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April-June, 2020

“I Am Never Upset for the Reason I Think”

by Rev. Jennifer McSween, Ordained Ministerial Counselor

In my early days as a spiritual counseling student I met someone in one of my classes with whom I became fast friends. We both felt deeply drawn to this field. I had a genuine desire to heal, grow, and transform our lives and wanted to learn to help others do the same. 

We were around the same age and had more than a few shared interests. Though we came from different backgrounds we had more than a few mess ups and major mishaps in common. Naturally we bonded and became fast friends. As friends do, we would talk frequently on the phone, go out to eat, exchange our favorite books and attend spiritual related lectures, workshops and events.

In spite of the fact that we seemed to like each other’s company and had many shared interests, our conversations and interactions with each other often bordered on being somewhat “highly charged” and did not always play out in ways that felt loving. It felt like there was always this undercurrent of tension.

In retrospect, I realize she was my “Forgiveness Partner” at the time. “Forgiveness Partner” is the term I coined to describe anyone (or anything for that matter) by which you feel taken off your peace, unfairly treated, attacked or victimized in some way. I introduced this idea of Forgiveness Partners in my book, True Forgiveness.

Even though we were both very conscious of the borderline charged interactions or underlying tension between us, neither of us ever brought it up. It was as if we had the unspoken agreement that said, “I know that you know, and you know that I know but we’re not going to talk about it.” What we would do, was distance ourselves from each other for brief periods from time to time, again, seemingly by mutually conscious unspoken agreement.

One of these periods of distancing lasted for almost a year. I had reconnected by calling to wish her ‘happy birthday.’ About five minutes into the conversation, which had consisted mostly of her telling me what she had been up to over the past year, she asked what was going on with me. I’d only gotten out a couple of sentences when she interjected with “hmm… it doesn’t seem like you have had any spiritual growth over the past year.”

I asked how she could say this given that we hadn’t been in touch for the past year and had only been talking for about five minutes? She said it was based on what she had ‘observed’ about me and proceeded to share her thoughts based on those ‘observations.’ It seemed like she was metaphorically ‘unloading.’ Each thought she shared felt like a blow to my chest.

This was a new feeling. It was way beyond the ordinarily highly charged feeling that would come up for me during our conversations. I felt like I was physically and emotionally being attacked. At this time, I had begun studying A Course in Miracles. I had not yet completed either the Workbook or the Text, but I had become open to it and was beginning to consider the Course’s perspective that we are not victims of the world as a possibility.

The title of Workbook Lesson 5 came to my mind: “I am never upset for the reason I think.” And, like I said, even though I didn’t fully accept this lesson yet, I knew it meant that my feelings are never caused by anything or anyone outside me. That what I feel in any moment is simply my experiencing the contents or the nature of the thoughts within my mind.
Thoughts of judgment will always be experienced in the form of being attacked, so the thought that then came to my mind was, “Who was I judging?”

What happened next was very interesting. That shift from thinking of myself as being attacked to realizing that I was only experiencing my own attack thoughts — thoughts of judgment — completely diffused my previously charged feelings towards my friend.

I don’t recall how the conversation ended but I remember getting off the phone with one thing on my mind — the question: “Who was I judging?”

A couple of days later I was driving somewhere and came to stop light at a major Intersection. As I waited for the lights to change, I glanced over to my left across the intersection ahead of me and noticed a high-rise industrial building. My eyes seemed to be drawn along the height of the building and rested at the top on which there was a billboard spanning the width of the building, and on the billboard were larger than life photos of Oprah and Dr. Phil.

My mind instantly made a connection and I shouted out loud, “That’s it!” just like Charlie Brown did in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” when he discovered what he was afraid of after paying Lucy a nickel, who was pretending to be a psychiatrist to help him discover his fear.  She had been naming off different types of phobias and what they meant you were afraid of and Charlie Brown heard the one that related to him.

The discovery I made was that my feelings of being attacked by my friend, were not caused by the things she said, but because I was experiencing thoughts of judgment about Oprah and Dr. Phil. At that time Oprah was at her peak with her talk show and had become “Oprah” as we know her today. She was a powerful voice and influencer, a catalyst for change and had the ability to bring people from obscurity to celebrity, seemingly with just a word or a nod. Dr. Phil was one of those people who had been launched into the spotlight and was a regular on her show.

The funny thing is I was a big fan of Oprah for many years. But for whatever reason I began having some thoughts of judgment about her. I felt she had begun acting like a “know-it-all,” thinking that she knew what was best for people and she could tell them what to do. And with regards to Dr. Phil… I was never a fan as I thought he too, as a person, came across as a “know-it-all” and, as a therapist, was very hostile… talk about thoughts of judgment!

No wonder I was feeling attacked. ‘They’ were the ‘who’ I was judging, and it was those thoughts of judgment I was experiencing in the form of feeling attacked by my friend.

Workbook Lesson 5 is teaching that, contrary to appearances, what I feel in any moment or situation is not caused by what is taking place outside me but by what is taking place within me in terms of how I’m looking at what is taking place outside me.

Learning this lesson is the essential first step to recognizing I am not the victim of the world I see so I need not feel threatened, attacked or affected by anything outside me or the words or actions of others regardless of appearances.

© 2020, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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