A few days ago, I had a phone argument with my mother about “immigration law.” My mother insisted that she heard about a law that was “going to legalize illegal immigrants and they won’t have to pay taxes and they will get our social security!” To make a long story short, I told her that I couldn’t believe that a law like that would be getting passed, and that I wanted to check the facts about it, but she didn’t have a bill number or even the name of this supposed law. By the end of the conversation, she was telling me that I “always talk down to her” and that I am “uppity.” :/
Today, I was sent the following video from another family member:
I pointed out that this video was from June 2007, and then pointed the sender of the video (and all the individuals he sent it to, including my mother) that though the bill number was never mentioned (interesting, eh?) accurate information about bills can be found at THOMAS or GPO Access and that the bill that I *think* he might have been talking about was S. 1639, and it was not passed.
I am now waiting for the shit-storm to arrive. I am sure I am now a number of nasty things (snotty, uppity, etc.) because I encourage critical analysis and I don’t treat outdated information from Lou Dobbs of all people as Gospel-truth.
“That’s what we’re dealing with here: choices. My Target-boycotting acquaintance is making the choice to believe what he prefers to believe, irrespective of whatever the facts might actually be. That’s a lot of hard work on his part. It requires an ongoing and exponentially multiplying set of fabrications to maintain. It involves an ever-expanding web of things that he can’t allow himself to think about. It has to be, on some level, exhausting.
…These people have fabricated imaginary monsters that, at some level, they know aren’t real and yet they’ve put those monsters in charge of their lives. They’re driven by fear and hatred — fear and hatred of things they know don’t really exist. They are, for whatever reason, choosing bondage to that fear and hatred and it’s making them miserable. It’s stunting their humanity. It’s confining them. It’s wearing them out.”
Is it really that hard to check in to see what is real? It must be more comforting to have one’s worldview reaffirmed by bad information. It just makes me sad…sad and, of course, an uppity liberal.
Again, another Message from the Universe that makes me irritated:
Actually, the only effective way of changing another person is by changing yourself.
Works every time, guaranteed.
The Universe
Again, I know the point they are trying to get across, but they are saying it in such an ambiguous way that it is, in my humble opinion, irresponsible.I’m probably going to unsubscribe from this email list. Grrr.
I receive benign, happy Messages from the Universe in my inbox every weekday from tut.com; normally, they are a bright spot in my day…and then yesterday, I received one that made me so incredibly angry that I knew I’d have to write about it.
The message was this:
When you can look beneath their behavior that hurt you, Lora, and you can see the frightened child - it becomes nearly impossible to be angry and carry a grudge.
And you so can.
ILY,
The Universe
P.S.- Besides, your happiness, abundance, health, and friendships are not dependent on how others behave.
And now, as I am a pagan and I have many friends who are interested in spiritual things and are connected to the Great Cosmic Hoochie Koo, I want to present the following thoughts for discussion:
I take issue with this message from the Universe. Maybe it is just me, maybe what I’m reading into this isn’t present in the message, but it seems that the full statement being made here is this:
If you can see that someone was hurting you from a place of wounded-ness, not only will you not be angry and you won’t carry a grudge, but you’ll realize that you *don’t have a right to be angry*. When you are *this enlightened*, you will be able to continue to be around people even though they hurt you, because hey, they don’t do it for any reason other than their own frightened-child-ness. If someone hurts you from their own wounded-ness, you have less of a right to take issue with their behavior. Being upset and heck, maybe even having standards and boundaries around how others treat you looks suspiciously like depending on others’ behaviors for your own happiness, and we definitely don’t want that.
(/snark)
As a person who is learning a lot through therapy, I have huge issues with this; these ideas may not really be present in this Message from the Universe, but I feel that they have been present in enough New Age spirituality to make me recoil upon reading anything that even alludes to the attitude of “once you are enlightened enough, you should be ok with others no matter how they treat you.” I have internalized this message in such a way that I have stayed too long in relationships that don’t serve me, in relationships that are actually damaging to me, because I tell myself that the person ‘isn’t being a jackass on purpose’ and therefore I feel that I lose some of my ability to take issue with their behavior. It sounds warped, but I’ve thought on more than one occasion that a ‘better’ person, a person with ‘more understanding’ would be able to see hurtful behaviors for what they are (for example, “a frightened child” acting out) and thus would find it “nearly impossible to be angry and carry a grudge.” Being in therapy with a Jewish woman who has said things like “Lora, I’m Jewish! My God is a God of vengeance!” has made me laugh, but has also helped me to see that anger is normal and ok and not something to push away or silence through spirituality.
Maybe this isn’t something others have experienced- I am totally willing to own that I might have misinterpreted something along the way which has led me to hear “once you get there, you will be able to accept everyone with a smile”. Has anyone else thought this, felt this, experienced this?
