Hurt and Being Hurt 2
In my previous blog, I explored the question of whether I can be hurt. And I talked about my aha moment: I cannot be hurt if my heart protects me from it. If I have the umbrella of clear insight up, I simply cannot get wet.
Thanks to my attention training, I usually don't dwell in my personality for long anymore. Naturally, I go to my heart. And my heart is the space where my freedom of choice awaits me. There, I immediately know again: what the other person does or says is her business. Mine is whether I want to take that personally. And I choose again and again not to. That makes me so happy.
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My thinking - she thought - had thus immediately found the answer to the subsequent question I pose in this blog, namely whether you can hurt someone. No, you cannot. If someone cannot be hurt, you cannot hurt them either. Logical, right? Well, then it's always the other person's fault if they feel hurt. It's never my fault. Done.
Always? Never? Done? Hmmm... I sensed danger.
I had a gut feeling that something wasn't right here. And luckily, I've learned to listen to that and not just blindly believe my thoughts. I took the time to look deeper, and slowly but surely, the danger I had sensed took clearer shape: my personality might want to use this insight from my heart as a license to do whatever it wants, 'because it's always the other person's fault if they feel hurt'. I might run the risk of shutting myself off from the other person's pain. Do you feel the hardening that lurks in this? My personality might abuse this insight to act against the other person instead of seeking connection with them. Clearly, more clear perception was needed.
And so my investigation continued. By that, I mean I kept carrying the question 'can I hurt someone?' with me and pondering it, whenever it settled back into my attention. Maybe this doesn't mean much to you, and I can understand that. It's not a process that can be described in exact words. I can say what it's not, though. It's not logical reasoning and not analyzing. It's a keeping-close, a nurturing in my heart. My experience is that in this way, insights come to the surface at all hours. They really come at the most unexpected times and, well, indeed often at night 😄.
THE CAUSE AND THE TRIGGER
At some point, I had the insight to distinguish between the cause and the trigger. And that's when it clicked.
When I feel hurt by you, the cause of that lies within my own personality. You say or do something, and I go haywire. That doesn't happen directly because of your action, but there's a step, or maybe better said, a filter, in between. I get upset because of my belief in my own stories and emotions about your action - thoughts that quickly pop up. And thereby, especially if I get stuck in this confusion of stories/emotions/stories/emotions, I lose the chance to see the bare facts, the reality.
And conversely, when I myself hurt someone, I am the the trigger, the catalyst, that sets off this process of feeling hurt in the other person. What in me was the reason for my behavior as a trigger? What in me made me not more careful? What in me felt it was necessary for me to say this at this moment, in this way, and in this tone? What in me caused me to adopt this attitude? These kinds of questions, which I then ask myself, invite me to pause and take the time to acknowledge and experience my own stories and emotions, which led to my trigger behavior, so that new insights into myself can emerge.
Note: I don't ask 'why' questions, because that would invite my thinking to start pondering and analyzing. I've gotten stuck in that too often. I stay in my observing heart and ask open questions to my personality from there. Without judgment, without accusation or reproach. With love and compassion, with the sole aim of understanding what was going on in my personality so that it became the trigger that hurt the other person. Only in this way can I - her heart - help her to learn from this experience and grow in wisdom.
Only from our hearts can we heal our personalities.
Trigger and cause: I am the catalyst, you are the source of your hurt. And next time it could be the other way around. Then you are the trigger and I am the cause of my hurt. That's just how it goes. And it happens so quickly...
Only when I deeply understand this process, am I willing to be patient and do my 'homework'[1]That means I investigate my own part and stay out of the other person's. I usually know all too well what the other person's contribution is, but do I have as clear a view of my own contribution?
If you and I both examine which stitches we've dropped ourselves in this way, and then share the results of our homework with each other[2] - then we can heal the wound that has arisen in love and connection, instead of continuing to fight and create even more separation.
AT LAST
Hurting and being hurt: one of the many paradoxes of non-duality[3], which becomes so clear when you overlay the dual image of the one Flower as a template[4]:
- Yes, I can indeed hurt someone's personality.
- No, I cannot be hurt by someone when I abide in the clear insight of my heart.
[1] See Eva Wolf, The Flower (2022), chapter 17.3
[2] Same
[3] Non-duality: it's not one, and it's not two. See The Flower, chapter 14.1 and 14.2.
[4] Dual, namely the heart and the three petals of the flower. For a template, see The Flower, chapter 1.11.