How do you tolerate intolerance, accept negativity and generally cope with extremely detrimental individuals around you? How to cultivate here?

[GrandmasterP]

Shirley Borderline

 

She just has to be a Country singer.

She'd have to cover these songs...

Did I Shave my Legs for This? by Deana Carter (courtesy of Scott)

Don't Believe My Heart Can Stand Another You.

by Tanya Tucker (BMI)....

 

Can't ya just hear that lonesome train whistle?

 

Edited July 13, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Marblehead]

 

Can't ya just hear that lonesome train whistle?

 

Yeah, and I'd be tempted to throw her mother off the train just for having her.

 

 

Edit to add: I think I just messed up regarding being tolerant. Oh well.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Marblehead

[manitou]

Shirley Borderline

 

She just has to be a Country singer.

She'd have to cover these songs...

Did I Shave my Legs for This? by Deana Carter (courtesy of Scott)

Don't Believe My Heart Can Stand Another You.

by Tanya Tucker (BMI)....

 

Can't ya just hear that lonesome train whistle?

 

 

 

And don't forget that other classic that Shirley would do:

 

I've Got Tears in my Ears from Lying on my Back Cryin' Over You.

[GrandmasterP]

Or that old standard...

 

 

" Git off the stove mother. You're too old to ride the range."

 

Edited July 13, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[PLB]

Negativity is meant to move OUT of. It is a clear sign of where we DONT want to be.

 

Negativity sucks, for sure.

You are inclined to reject assurances that those experiences are a part of necessary process. I get that rejection and do not wish to struggle against your inclination.

But you are the one who posed the question in the context of an obstacle you were hoping to get around. If you are all good to go with an answer for yourself, what are you actually asking?

[sunchild]

Before these practices I saw myself to be stable.

 

At this point, with this amount of experience - I would highly recommend Not doing any practices that involve raising your energies in an urban environment. Or do you know any monk building his spiritual foundation on a garbage dump?

 

i'm also beginning to feel this way. thank you for sharing.

[manitou]

I

My endgame from this perspective is the 'resolution of the opposites', but there are times when this seems an implausible feat.

 

 

Missed this statement the first time around. I think this is profound. In metaphysics what you are striving for is the High Indifference - not a state of 'not caring' as much as 'not judging', and compassion is infused in there because it becomes our original nature. At the bottom of everything is Love (or for you, Marbles....Compassion!)

 

Edit: Maybe I should rephrase my last sentence. I don't mean to say that Marbles needs compassion - I only meant that he's not crazy about the L-word.

Edited July 14, 2014 by manitou

[Marblehead]

Hehehe. Yeah, the "L" word has been censored from my vocabulary.

 

Compassion I can do. But I do try hard to properly place it. If anyone is looking for a pity party they will have to look elsewhere.

[Anoesjka]

My mother, who is 81, is the only one (besides me) in our family who's still alive. I loved my father very much, and I was very proud of my brother, who was very talented, but they passed away at an early age.

 

So now I was stuck with my mother, a prejudiced being with a limited intelligence, who loved telling the same stories over and over. She didn't understand me and I didn't understand her. Gossiping and judging was all she could do and I hated it. I really didn't like to visit her and when I returned home after a visit, I felt completely drained.

 

Years and years nothing much changed. Until I decided to change. I decided to truly listen to those stories she was telling me. I wanted to respect her as a human being. And you know what? Over the past year I've grown to love her and I can express that love to her. It feels wonderful and I wish I had seen this sooner. We both enjoy each other's company now, there's no need for negativity anymore.

 

Moral to this story: everything can change if you change. Even if it takes you a lifetime.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Anoesjka

[manitou]

Anoesjka - that was beautiful. I have the identical situation with my mother (minus the limited intelligence) - but the rest is all there.

 

It's like we turn into our parent's parent at some point in time. I put together a bunch of photo albums for my 89 year old mother - the only thing she seems to get a kick out of anymore is to see pictures of her and her family as a child. So we go through the albums every time I go out to see her, about 4 times a year (she doesn't remember that we just did it 3 months ago). The repetitive conversations are just mind-numbing - so I guess it's up to us to figure out a little stimulus. And your changing your perspective to actually listen to her stories (and go along with them!) is such an act of love.

 

I guess it's just quid pro quo for all the times they changed our diapers.

[Kun]

you don't tolerate it, you help fix it. Tolerating intolerance is watching someone kill themselves in front of you without you telling them that they don't need to do it. There's no such thing as someone naturally born to only hurt and hurt; they lived their lives knowing and seeing nothing else and became a product of that. You're only hurting yourself if:

 

A ) you're allowing that member to flow negativity into you

B ) you don't fix the source rather than fight the outcome

 

You can't make that person change yourself, but you can help them out by showing what love is and what love means. If you were to just see all this bad stuff happen in front of you and you don't do anything to help stop it, then who's the bad guy? Negativity is healed with the positive, hate is healed with love. Love those who hate, and they'll start loving too. Stop torturing yourself by being a witness. Help end the issue.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Kun

[silent thunder]

Missed this statement the first time around. I think this is profound. In metaphysics what you are striving for is the High Indifference - not a state of 'not caring' as much as 'not judging', and compassion is infused in there because it becomes our original nature. At the bottom of everything is Love (or for you, Marbles....Compassion!)

 

Edit: Maybe I should rephrase my last sentence. I don't mean to say that Marbles needs compassion - I only meant that he's not crazy about the L-word.

As I move in this field of awareness, high indifference is a good descriptor for it. There is no lack of care or love, quite the opposite. One of the benefits to this has been my ability to see the child in just about anyone I come in contact with now and that has allowed me to step beyond my overly harsh judgmental tendencies and live in more compassion, (from time to time).

 

In the end humans are not male or female, they are male and female. All opposites are their antipodal extreme and would not exist without each other. From the point of high indifference this is accepted as original nature and it is my judgment within the context of a situation from alligning myself with one side or the other that creates the conflict I experience internally.

 

It's slow going, but after the initial vajra moment/epiphany of this, it's been steadily gaining inertia in my reality tunnel.

 

My mother, who is 81, is the only one (besides me) in our family who's still alive. I loved my father very much, and I was very proud of my brother, who was very talented, but they passed away at an early age.

 

So now I was stuck with my mother, a prejudiced being with a limited intelligence, who loved telling the same stories over and over. She didn't understand me and I didn't understand her. Gossiping and judging was all she could do and I hated it. I really didn't like to visit her and when I returned home after a visit, I felt completely drained.

 

Years and years nothing much changed. Until I decided to change. I decided to truly listen to those stories she was telling me. I wanted to respect her as a human being. And you know what? Over the past year I've grown to love her and I can express that love to her. It feels wonderful and I wish I had seen this sooner. We both enjoy each other's company now, there's no need for negativity anymore.

 

Moral to this story: everything can change if you change. Even if it takes you a lifetime.

Wow. I am so glad you shared this. This one goes right to my core... I've never shared this with anyone but my wife and my best friend. But this place is unique for me and so here goes:

 

This is so close to me. My folks had a very nasty divorce when I was four.

 

My mother, in an attempt to hurt my father, raised me telling me all sorts of stories about how my Dad repeatedly raped and beat her, which drove a massive wedge between he and I as you can imagine. As children believe anything they are told...

 

As I grew into a middle-aged man and began to reassemble my actual memories, questions began to arise and I started to ask around. My sister was 7 years older than I so she remembered those four years that I do not. My Sister, flat out told me that those things never occurred in her presence. Which didn't mean they didn't happen, but it added to the inertia of the line of questioning.

 

My Dad found another woman and they spent the next 38 years together, until her death 3 years ago.

 

One day sitting at the breakfast table with my Step-Mom, she out of the blue said to me...'You know Creighton, not only has your Father never raised his hand to me, even in our most heated arguments, he's never said an unkind thing about me.'

 

And then one day, my Mom came clean. She's bipolar which was never treated or recognized until very recently. and now has severe dementia, but in a moment of clarity and remorse, she admitted to me that she had lied to me, in an effort to hurt my Father and in an effort to keep me close to her.

 

It was some years before I could even think of her voice in my head without raging on some level. While I still loved her on some level, I hated her too, vehemently. But this deep hatred and my obsessing over it in my mind relentlessly led me to resolve the opposites in this case.

 

The epiphany/vajra moment regarding this dissolved my hatred and I've come around to full acceptance of my Mom.

It was while listening to my Wife of then 21 years telling me she had lied to me about some horrible things that happened to her in the past. She admitted she made them up.

 

In that moment with her, I realized I had no anger at this... and didn't understand why.

 

Then it hit me. Both she and my Mother had done something they felt they needed to do... they both told me these lies because they knew on some level that it would engender my love for them and bring forward the love they desperately needed.

 

In that moment I realized that I loved them both no matter what they had said and though hearing these stories about my wife hurt me through thinking about the hurt it was for her, I was not actually harmed. I immediately understood why she had done it and by proxy, I understood why my mother had done what she did. Desperation drove them to this.

 

In the conversation with my wife, I told her. "You did and said those things, because you felt that you needed to do that in order to get the love you required from me. What you couldn't realize in that moment is that my love for you was always there and would have been there regardless of the stories, but you had no way to know that, no way to trust that it was possible based on your past, (both she and my mom were abused as kids by their parents)."

 

In that moment my hatred for my mother melted away in a flow of compassion for the severe pain she was in and I could see the injured child in her desperately reaching out to find a comfort zone, something safe she could control.

 

Vajra, unshakable truth, hard as diamond, obliterating all else in a thunderbolt of truth.

 

My mother now has severe dementia and doesn't recognize me as her son, I'm her brother when we talk, and this is fine. In some ways her dementia has been a blessing as she's forgotten some of the most heinous times of her life and lives in semi-bliss. When we talk it is free flowing love and there is no judgment, only the desire to see her happy.

 

As for my Father... I reached out to him about 3 years ago when my Step Mom passed.

I told him what I had discovered and how sorry I was for not seeing it sooner.

True to his form, he just hugged me and said ' welcome home, I missed you.'

 

He passed this last April, very suddenly, but you are so right Anoesjka... "everything can change if you change. Even if it takes you a lifetime." Even if it happens the moment before death, one moment of clarity erases lifetimes of ignorance and pain.

 

I'm so blessed and grateful for this lesson, it's hard to convey the depth of my gratitude.

 

Thank you so much. I've been in a very dark place the last few months on and off since his death. This has reminded me of how much light is present in the darkness. The opposites here have resolved into one shining beautiful truth.

 

I love them. Just love.

No expectations. No exceptions.

[manitou]

Silent Thunder said:

 

"As I move in this field of awareness, high indifference is a good descriptor for it. There is no lack of care or love, quite the opposite. One of the benefits to this has been my ability to see the child in just about anyone I come in contact with now and that has allowed me to step beyond my overly harsh judgmental tendencies and live in more compassion, (from time to time).

 

In the end humans are not male or female, they are male and female. All opposites are their antipodal extreme and would not exist without each other. From the point of high indifference this is accepted as original nature and it is my judgment within the context of a situation from alligning myself with one side or the other that creates the conflict I experience internally."

 

 

 

I recently read a book (Experience and Philosophy, by Franklin Merrell-Wolff) where he referred to the transcendent state of mind as High Indifference - the phrase sort of kicked me in the gut because it so closely describes the state that we're talking about. I've used the expression several times in my recent posts, as it is so very descriptive of what happens to us as we increase our understanding. And it surely does involve love or compassion. The state is with me all the time - rarely do I find myself falling out of it any more. I can't remember the last time I was angry at something. High Indifference. And it resides in my psyche all the time - during the mundane as well.

 

Silent Thunder, your coming full circle with your parents is exactly what I've had to do. As I mentioned on a recent thread, I can finally have a picture of my father hanging in my room, despite the early years and all the pain. I am delighted about this, because it shows me that I too have come full circle, in both the forgiveness aspect, but also the love aspect - where I have found the love I had for him before the leather belt went into action.

 

Your story is beautiful, and a wonderful story of healing.

 

Congratulations to you for doing all the work necessary to get to that place.

[manitou]

Actually, I think I'll start a thread in General Discussion relating to the High Indifference, as explained by Merrell-Wolff. It seems to fit any discipline...

[4bsolute]

you don't tolerate it, you help fix it. Tolerating intolerance is watching someone kill themselves in front of you without you telling them that they don't need to do it. There's no such thing as someone naturally born to only hurt and hurt; they lived their lives knowing and seeing nothing else and became a product of that. You're only hurting yourself if:

 

A ) you're allowing that member to flow negativity into you

B ) you don't fix the source rather than fight the outcome

 

You can't make that person change yourself, but you can help them out by showing what love is and what love means. If you were to just see all this bad stuff happen in front of you and you don't do anything to help stop it, then who's the bad guy? Negativity is healed with the positive, hate is healed with love. Love those who hate, and they'll start loving too. Stop torturing yourself by being a witness. Help end the issue.

 

Yep and what if they do and you just watch and take notice? What if it is important for that individual to experience suicide?

 

Sounds harsh from a mixed human-spirit perspecitve, I can feel you readers. But what if human life is respawn-heaven, for spirit? Again, sounds mad, but what if? Like in a game, you die, you're choosing your respawn point and *pouf* you are back human again, if you so desire.

 

Surely matter is expendable for Creation itself. But that is not the point here, for every individual to experience a Holocaust itself as victim and starter.

 

Yes, even contemplating about that fact would make individuals try out murder and go ape. That's why you really don't care to go any further at this point. Here I stop, because I just gave and would further give energy to this to come forth. So hereby I purposely erase all my previous thoughts that lead to that article.

 

And here comes reason into play. For reason would be the main aspect what "we" as spirit, "teach" matter. Reason. To be reasonable. But what can we teach, if we arent reasonable ourselves?

 

So many gaps in our daily doings. See how important it is to properly and fully reconnect to Source again? Not to any Astral entity, channelling yet another Adolf Hitler experiment, Source. Straight to our creator, experience life from that point and having full view.

 

The point here is trying the leap from a smaller consciousness to a bigger one. When the smaller one, still involved in the ego, tries to assume the larger picture without actually being in it, but pretending to be. Just like I did. So I assumed assumed and assumed. Without even being in the house of the yelling father, maybe yelling at the computer screen, losing to a game, child noticing, getting yelled at too, but wasnt initially the target.

 

And then the mirror theory of what is on the outside, just reflects whats on the inside. Which I am very much in alignment. Sort it out inside yourself and watch it disappear on the outside. But dont have judgement how it will disappear, but it will.

 

We will all get this straight, no worries. All is well.

Edited July 15, 2014 by 4bsolute

[GrandmasterP]

"Yep and what if they do and you just watch and take notice? What if it is important for that individual to experience suicide?"

......................

 

"In order for evil to flourish, all that is required is for good men to do nothing."

 

(Edmund Burke).

Edited July 15, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[sunchild]

"Yep and what if they do and you just watch and take notice? What if it is important for that individual to experience suicide?"

......................

 

"In order for evil to flourish, all that is required is for good men to do nothing."

 

(Edmund Burke).

but there aren't any 'good' men or women, just human beings

[GrandmasterP]

but there aren't any 'good' men or women, just human beings

 

You've not met Mrs GMP then?

 

[Marblehead]

but there aren't any 'good' men or women, just human beings

Hehehe. Sunchild is trying to eliminate dualities.

[GrandmasterP]

I'm still in two minds about duality.

[manitou]

I'm still in two minds about duality.

 

....or

Edited July 16, 2014 by manitou

[sunchild]

Hehehe. Sunchild is trying to eliminate dualities.

am trying to enjoy life.

 

[Marblehead]

Cynthia didn't have anything of interest to me but yes, I am glad that you are trying to enjoy life.

 

I will oftentimes tell someone to have a great day and they sometimes respond with "I'll try." I immediate respond with "Just do it."

[sunchild]

I will oftentimes tell someone to have a great day and they sometimes respond with "I'll try." I immediate respond with "Just do it."

me too. how grand.

[silent thunder]

You'll both be getting calls from Nike legal...