Stop fighting what things actually are. In you, in your surroundings, in those closest to you, in those who have an effect on your life. Not wanting to be affected is a rejection of the reality of being affected. Not wanting to be ‘involved’ is a rejection of the reality of being involved. Trying to help others change so that you are no longer affected, bothered, squeezed, scared is an agenda. Softly embrace things as they are. Exactly as they are. Without trying to find a way out.
Speak your truth and be squeezed. There is nothing to be done, to be figured out. You’re not ‘failing’ for being affected. That’s an extra pressure that you put on yourself. A standard of untouchability because you hate being affected by those people. You hate their influence in your lives, not just that, but their existence in your lives. And that’s understandable. But they are. No matter how much you try, they seem to weasel their way in. And you’re powerless in their weaseling, in their influence.
Something in you is imagining a life outside of this. But that in itself causes suffering in you. It’s a denial of things as they are. This does not mean to conform and cave in to victim-powerlessness. But there’s something to not fighting force with force. Something to accepting the squeeze and softening to the point where there’s no longer anything to squeeze. Not opposing, not saying no internally. You can say no externally but inside you’re saying yes.
Don’t hate yourself for this experience, for this challenge. You haven’t failed and as a result, you’re here. You haven’t betrayed yourself for being here. You’re in the process of un-betraying yourself. But softly. Without violence and pressure. Without the veneer of ‘this shouldn’t be so’. It is so. And there’s relief in just admitting that without hate, without resentment. Just saying yes to the fact of it, you are here.
What makes you want to reject this experience is this idea that your dignity is hurt in this. You need to get out of this situation so that you can not be on the receiving end of such bullying. There’s pride in there. This pride is actually a protection, a defense from being hurt. It’s a wall. A no. But this ‘no’ alienates you. Not in the sense that you’re trying to fit in, but it alienates you by limiting you. Your ‘no’ becomes a prison that you have to live in to prove a point.
Your ‘no’ becomes a prison that you have to live in to prove a point.
We’re taught that to say ‘yes’ to hurt is to be defeated. Is to be weak. Is to lose. But that is erroneous. Saying yes in this way is a yes to what is. Not to the person or behavior but to what is. It’s a deep acceptance of things as they are, people as they are, without deeming it wrong, shouldn’t be.
When you have the capacity or are the capacity to say yes in this way, then the squeeze is no longer a squeeze. It’s no longer meeting an opposition in you, it’s moving through you. The rub of it falls away. Everything can be exactly the same on the circumstance-level but it’s effect can be completely different. And that’s the freedom. The freedom is not changing things outside, that can happen, it can help, but it’s not freedom because things are outside your control. The freedom is inside, it’s a breaking down of all the walls, all the places in you that cave from bombardment, that try to ward it off.
That’s not to say that you should stand in the face of abuse and take it, no. You’re free to move or not move as you please. You’re free to say yes or no… all of it. But you’re inwardly not bound by any stance, any opposition, any protection . Your untouchability comes from seeing how touched you actually are and admitting to it. Not denying it. Not protecting from it. Because the fact is you’re touched, any protection comes after the fact. So in a way it’s not effective because the harm has already happened. If anything it can solidify the harm even more, make it stuck.
Your untouchability comes from seeing how touched you actually are and admitting to it.
But you yourself need not doubt your sincerity, your willingness to see, your ability to take right action when action is needed. That’s not what’s in question here. This is prior to all that, it’s acknowledging what’s here, what’s already the case before anything needs to happen. And this acceptance is all inclusive, it’s whole. It doesn’t leave anything out and say, ‘all this is ok but this little bit right here needs to change’, no. It’s accepting all of it, with you, and everything in it exactly as it is, exactly as you are.
And this is what it means to surrender. The word surrender itself has a negative connotation to the mind. The pride in you won’t want to surrender, thinking itself to be more powerful than surrender. But surrender is the most powerful thing, deep surrender. In there is rest, relief, peace, humility, tenderness, acceptance, belonging, heartbreak, love and paradoxically untouchability- all in bowing to what’s actually here.