Two Kinds of Hurt
There are two kinds of hurt: self-pitying hurt and sad
hurt. Self-pitying hurt is the kind of hurt we feel on purpose, so that
we'll have a good excuse to wallow in self-pity. Whenever we are
self-righteously indignant at someone else's behavior, we are
indulging in self-pitying hurt. We seek self-pitying hurt when we
expect or demand something from another person which that person is not
offering freely. Whenever we believe that other people (e.g. our
parents, spouse, or children) owe us anything; whenever we try to
bribe, wheedle, or coerce other people; to try to make them feel guilty
if they don't come across for us; to impose our own desires on them
beyond what they are comfortable with; then what we are actually
seeking from them is their rejection, which we can conveniently blame on
them.
Whenever we make our happiness depend on something which
someone else does or doesn't do, we are just asking that person to
hurt us. This kind of hurt is easily avoided by being respectful of
other people's space: their limits, their right to have feelings of
their own, including the right to reject us, if they so desire, without
our resenting, denying it, or taking it as a personal affront.
Where self-pitying hurt is the natural consequence of
possessive love, sad hurt is the doorway to true love. Sad hurt is the
hurt which other people make us feel in spite of our having reached out
to them joyously and in good faith. Sad hurt is puzzling hurt (as
opposed to self-righteous hurt). Where self-pitying hurt can easily be
avoided by listening to and respecting other people's feelings, sad
hurt is unavoidable – it's part and parcel of the human
condition. Sad hurt is the hurt which other people lay on us purposely
– the product of their self-hatred which they project onto us as
scapegoats. Sad hurt is the hurt we feel when other people are just
using us as an excuse to pity themselves.
This kind of hurt seems very unjust and unfair; and it is
unjust and unfair. Although it is a meager consolation, this kind of
"unmerited" hurt is indeed the result of karma that we ourselves
set into motion in other lifetimes and realities. If we feel that it is
unjust that we should have to suffer now for sins committed in other
lifetimes, that's too bad; but it's life, and there's no use
complaining about it. Complaining is what turns it into self-pitying
hurt.
When other people try purposely to hurt us, it hurts.
There's no use pretending that it doesn't hurt, or getting angry
at them in return. Those responses (apathy or anger) cover our feelings
of sad hurt – keep us from feeling the hurt directly by substituting
thought forms of self-pity for the direct perception of pain. These are
our protections (closing up or striking back) when other people
deliberately try to hurt us, and they are effective blocks against the
feeling of sad hurt. However, they also block out the feeling of true
love.
If we're going to be open to other people's love, we
have to be open to their hurt as well. Vulnerability is not a door that
can be opened and closed selectively, to let some feelings through and
not others. To protect ourselves from feeling hurt is to prevent
ourselves from feeling love.
When the crowd taunted and crucified Jesus, he felt deeply,
deeply hurt. He felt exactly the same way we would feel if there was a
crowd of people taunting us and pouring their self-hatred upon us, and
we had done nothing to deserve it. Jesus was not such an exalted being
that he no longer had a capacity to feel hurt. On the contrary, he was
an exalted being precisely because he let himself feel the hurt
directly, instead of blocking his pain with self-pity (apathy or anger).
No matter how enlightened we may become, we never get to a
place where hurt no longer hurts. There's no way that hurt ever
does anything except feel BAD. But if someone hurts us and we let
ourselves feel the hurt directly, then that's that; that's the
way the cookie crumbles. We feel bad for a little while, and then the
feeling passes and we go on to something else.
But if we are afraid to feel hurt directly; if we reject the
feeling of hurt by substituting apathy or anger for it, by trying to
dominate or control relationships, by rolling over and playing the
victim right off the top, or by avoiding intimacy altogether; then we
are in fact grabbing onto our hurt, hugging it to our bosoms, and making
it the centerpiece of all our relationships. And all there can ever be
is hurt, because we leave no room for love to get in anywhere –
we've got every chink stuffed.
Apathy and anger aren't really painkillers, they're
just pain deferrers. All they do is postpone the pain. The only way to
really get through pain, to get over it and past it, is by feeling it
directly. Of course, this is the last thing which people who are in
pain want to hear: "Haven't I suffered enough?" they ask.
"And it's not even my fault!" But the truth is that the
amount of pain which people feel (or repress into apathy or anger) is
the precise amount of pain which they must yet feel to disentangle
themselves from it and put the pain behind them.
This is because pain is not something which is external
(imposed from without), but rather arises from within ourselves. The
external situation which causes pain is but a symbol for something going
on inside us on an emotional level. To consider our pain as something
detached from ourselves is to refuse responsibility for our pain. To
blame someone else for our pain, to try to make someone else take
responsibility for feeling our pain, is futile. Only by feeling our
pain directly, looking within ourselves for the source of our pain, are
we taking responsibility for it, and thereby putting ourselves in a
position to move beyond it. We do this by finding a way to heal our own
wounds, instead of expecting or demanding other people to heal them for
us. Other people can't heal us; they're in too much pain
themselves to have any extra love to spare. We have to be willing to
take complete responsibility for our own healing.
Go back in your mind's eye to every scene in your life
when you were hurt by other people. You do this like a normal daydream
or fantasy, but instead of trying to capture a feeling of glory,
vindication, vengeance, self-righteousness, etc. (as is done in normal
daydreaming) , you try to capture the feeling of hurt that you felt at
that time. Watch the scene of that person who is you being rejected and
needing love, and give love to that person. Talk to the you in the
visualization, call to him or her: "There, there, cheer up! You
may have been rejected, but you're still a worthwhile person.
You'll go on living and breathing, and in time you'll find true
love. After all, I love you. I really do!"
Say this using your own words and sentiments, and mean what
you say. Give yourself all the sympathy and compassion that you were
denied at that time. Let yourself feel sad for that person who is you.
And when you let yourself feel sad for yourself, you'll also find
yourself feeling sad for the people who hurt you.
Sad hurt implies forgiveness – the sadness is as much
for those who hurt us as it is for ourselves. Sadness, not anger, is
the true feeling we share with the people who hurt us. Anger separates
us from them, whereas sadness unites us to them – we are one with
them in sadness.
This visualization is not so different from what we do when
we indulge ourselves in angry fantasies of the people who have hurt us
– telling them off, or delighting when they feel remorse for what
they've done to us. But instead of using the visualization to stoke
our self-pity, we use it to heal ourselves by feeling good about who we
are.
To be able to love others and to freely receive their love
in return, we have to be ready to be rejected and hurt by them. We have
to be willing to face this directly, instead of preparing ourselves in
advance, bracing ourselves, taking out insurance in advance against
hurt. We have to be able to forgive people for the bad things they do
to us rather than get into a tizzy about it – forgive them because
they don't know what they're doing.
Of course, this is a lot easier said than done, but the key
to it is being willing to feel hurt: not angry and vindictive, not
blithely pretending we're not hurt, not bitterly wallowing in
self-pity over past hurt, not setting up ground rules and strictures in
relationships to guard against the possibility of future hurt; but just
plain old feel hurt. If we can truly open ourselves up to hurt, then
we'll automatically open ourselves up to love.
(Excerpted from Magical Living, Copyright © 2001 by Bob Makransky.
All rights reserved).
