Ritam Studio Podcast With Jonni Pollard and Carla Dimattina

Healing Through Understanding: Moving Beyond Pain and Resentment

• Jonni Pollard • Season 5 • Episode 5

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We explore the journey beyond conventional forgiveness to a deeper understanding of compassion and healing. Discovering that true liberation comes not from pardoning others but from recognizing the divine nature within everyone – even those who have hurt us.

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Speaker 1:

I've had an experience recently where I feel I went through a journey of taking responsibility yes but then I have an inner conflict of I don't think I'm projecting blame or making anyone outside of me responsible, but I do have seem to have just difficulty in a practical sense, on a human level, to forgive. And I've heard you say before that forgiveness, there's actually nothing to forgive. And I've heard other spiritual teachers say that if you go high up enough in the frequency and level, nothing actually even happened. And I feel that intellectually I understand that.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And also in my body, I feel. I don't feel resentment or I don't wish them unwell, but I feel like if I see them in person.

Speaker 2:

It's triggering pain and resentment. Is that what's happening?

Speaker 1:

I can imagine it would be. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm just wondering how to manage.

Speaker 2:

Is it happening in your imaginings? Are you feeling pain and resentment in your imaginings?

Speaker 1:

When I go into it, it Well, when I imagine what? Because you know, when you live in a small place and you just I don't really think of scenarios, but I am afraid of eventually like facing that situation yes and again, I don't think I blame, I've taken responsibility. I went through a process, a journey, but I feel, on a practical human level yeah there is a conflict inside myself that I feel I can't forgive, great, no problem.

Speaker 2:

Let the conflict be there and wish for the encounter to occur, and let it be as messy and clunky as it needs to be. What does it matter? Your intention is beautiful, it's pure. You wish to correct, you wish to let it go, you wish for it to stick on you. You're not harboring resentment. There's no problem here. No harm, no foul.

Speaker 2:

Our healing and recovery from having our sensibility violated. It takes time and it's a little bit clunky. So even if you see them and you just want to slap this person, don't judge yourself for it. It's just a human thing. Unraveling here. Breathe through it. There's no failure, it's all fine.

Speaker 2:

And then you go through the process and what it will inform you is how to recover from such a challenging, difficult thing. It's a difficult thing when somebody you feel doesn't care about you or behaves in a particular way that I'm making some assumptions here, you know um and disregards the value of your existence or your feelings, or, and you're like, how could you do that? It's really. It's a hard thing to let go of, because we, by our nature, are belonging creatures. Our deepest sense of well-being comes from a sense of belonging to each other and the care and the nurturing that is required to live, embodied in the responsibility of belonging.

Speaker 2:

And you know we are all day long trampling on that sensitivity and that sensibility, making a mess of it. And you know it's like death by a thousand paper cuts. You've had this happen a hundred times and it's, you know, it may be a small thing but it feels so big because it's happened so many times and the next person is going to cop the you know, the 999 other cuts that you got. You know it's all going to be their fault until we can get really clear about that right. So we just need to be really realistic about the condition of our nervous system and you know how we've grown up and what we've experienced and and be okay with the clunkiness of recovery. All that is required is that you remain vigilant to the process of recovery, which you are. You've done a lot of work around this. You can see it, you've examined it, you've imagined it, you've sat in scenarios and you're like, oh shit, I still don't think that when push comes to shove, I'm going to like, appear like something. Don't be interested in appearing like anything.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's my whole point. I don't want to appear. I actually really genuinely just, I don't want to feel. I want to feel neutral about it, because I appreciate that.

Speaker 2:

There's no such thing as neutral. No such thing. You want to have a heart full of love and compassion. So let's talk about this forgiveness thing that you brought up. Right at the beginning you heard me say something about forgiveness. We only need forgiveness when we can't access compassion, when the heart is still hurt and in pain. I know the right thing to do is to let this go, but the pain dominates my ability to access love. So what am I going to do? I'm going to apply the intention to cultivate compassion, which is forgiveness. It's more of an intellectual thing.

Speaker 2:

Forgiveness doesn't get us over the line. Forgiveness doesn't free us, because forgiveness implies I need to forgive you. There's a kind of hubris in that I, who have never sinned and have never violated anybody's sensibility, am so offended by the way you treated me. There's all kinds of complicated hypocrisies and things in that Forgiveness. What we're seeking to do in a higher state of consciousness is just to understand what motivated that action in the first place. Forgiveness comes with an ignorance of our divine nature. With an awareness of our divine nature, we know that everybody ultimately is intrinsically benevolent at the baseline and if they're not behaving with care and love towards me or others that might offend me or hurt me in some way. Forgiveness is not going to rectify the situation internally. The only thing that's going to rectify that is by going deeper, beyond the pain, and going okay. Well, your nature is divine. So what's happened to make you forget that and behave in this way, and can I relate to that? Have I behaved in a kind of way, something like this to somebody else, where I forgot who they were? I didn't see them for who they were. I didn't see myself for who I was, caught in a cycle of pain and anger and projection or whatever? The answer is yes, of course. We've all been there. So for us to discover true peace and reconciliation, we need to take the attention off our own pain and realize that the liberation comes through putting our attention on the other and really understanding, understanding them, showing love for those who show enmity towards us, and really understanding it.

Speaker 2:

As far as my research can tell, there's no other way of finding peace. You have to really understand them, yeah, yeah, and when you encounter them, at the time that you encounter them, if you've done some kind of push-ups going back to our other analogy around this you've built up some strength, and if you fumble in the first instance and there's a kind of unelegant you know vomiting of some emotion, you know, whatever, it's fine, you know you get out the hanky, you'll happen oh sorry about that and you you go. I beg your pardon, I'm back, I just needed to get that out and we reset right. We reset no harm, no foul. We carry on. All is good and this is it, and we need to just become more courageous in this, be willing to just be more human in this way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the being human part I feel like is the… it's scary as heck because we live in an environment where we are fiercely judged for the things we judge ourselves for. So a part of the, the, the pathology of the human condition, the, the illness that we have, is that we project. If somebody is fiercely judging somebody, it is just an announcement of what's happening inside of themself. If somebody is established in acceptance and love, with compassion and patience inside of themselves, with themselves, you will see that on display. The extent to which it's happening inside is the extent to which it is displayed. It's just a basic truth. Where somebody is at is entirely evident in any given moment. And if someone is incapable of demonstrating compassion and kindness and love towards us, then immediately we can acknowledge that that's what's happening inside of them.

Speaker 2:

And I don't know about you, but when I connect with the extent to which somebody is not good within themselves, I feel for them. I feel it, and then my mind immediately goes to when they're a little child. When did this happen? When did you lose sight of your divine nature? What has happened to make you forget the greatest truth? And that's a tragedy we can all commiserate with. It moves us at the deepest part of ourself.

Speaker 2:

The notion of a little child's lights going out. It's a tragedy, I don't care who you are, it makes you go oh, and that's something primal that we have available to us to connect with. That opens the floodgates of compassion, and that's something primal that we have available to us to connect with. That opens the floodgates of compassion. But you can't expect to do this without having done it with yourself.

Speaker 2:

So what it's revealing is what I'm trying to point in a very gentle way is that the extent that you're struggling with this situation, just turn it back inward and go all right, how am I with myself? And that'll reveal where the work needs to be done and eventually, as we become more intimate in our relationship with ourself through these challenging landscapes, the more proficient we become in sustaining presence with ourself, patience with every step. Presence with ourself, patience with every step, not projecting the voice of whoever it was that was antagonizing us as children, because we adopt that. To relinquish that and to free ourselves of that influence and to really own our internal space and be with the feelings, we can heal and recover very quickly, but it requires being with it. It's a practice Of which you're very, you know, adept and you're just, you know you're inquiring about refinement.