You know when you have a conversation with a friend, the ones that leave you ruminating over what you didn’t say?
I was chatting with a friend, and I told her, ‘I went away for 2 days and someone came into my house and closed the door to the room where my cat’s litter is in. My cat then pee’d on my daughters’ bed. I’m pissed because I have to buy a new mattress again because this also happened two years ago! I know I’m feeling overwhelmed and frustrated and not my most grounded self. She said, ‘what are you doing to attract this, it must have something to do with what you’re putting out into the world’.
What? Did you just say that? Yet honestly, I’ve done this in my past and feel like a jerk in hindsight. I’ve said that we attract what we put out into the world, and I do mean that. Yet I do believe that there are things beyond our reach or intentions that happen to us, that have nothing to do with the energy we’re putting out into the world.
When we take someone’s experience and make it a spiritual insight that’s supposed to teach them some BIG lesson, it doesn’t. It just feels disrespectful and belittling.
There’s an abundance of language about spirituality and self-awareness, it’s enticing to get swept up in the wisdoms we’ve learned for ourselves and turn our learnings outward to show others the ‘right way’. When we do this it often creates disconnection and frustration from the people we’re doing it to. We use it to point fingers, act like we’re all knowing, and act like we’re some guru whose here to point out what’s wrong in someone else’s life. Maybe our words will be seen as an important moment of shift in their life – my ego LOVES to take authority over someone else’s experience.
Another phrase we use is, ‘just get over it’ to a friend or colleague who is sharing an experience that (most often) feels shitty and gross and they’re attempting to process it by sharing it. We may do it because we don’t want to hear the discomfort they’re experiencing, we tell them to move on, let go and better things will come if they could.
That’s called spiritual bypassing which according to Wikipedia means, “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”. The term was introduced in the early 1980s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist.”
When we do that, it can be traumatizing and often breaks connection. Because sometimes we do this with innocuous things that happen in someone’s life, and sometimes we do this when someone is ill or dealing with disease and we suggest that they’re bringing this on themselves. This has been a hard lesson to learn personally, and I feel like a jerk because I’ve done it.
I started to see how we use spiritual or mindful ideas in incredibly disrespectful ways.
If you want to keep your friendships healthy and build bonds – listen and speak less. There’s listening with judgement and there’s listening with curiosity. Most of us can feel when someone is listening with judgement, it sits in the air like an orb of discomfort. When I feel as though I’m being judged in the silence I’ll resort to diffusing the situation or the story by making excuses and tirelessly explain myself. It ends up being unproductive and doesn’t change the situation and leaves me feeling the judgement.
We can offer suggestions and be aware of using language like; ‘what are you putting out into the world that’s drawing this to you’, because you’re basically telling someone they’re screwing up being human. Perhaps we can offer insights and if it’s an issue that’s been repetitive, we can offer that observation, kindly.
We can still be richly connected to our spirit and consciousness in a way that allows us to grow without projecting that outward. Growth, spirituality, awareness is an individual journey, the understandings, and awakenings we experience are not prescriptive, they are unique to us and only us. We can’t tell anyone else what their path is or what they should be aware of, because it’s the story according to us, not according to them. Just because we believe something doesn’t make it true. Allow for someone else to have their own experience and ask the same for yourself.
This doesn’t mean we disconnect from setting boundaries or healthily communicating our needs, but it simply means we don’t try to take dominion over someone else’s human experience. We learn to say things that support each other rather than unintentionally insult each other. Listening with patience rather than with the idea we know what’s best.
There’s potential that our relationships become more loving when we are patient and aware of the language we use.
With love
Noelle