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January-March, 2004

Putting Things in a Different Light

by Rev. Myron Jones, O.M.C.

I have been working on course 905: Special Relationships vs Holy Relationships. It is a wonderful course and I’ve experienced several shifts in perception. One of the sections points out how we project our own sense of guilt onto others. It asks that I think of ways the errors in my brother seem to be hard to understand. I am asked to make note of these errors. Immediately I thought of my ex-husband. We have been divorced for very nearly four years now and I can still list his errors in pretty impressive detail, so I used him to do this exercise.

At first, I just listed things about him that irritated me. Then I added some things he did that were painful to think about. As I listed the different ways in which we wounded each other, more and more memories came to me. In my mind I relived some of the incidents that led to our divorce. As I did so, I began to re-experience the emotions that accompanied the accusations we hurled at each other. I found myself feeling angry because of things he said and did. I felt fearful as I thought that being in that situation once seemed to make it possible to be in it again.

I felt so guilty because staying in that situation seemed to be damaging to my children. I felt ashamed because I allowed this to happen to me and continued to allow it for such a long time. By the time I finished this list, I was feeling pretty drained and my most immediate thought was, “I hope I’m not going to be asked to see this differently, because I don’t see how I can.” And of course, I was asked to do just that.

This seemed like such a huge task, and truly I didn’t want to do it. I just wanted to relegate those memories to the dark place in my mind where I had been keeping them before I pulled them out for this process. But, the only way to get to the next step in this course is to get through this one, so I got started. Using the guided meditation “From Specialness to Holiness” that came with course 905, I asked the Holy Spirit to look at these thoughts with me. I asked him for a different way to see what happened in our marriage. I also asked for a different way to see my guilty condemnation of both my ex-husband and myself. I asked for healing of my reluctance to forgive.

The first thought that came to me was that so much of his behavior resulted from the way he was raised; the things he learned from his parents. I understand this because I have had to unlearn a few things I picked up as a child. We all know that not everything we learn as we are growing up is going to be helpful to us as adults. He has indicated to me in the past that he was raised in a very authoritarian atmosphere where they were taught that there is only one way to do things. They were not encouraged to question what they were told or to look for their own answers. It must have been very frustrating to him that neither his wife nor his kids accepted his authority without question. He was taught that, as the father, being the authority for his family was his job. It must have felt like he was failing in his job as the father. Being a parent is hard and we aren’t born with the necessary skills nor are we taught them. As I thought about this, I felt my resentment and anger loosening. There is another way to see things!

More than once I had tried to share with him a different way of experiencing our relationship and of raising our children. He was always resistant to anything that didn’t mirror what he already believed. Even though he was willing to admit that some of the things he was doing weren’t working, he was unable to consider changing. It always seemed to him to be the fault of the other person that his method wasn’t working. I couldn’t understand this at the time and I felt so frustrated and angry about it. Now Holy Spirit showed me something that helped me to understand.

I saw him in his dream. He was in a completely dark room. He stumbled around for awhile searching for a way out. He called for help and his ego answered him with misdirection and warned him of the danger of listening to any other voice. At first he tried to find a way out of this darkened room, but finally he became used to it. He became afraid that however bad this is, something else could be even worse. He was so afraid of losing what little he had that he became paralyzed into inaction. He sensed a door leading out, but he stopped looking for it now that he was more afraid of leaving than of staying.

Wow, that certainly puts things in a different light! Why did I have so much resistance to this process? Why did I feel the need to cling to my resentments and blame? When I asked these questions, I began to realize that it is easier to look at his errors than my own. Now I was seeing myself in that dark room with him. For years we were caught up in the defend/attack cycle, just wounding each other endlessly. It seemed to have no end and no way out. We were both listening to the wrong voice. I believed the ego when it told me that if I set my weapons aside I would be unprotected; that if I quit fighting back I would be annihilated.

I kept my attention on his errors so that I didn’t have to see my own. I didn’t think I dared look at my own because the ego assured me that they were so horrific I would certainly be condemned. Of course, what the ego didn’t tell me was that to stay focused on his errors would keep me locked in mortal combat with him even though I have physically taken myself from the arena. I thought I had made progress when I chose to step out of that darkened room we had shared for so long, but until I choose to forgive, I am still in darkness.

Though I had been afraid to look at my errors, I now saw that I would have to. The Holy Spirit assured me that I had nothing to be ashamed of. I was, for a time, following a voice in the hopes of escape. I had been listening to the wrong voice and was being misled. That is all. It did not make me evil — just mistaken. There is another Voice and I am learning to listen to It. The same is true of my ex-husband. He is not evil. He is not condemned. He is just mistaken . He has access to the other Voice as well. When he is ready he will hear it, too.

The voice for the ego tried to convince me that our conflict was important and that what we did to each other as we flailed around in that blinded state would condemn us to hell. The voice for the Holy Spirit assures me that this is not so. It was actually just one more learning experience. We protracted it as long as was necessary to learn the lessons. The ego tried to convince me that I was trapped there, unable to get out. I see now that I was never trapped. I didn’t escape, I simply learned from the situation what I could. Then I stepped out of it as easily as walking through an open door.

Before I looked at this with the Holy Spirit I saw shame and fear. I saw hate and blame, recriminations and self recriminations. I hated myself for what I did and felt, and I projected those feelings onto my ex-husband so I hated him as well. With the Holy Spirit’s help I am able to look at the same situation and see past all of those dark thoughts as if they were a fog being burned off by the light of forgiveness. I had been looking on our marriage as a huge mistake, as just one senseless battle after another. I had been feeling like a failure. Now I just see our life together as two Sons of God helping each other return home.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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