who is right, and who is wrong. And only when it stops, can we get past that and see, with clear eyes, what needs repair. Sometimes I feel buried by the avalanche of how much is NOT OKAY right now (the very least of which is some random person I used to know who didn’t pay her bill – sincerely, I wish that was the worst problem I saw with the world). What forgiveness does is it turns the reactive sense of victimhood into clear and conscious assessment of reality. What happened, happened. What is, is. My interpretation of those events can either keep me in them forever, or set me on a better path. If I keep carrying it, it stays my problem.
I don’t want that pain.
I want clarity, and the ability to make good decisions, and to know how to find those who are trustworthy (and how to avoid those that aren’t), and opportunities to move myself away from the path of those pain-informed actions. I want to establish new patterns in my life. I want freedom.
In truth, that is what I want most, and I’m willing to give up the rewards of rightness to have it.
The rewards of deep and real forgiveness accrue to me. The examined belief becomes a glowing light of protection around me.
Pay yourself first. And never, ever, steal from yourself.
If you’re looking for me, I’m a tree.
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