Who Am I? Lessons from the Teacher

One of my favorite assignments to give my clients is to create a vision board. This is a way to decide what kind of person you are, what is important to you, and how you want to live. I like the vision board to be an actual foam board – about 2 feet by 3 feet – where you put magazine photos, small objects, and actual words on. As it fully develops, you step into it, and live in congruence with your values and goals.

For most people, anger, hatred, resentment, and sadness are not the places they want to inhabit. Most people, when asked, will say they want to live in love, joy, and contentment. In reality, though, their behavior does not match their desires.

I struggle with this often, especially in today’s political climate, which has led to the unleashing of so much ugliness and cruelty. It is so easy to slip into anger and despair, and to perseverate on the people I perceive are causing this.

So, what do I do?

I was raised as a Christian, and I am very familiar with both the Old and New Testaments, especially the gospels. These contain the lessons from Jesus, a great teacher, regardless of anyone’s religious or agnostic or atheistic identities. For every life situation, I can turn to something Jesus said (and yes, I know that we can’t know what was actually said), and apply it to my life. The result being that I feel better, more at peace, and definitely more in harmony with the self I want to embrace.

To begin with, Jesus’ main message is to “love and forgive.” Simple, yet difficult. The other day, I was obsessing about the meanness people are displaying to those they view as “other,” and “less than.” I turned my attention to a family member who embraces all the conspiracy theories, calls herself a Christian, but expresses discrimination and bigotry towards various groups. She has even lashed out at me personally for having differing opinions than she does. How do I forgive her?

Then I thought of Jesus hanging on the cross. He had been betrayed by a close friend, had been persecuted by former followers, was judged as an enemy of the state, and was now being stabbed with swords by the Romans as he was dying. And what did he say?

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Many of the people in power know exactly what they are doing, and they don’t care. I can put those aside more easily than the people who follow them. Those are the ones that make me most angry, until I recall what Jesus said. As I do that, my anger drains away, and I can feel compassion and forgiveness. They truly “know not what they do.”

Human beings have the incredibly difficult task of rising above their Survival Brains to Connect with their Enlightened Brains.* As I tell my students, the biggest motivator of human behavior is the need to belong to the group. This has been a primary survival mechanism, although it is no longer so important for the survival of the species as it was 200,000 years ago. That mechanism is still active in our limbic systems and explains a lot of irrational behavior. When the limbic system is activated by fear or addiction, it shuts down the prefrontal cortex’s – Enlightened Brain’s – ability to make rational decisions.

When people are living in fear and anxiety, and when they are immersed addictively in social media groups, they lose the ability to think – to ask themselves, “does this make sense?”

Whatever your faith, whoever your teachers are – Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, the Dalai Llama, and others – there is the common message of love, forgiveness, and Connection.

YOU can be a teacher as well.

Be the Light

* Addict America: The Lost Connection

Carol