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Appreciation-The Skill of Seeing What Is. By Jay Ray For the last few weeks I have been teaching the principle of Unconditional Love and Forgiveness a great deal. Its an immensely important principle within the Psychosynthesis toolkit, and a skill with which great healing can be facilitated. Most of the time, while working with clients, my role has been to allow them the space to acknowledge the pain in their lives and see the affects of the past on the decisions they are currently making. Usually, this undealt-with, unacknowledged trauma goes unnoticed as the aspect that shapes continued choices, ultimately leading to continued pain. But bringing awareness to past trauma is only one aspect of the healing. Awareness alone cannot make the difference. I have seen many people go round and round in the adrenalin of the drama, feeling better after the steam has been let off, only to continue in the path of repeated patterns of behaviour. My challenge as a therapist has been to offer them a 'next step'. It has been to assist them to see a way to change the behaviour, allowing for the wound to permanently heal, rather than the scab to form only to be picked off again. This presents them with a challenge: to take the reins of their own life and do it differently to the way they have been taught to do life in the past. If the client has an investment in the wound being healed by those that perpetuated it, often parents, they will refuse the invitation, preferring to continue to hold out expectations that it 'should' have been different. This results in wanting it to be different but not being willing to do anything to change the current situations for themselves, attracting more 'parents' into their lives with whom to repeat the same behaviour. The process of Unconditional Love and Forgiveness, as taught in the Psychosynthesis tradition, is the only tool that can facilitate the transition from unskilled victim to empowered adult. Rather than it being a lightweight attempt to put a positive 'spin' on life events, it is a very powerful possibility for real growth. The process asks that, once we have seen the events of the past and the affect they have had on us, having allowed ourselves sufficient space to cathart the residual emotional pain, we drop the unrealistic expectation on those people's past behaviour. Rather than this letting them 'off the hook', instead it frees us. They are never going to change because we want them to. Indeed, often they have already moved on or died, leaving us wanting change in them that has already, or can never, be accomplished. What we can do, however, is learn what we can do for ourselves from what they were incapable of doing for us. By ceasing to hassle ourselves about 'their' behaviour, we can turn to our own and begin the transformation. We can train ourselves in the skills they did not have, making self-nurturing decisions that begin to have favorable outcomes for us. At this point we are letting go of behaviour that had us trapped. Whether the other people involved were also able to do that for themselves is entirely up to them. This is the forgiveness part of the equation. It is less like the old concept of 'forgiving and forgetting', and more like the idea of having a debt 'forgiven' so that you can start again. You are absolving the concept of a debt they owe you, so that you can cut your losses and begin again. The Unconditional Love part of the equation has always presented people with still more challenges. Myself included! In a way, the 'unconditional' nature is the dropping of self-defeating expectations. So far so good. However, sending 'love' to those who have ill-treated us is a tall ask. Whilst I have done it for years, I also have found the process lacking. In the true spirit of 'you teach what you most need to learn', I have had many opportunities to fall into this pit over the last few years. Eventually, after a harrowing year, I believe I have cracked the code. It occurred to me that its not enough to let go of the expectations of what we feel was due us. Certainly we are able to take responsibility for making new decisions from that point. We see what we did not get and are able to fill the gap. What we do not get is that in every relationship there is also another side. There is always that which we 'did' get which is all too easy to overlook when faced with the overwhelming absence of what we did not. Once again, if we are unwilling to accept gifts from the past, we find ourselves overlooking gifts in the present. We perhaps see only that which we do for ourselves and do not notice that which others do for us in either a forthright or 'back-handed' way. This results in our storehouse of knowledge illuminated in one corner where we know well its contents, but the other half remains in darkness, with us unwilling to shine the light on its contents out of bloody-mindedness. But lets suppose someone had the courage to look again at a previously 'forgiven' relationship with new eyes. If they gave themselves the opportunity to look at that part of the glass which was half full, for a moment, what might they see? What might you see? What I saw was that everything that had ever happened to me placed me in a position from which to grow. I saw that had it not been for the circumstances of my life, I would not have developed the strengths that I currently have. What I also saw was moments of beauty in amongst the grit: times when the spotlight of my focus stopped on previously overlooked kindnesses. As this began to happen, some relationships in my life began to change colour. The hue that had highlighted them in my past view switched, and I saw a bigger picture. A strange thing started to occur. I began to 'appreciate' those things and those people for being there at that time to facilitate those moments, notwithstanding the events within other moments we had shared together. By being able to see fully both sides, I feel that I have grown again. I am able to focus more fully on my whole life. In that expanded vision, I am able to embrace greater opportunities for growth that I had previously filtered out. So I feel that there is a next stage on from the unconditional love and forgiveness process that has been so valuable to myself and my clients in the past. That stage is the willingness to open our eyes yet further and fully appreciate our path and its lessons, allowing nothing to be lost, nothing wasted. Or maybe that is the interpretation of 'love' that was always in Assagioli's mind as he laid down the concept for us. It has just taken me a few decades to understand! |