What when you are cheated and lied to ..in your relationship?

Today is good Friday.  As the priest asked us to meditate on the wounds of Christ, I was set to thinking on what could be the most painful kinds of wounds and the most difficult lessons in life. And so I am here again after a long time with something to ponder in my Thinking Space.

There are those not so difficult lessons to master;  people to whom you have done good may be the ones who ditch you. You may be misunderstood by your friends,  humiliated for no fault of yours, deserted by those you expected to be with you. Piece of cake to handle. Okay, well, more or less...,particularly if you have experienced such things a couple of times, and if the relationship was not more than that of friendship. The thought that can help through, is that, if Jesus,despite being the purest of pure, in spite of the miracles he performed, was misunderstood by the masses and disowned by any of his disciples; we don't really have to lose our self- esteem over these things. People can be like that.

But as I look around I see a very difficult lesson that many are struggling with owing to the different nature of  relationships in the current times. More often than not, relationships are no longer  exclusive. Some with consent, some without, have more than one partner at a time.  Cheating someone who has been perfect in the relationship is not so difficult, unfortunately. Lying, lying and more lying to someone trusting, loving, sincere and honest is also, sadly normal . 

But Jesus says. who has not done these things, can raise the first stone.

Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.Luke6: 37 

So, no, this post is not to judge anything. But I am here wondering, that if you have been cheated, how do you survive it? I see a lot many struggling to cope and I feel pained. After a lot of deliberation, I thought of writing this post and just hope to be of some help.

First of all,  it is important to accept that it is not easy to cope with such a situation. You did your all, you don't know what was lacking in the relationship for the person to look outside of it. Maybe it was just to find a new thrill, a new exploration, a new chase. If in an open relationship, I guess people handle it, but in closed, exclusive ones?  There is breech of trust. Getting out is one option, but if you want to be in for whatever reasons, how do you do that? Maybe everything else is perfect and you do not expect another new person to be less of a cheat eventually. What questions would help you decide?

One is, quite obviously, you surely have to have the other person, coming down on knees begging your forgiveness and telling you that you are  wanted in their life. Giving assurance that they won't lie or cheat and that they would bring more transparency into the relationship is also important.

But last time he promised the same,  when you had seen the beginnings of an affair?  But he just hid it well from you this time around when he got connected again? 

Hmm what then...?

So, you still want the relationship, in spite of these factors!???

If so, you have no choice but to LET GO. No I don't mean the relationship. I know you don't want to do that. But you have to let go the need to control your spouse/partner.  There are things you cannot control, such as another person's honesty and sincerity to you, his feelings for another. You cannot be assured that a person who is used to lying, will turn truthful overnight. Even if they do, you may find it hard to give up doubting. No... saying how much it hurts you, condemning or expressing your fears and hoping the other would understand, may not help because still in no way can you be sure that he won't lie again. Lies in relationships are like that pus filled pimple that simply never seems to go, just keeps coming back. Some germs are incorrigible. So whats the point in incessantly begging for honesty?

Then what the hell can you do?

Exactly, we come back to it again. NOTHING. The only way is to let go of the  effort to control the situation and take up prayer to God. Pray that your relationship gets over the mess. Pray that it gets strengthened with honesty and sincerity. But be your own self, do your own thing, be engaged in your own. Don't keep trying to make sense out of it, to find out why it happened; there is no reason. Don't convert 'keeping an eye on your spouse' into your job. Don't pester your spouse or partner with calls or messages, hoping to crowd out any possible lover or checking to know whether he is on call with someone. All this will only make you insufferable to your partner and it will also make your every moment a hell. It is not the loving thing to do to your partner (who probably is repentant ) or , needless to say, to YOURSELF.

Yes, this requires a lot from you, because the only thing in your hand is...... nothing, but to pray for healing in your relationship and to let go your need to control.  It requires relinquishing a reliance on your own wisdom and trusting entirely on god.

It also requires humility to accept that you are not all important for the one you love and maybe never will be. He/she has not found you enough and it's more sensible not to expect that anymore (because you had been more than enough).

Yes, you have to be SUCH a bigger person .......But that's spiritual evolution; you are bigger than the way you started off. Possibly God loves you so much, he gave you a difficult lesson to master in your spiritual journey. And hey, you are not intended to suffer for someone else's failings, but you are expected to learn your invaluable lessons.

Yes, you have to hold your tongue from begging for honesty, your hands from checking his/her phone.Yes, it requires suffering alone and eating those words that you actually want to throw at your partner so that he/she would hurt as much as you do. Your ego is hurt, you may want to even opt out immediately. He/she made you feel so small and insignificant. True. but...

If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you. Even sinners do that. Luke 6:33

Never forget that life is transient and that"In every crisis there is an opportunity". Maybe it is your opportunity to grow or an opportunity for your relationship to deepen. So, check out your resilience. Be good. Don't hurt your partner just because you are hurting. Not the loving thing to do.  Yeah, you may still end up doing that sometimes. Well, forgive yourself too.

PS- There is indeed the possibility that liars stay liars despite your prayers. They may stay blind to your pain when they resort to blame and other tactics or strategies to evade your questions or to hide facts from you. If you are indeed with such a self serving, habitual or pathological liar, prayers will help you find enough evidence for that sooner than later and will give you the resolve to dissociate from that painful relationship and to find your peace.........

The Light Within

I heard a story in church a few months ago that answered some very crucial questions I had been having.  Today I am in the frame of mind to share them.

Can we be available to everybody? Is being available and ready to help someone be a wrong decision in the larger scheme of things? Sometimes do we have to refuse and become bad to be in fact right in a larger scheme?



Here's the story that will help us compare our situation and take a stance.

Many years ago in a little village on a rocky seacoast, there was a lighthouse. A new lighthouse keeper was once appointed from that village. He was a good man whom all the villagers loved and often sought help from as he never said 'No" to any request. He was given a limited amount of oil every month, enough to light the lamp to full flame for a month.
It so happened one month that a relative who lived nearby dropped in one night and said his son had an exam and the lights were out..could he spare him some oil
The man wanted to help his relative and gave him some oil
Soon one after another followed with one genuine need or other and the kind keeper didnt feel it right to deny them help..

But by the month end there was little oil to run the light to full flame. The light was dim.
One fateful night three ships crashed on that rocky beach and thousands of lives were lost.

Such an event had never happened since the lighthouse had been constructed.
When the keeper was questioned by the authorities he admitted that the flame was low as he had given some oil to needy neighbours
"You were given just one Job, to keep the light burning of your lighthouse, you can never compromise your job to light a few people's lamps.
In keeping a few lamps aflame for few hours you compromised the lives of thousands of people"

The lightkeeper realised his great folly but too late

The moral of the story is that we have to know what our job really is. Some decisions call us to deny our help and availability to a few but it might in fact be for a relatively better and more enduring good, that which is our real calling. Our first and foremost responsibility is to the light within us. If any circumstance makes our flame, our good light any lesser, we make life hell for those dependent on our light. 

Somehow this story helped me become sure of some decisions of my life and I hope it would help others too.
Keep your lights burning

Have Thine Own Way!

I was told about the intrigue and beauty of Al Kahf (surah 18, of the Quran) and so had been going through it. I have to say, I simply loved the depth and the meaning of the stories in it. One I want to mention here is of Moses and the Mysterious Man.

Moses wanted to gain more wisdom and so went in search of this Man who was called Khidr, which meant green, for his knowledge was “ever fresh and in contact with the life as it is actually lived”. Moses was to take a fish on this voyage which was supposed to disappear at the spot where he would meet this man. But when the fish does jump off into the sea, neither Moses nor the attendant remember to make note of it. As they pass on, the journey becomes more laborious, the stages become heavier and heavier and fatiguing; until they remember to turn back and look for the man again.

This story signifies that when we exhaust our old knowledge and require new knowledge we have a “feeling of uneasiness, heaviness and difficulty especially if we have passed the new knowledge by, without making it our own” The heaviness and discomfort felt is, in fact, an effort of the soul to search for the new knowledge,  a knowledge we have to acquire, to make our journey of life easier once again, after being armed with the new knowledge.

The readers would be curious as to what was the new knowledge Khidr gave to Moses. Moses was told by Khidr not to question whatever he does but he could not refrain from questioning three times over, as he found Khidr causing a loss, being cruel and returning good for evil; all with no apparent reasons. Finally when Khidr explains, his reasons are found to be surprisingly very sound.

The lessons were-
“Often in life, when directed by higher impulses, a person does things that seem wrong or foolish by worldly standards. Only a similar mind can see why the deed was done, that it was from higher wisdom, in accordance with the universal plan; and so such a person may have to bear the blame and questions of the common crowd.”

“There are paradoxes in life-apparent loss may be real gain; apparent cruelty may be real mercy; returning good for evil may really be justice and not generosity. Gods wisdom transcends all human calculation”
Hence, wisdom is to trust in God's goodness, without questioning

This Sunday’s sermon reminded me of the above story and the lessons from ‘Green’. In the sermon was a mention of the famous writer Eugene who was considered a ‘good for nothing’, but his miseries made him express himself in written word, and eventually his writings brought him fame. I wondered as to how Eugene must have thought. He had indeed lead a miserable life, suffered from depressions; and I felt that “maybe he never wanted fame, all he wanted was a happy life; then why?”

From Khidr's  lessons I feel that sometimes, things have to be as they have to be. Just like Moses, we may not understand why God does some things in our life. For instance, I never understood why God made a 'blindly trusting person' like me, become a religious skeptic; why he led me through treacherous roads, why he closed all options of talking my doubts out with someone of a like mind; so I would be forced to take up the pen, talk to myself and write and clear my doubts.

But this sermon was what I heard, coincidentally, on my birthday, the day when I woke up and opened my mail to see that my book (that dealt with clearing contradictions in various religions) was published in Amazon, a birthday gift from my brother. The sermon about Eugene made me think that maybe somebody would be helped by my book someday and that would make all my slogging and troubles worthwhile. My mind may disagree and say that I had actually wanted a normal doubt free happy life, but my heart says that maybe my soul always preferred something lasting, maybe it always wanted to leave behind something helpful. Our joys and miseries are momentary but what we learn and leave behind, are eternal.

I never wanted this! Why Lord! Can't you hear what I am asking from you? What the hell is this that you give me! These are lines that I, and I am sure all of us often say to God in prayer; and then like this sermon, something may make our minds finally reverberate to the words of this hymn that followed the sermon.....
Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mould me and make me after thy will,
while I am waiting, yielded and still

Should the clay fight with the potter and say “.. Hey not like that!... Lightly not so rough!..”
It is the potter who has the final picture of the pot in mind, not the clay…In other words,
it would make life easier when we yield to the uncalled slaps of life and say…Uh Okay, I can't see the final picture Lord, You can......Have Thine Own Way …!

Each Blessing has its Curse

Is not it true, that attached to each blessing is a curse?

For example, you might be blessed with beauty but can you be sure all the attention you get is real love? It could just be more of a desire to pluck, than to tend; leaving you with a wound to nurse. Many who are beautiful get cutting remarks and often feel hated for no reason they know of. Beauty is often cursed with undeserved hate and hurts.

Feeling love is a blessing but it often brings in possessiveness, insecurity and the likes which are horrible feelings and which make you wish you wouldn't have loved. It can gift you the worst heartache and the most terrible period called break up...Love is cursed with pain.

Talent is a blessing but cursed with loneliness. Highly talented people often don't find similar minds or understanding friends. They may find an aspect to themselves that compliments every different friend but there might not be a friend who could find a side which is able to understand or sync in to their complete self. They are cursed with loneliness in a crowd of friends.

Fame is a blessing but cursed with fake friends. People flock to those who are popular and claim them when fame knocks up to them. They may get praises and appreciation and are applauded, but they can never be sure the sources are true to them. The famed are cursed to a fake world.

You can add to this list and see the curse attached to each blessing. However, when plagued by the curses,you can  remind and console yourself with the knowing that "It is because I have/had a blessing" and so ignore the side effects or  downside. What is more, every curse can turn to a blessing...Pain can often be the best fuel to creativity, insights and higher wisdom.

On the other hand, if you don't have these blessings, you feel just a regular person with nothing much going for you; then look again! Quite possibly you have been blessed in life "with all that really matters"- such as good friends who stay by you through thick and thin, and perhaps even true love"!

Unlike the gods or angels in forever bliss, being human, we have the privilege of being able to experience various kinds of joy in innumerable aspects of what we call life. However, it comes with the promise of  being able to suffer just as much. But then, every suffering comes with the assurance of precious lessons, of a meaningful life. Just look closer......and deeper...

Life is an inseparable duality. Accepting both - 'so called' blessings and' so called' curses -with equanimity, is the only escape.....

Rising above... On Track...

Recently, I saw the movie "Soundtrack", a remake, an inspiring story about a musician who loses the power of hearing and then makes even more amazing music than he ever did when he could hear....The philosophy that struck me most in this movie is “First accept your situation, and then discover another beauty to the world from this situation where you are” . It reminded me of what a friend said to me “zindagi jeeni hai, jaisi bhi hai”.That is, Life is to be lived however it is. You cannot choose to live only the good part” And when we live the bad part, accepting the situation it places us in,and work “with it ” that is when we discover that life has become more beautiful now, than it could have been had life been going the way it was before...

Each situation in life has a potential and the situation itself arises from our soul calling out, seeking to escape the dip it has set into. It calls out to the universe for an upheaval, something that would rouse it and liberate it from the accumulating dust of daily living. Of course “every situation can turn for good only when we make the effort to rise above it and not get washed away with it”. So don’t give up just yet, look around..the world may be changing.

How worse is your situation? The worst is you might be feeling lonely in the world. You might have been consistently abandoned always by people you depend on the most, ignored whenever you called in your need, left alone, but just check out your inner world after you accept that you are meant to depend on no one..that life intends for you to depend on yourself; you might realize that your inner strength has grown so strong that you don’t need anybody.. it couldn’t have surged out unless you experienced abandoning from every person you relied on ...Surged out because it owes you love and support.

Have you been the leaning sort by nature? Would you have ever discovered this power within you if you had found someone you could always lean on? Maybe you were meant to discover your inner strength and your trials were meant to lead you to your profound self. Just look inside you, your power might be surging and rising after each disappointment, a power that is self sufficient, a power that is complete in itself, a bliss, that needs no one to fulfill it.

One Faithful Friend

Some times the experiences in church can be truly moving! I arrived in church a bit late. The sermon was going on. "You must help when you see people who are in need." 'Oh yeah' I thought as just the night before I had commented to my friend on facebook that it is dangerous to have a good heart and one had better hide it!
"But Jesus never said you wont have troubles" continued the priest. "He would give you strength to handle the troubles of each day and he has said not to worry about tomorrow as each day has enough troubles of its own. Just don't tire of doing good."

I was mellow now but was thinking, 'What's the use anyway of any good we do, any advice we give? It doesn't seem to be interesting to anybody.'
"Many people left Jesus saying that his teachings are too hard." continued the priest."Jesus was also insecure and asked his disciples, 'Will you also leave me?' He also said, 'When I come again will I find any faith?' Jesus even felt isolated from God while on his cross and cried to Him, 'Why have you abandoned me'. It is important that we rise above our anxieties and ask God in prayer '..protect us from all anxiety...'

The priest seemed to be answering my thoughts. I had been waking up many mornings feeling very anxious and uneasy. From a spate of experiences with a number of people, I had really formed a strong belief that it was bad to be good as the good seem to be considered 'the weak' and taken advantage of. Also there usually never has seemed to be an acknowledgement or awareness of the good done but often the good was returned with bad or even abandonment especially when you were in need.

What happened in church was totally unexpected and as the mass ended there was the song, "I just keep trusting my lord as I walk along. I just keep trusting my lord and he gives me a song.......He is a faithful friend....I can count on him, to the very end." That was it, my eyes filled up. This had been my favorite song since childhood.

He really proved a faithful friend to me in church today. Even if there seem no results of doing good, moments like these are enough to inspire not to tire doing what seems good and what seems right.

The good from sin?

I heard 'The Prodigal Son' in church last Sunday! The story (a briefing for those who perchance may not know the story) is that of a man who had two sons. His younger son asked for his share of property and went away with it to explore the world. But soon he squandered all the wealth and was short of money. So he began to work as a hired help feeding pigs! He came to his senses realizing that he had forsaken his father’s love; for in his father’s house even hired men had food to spare! The story goes that he returned and asked forgiveness from his father and said he would work as a slave as he did not deserve to be called his son. His father on the other hand was overjoyed and celebrated his return. But this made the elder son angry and he complained that though he had been an obedient son, never once had his father been as extravagant on him. The father then explained that it is because of the joy of having found a son who had been lost.

On hearing the story again I was just wondering with a little boredom as to how many times since childhood would I have heard a sermon on this topic, when the priest said something that made me pay attention. He said that unless we have fallen into sin and repent and require forgiveness, how would we learn the importance of forgiving. This statement woke me from my half sleep and it suddenly brought into my mind the story of the book (play) 'Lady Windmere's fan' by Oscar Wilde. I had liked it because of a similar message it had held. A woman falls into sin (due to some miscommunication) and loses a lot in life because of that and realizes her blunder.

Later she finds out about her grown up daughter who happens to be in the same position 'of being about to fall into the pit' and rescues her from making the same mistake as her. And then is shared a profound wisdom by the author! I remember the words only vaguely, but he meant, 'that those who have fallen and are considered ‘low’ in society are often better people (than the good people of society who have never committed a serious mistake) because they know where the pits are and are so much wiser because of it and are also in a position to warn and prevent 'the good people' from committing the same mistakes. Their example and experience is what guides the 'good' to remain 'good'....

The basic message of ‘the prodigal son' was skipped in my mind and new messages unfolded! It is true that I have heard 'the prodigal son' around a thousand times since childhood; yet I realized another aspect of its meaning in church today. Wasn't the prodigal son repentant, meek and humble in the end when he returns to his father? And wasn't the son who never ever sinned (never left his father or disobeyed him) arrogant, unforgiving, jealous and too proud of being 'good'!

No doubt, as the priest said, "God sometimes allows us to go away from him"....... so we can come back as better people than what we were as obedient sons!

When one door closes...

When one door closes...another door opens?

Or could it be that when we are single mindedly pursuing one particular door and ignoring the other doors which are more proper for us at that stage, the door we are heading towards closes on our face? We can cry forever at the door or wait forever for it to open, or we could just look around at the other door that was always there, but only now was brought into focus.

I have been thinking...we should be so thankful that there is a power greater than the power of our Focus, that closes the doors we are focussed on. And we should be so thankful to all the doors that close on us. The Negative is just a pricking nudge towards the positive. If we could always look around and choose the best door against our nature to focus on one and become content with it(often beyond it's duration of usefulness), then probably we might never have needed closed doors.

Each person with his/her own particular nature needs his/her own miseries for his/her own good. Knowing this as true is essential sometimes, so we can force ourselves to look around, as sometimes we just can't look away, from our favourite door...

Art of Living

One thing I enjoy in life is making new friends, as it leads to new discoveries, a whole new perspective to life. It is decades of different circumstances, different understandings leading to different discoveries that we gain in one new friendship. I look at Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as the first new friend that I have managed to make in a new place I shifted to. I was starved for a friend in this new place and it was a wonderful coincidence that my husband should suggest that I do the Art of Living course. The course was being conducted in our locality exactly in the week that my parents came visiting us and so could take care of my kids while I attended the course. In the class, I made a new friend, as I said, in Sri Sri Ravi Shankar though I didn't personally see him. He shared his understanding and research in the study of breath through this course. People were surprised that I,  a Christian, was attending a "Hindu" course. And I was so surprised about their surprise! What in the world is "Hindu" or "Non-Christian" about breathing a bit differently!! I was later again surprised when, while researching on the breathing techniques, I discovered that some Christian sects do not consider it very proper to undertake these classes! I feel, rather, that it is essential to understand the one thing that we definitely do as living entities which is to breathe. If we can take medicines to relieve stress and depression, and that is not 'Non-Christian', then definitely using understanding of breath to relieve depression and stress is definitely not Non-Christian. We attend any class to take what we want and have the option to ignore what we don't subscribe to. 

Another point that I would like to share is "my new friend's" understanding about the positive and negative things in life. He reiterates what Indian scriptures have to say, that there is no experience of positive without the experience of negative. Hence, one cannot be without the other. Duality is the nature of everything.

Though difficult to remember in negative circumstances, one cannot argue against the truth to it. In positive circumstances, we recognise the coincidences that lead to the good events. In negative circumstances, however, we wonder whom to blame for it. We think 'maybe if this had not been done, maybe if I had said something else, maybe if I had not surrendered to my feelings, maybe if my nature was different.. things would have been different?' Why is it that we often accord God for the good in life and want to blame ourselves for all the Bad! A moment has a power of its own that sometimes makes us react uncharacteristic to our nature, but though what it leads to may be read by our limited mental faculties as negative, if we are aware, we can realise that the negative event would have changed our direction to new discoveries in life, to new experiences, and all 'so very positive lessons' which would have been inaccessible without the nudge of the negative. 

It is, therefore, possible to feel blessed to have 'negative experiences' in life, but it does not mean we would be smiling through that rough patch of negative. The same way that anything positive in life brings smile and laughter, something negative brings tears and anger and suffering. But we have our knowledge serving as a log we hold on to during a flood, helping us endure and navigate through adversities in our life.