Impossible! What can we do when we find ourselves in relationships that are intolerable? I needed an epiphany!
When I finally admitted my passionate dislike, an epiphany shone through the darkness. I felt a heaviness in the relational cloud dissipate. The epiphany? It was not so much about the other(s), as is was about having to deal with the fragmented person I became, when I was with the judge, critic, victim, manipulator, bully, abuser, etc. The intolerable other had become I.
My epiphany included seeing three of me: my outer response, my inner reaction and the truest part of me. I not only felt disjointed, but inauthentic.
Creating peace among my three parts would take immeasurable energy. I had a choice. Did I want transformation or control? Apparently, loving self was indeed at the core of loving the other.
As it turned out, my disturbing inner reaction was inviting me to newness of life, but first I had to see all that I had nobly danced around. Perhaps my inner emotions had acted out, to get my attention. Taking time to nurture what I had ignored in myself parted the dark cloud, allowing light to shine on my path.
Each of us knows what we have to do to be an authentic presence in the world. Though it may call for changes in our outer responses, it surely requires pulling our hidden thoughts, emotions and motives down into Sacred within.
This is one of many small steps, leading us to the cross, the place of forgiving others and also ourselves. It is where we learn to love the world, one relationship at a time. True, transformation does not promise a change in the other, but it offers us freedom that comes in the release of our expectations of them.
In the inner quiet space, we hear whispers; observe, wait, stay, commit, speak, release, forgive, leave or run. The messages may differ, but an invitation to joy is always waiting.
An epiphany is a living entity that grows with us. With new, yet similar encounters, the illumination speaks again and again. We can choose to move forward in trust, or continue in blame, struggling to control people and the trying circumstances they create.