Get Over It

Get Over It — There’s reality and what you do with reality in your head. All emotion comes from you not accepting what is right in front of you, and working from there.

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Here’s a little Haven story for you.

For those of you not in the Haven loop, it’s a per­son­al devel­op­ment Cen­tre on Gabri­o­la Island in BC. Back in 1983, my super­vi­sor / ther­a­pist, Glo­ria Tay­lor, thought I’d ben­e­fit from train­ing there.

Being me, I declined. Wait­ed. By 1996, I’d had a phys­i­cal break­down, and was con­sid­er­ing leav­ing the min­istry and just doing counselling. 

I head­ed our West think­ing I knew it all, and the break would do me good. Yeah. Right.

July marks my 30th anniver­sary of that first “event” at The Haven — a 25-day Phase 1. Let me tell ya, a learned a ton. Includ­ing how thick-head­ed I can be.

There were 30+ of us in The Phase 1 Group. One of the first exer­cis­es was to select small groups for evening work. 

There was a 21-year-old in our small group, and she was deeply ambiva­lent toward me—something I was not used to. 

To boil it all down, she had one set of rules for the rest of the group, and anoth­er set for me.

Exam­ple: We’re all hav­ing din­ner one night. Quoth she, 

“I’m work­ing on my lan­guage. Tell me if I’m blam­ing.”
A minute lat­er,
“She makes me so angry!”

I bite.

“Should­n’t that be, ‘I’m anger­ing myself over that?’ ”

Silence, then the glare. 

“Wayne, not you. Every­one else can tell me, not you.”

One of many examples. 

No ques­tion, I was chew­ing on this. I was used to being liked, lis­tened to, and this per­son was not fol­low­ing along!

Final­ly, 15 days in, I decide to do a “clear­ing.” (Haven-speak for work­ing through an issue.) Here was the gist of my argu­ment, as I spoke to her in small group:

“You have one set of rules for the oth­ers in the group, and anoth­er set for me, and it’s not fair! I want you to change!” 

She replied, “My life, my rules.”

I’m pret­ty per­sua­sive, so I cranked it up. The small group leader kept say­ing, “Lis­ten to her. It’s not about you.” 

I did­n’t get it. I argued for fair­ness. In actu­al­i­ty, I argued for what I want­ed, and pre­tend­ed to myself that what I want­ed was fair. (I not­ed that no one else in the group was sup­port­ing me, but I was too wound up to care…)

She did not budge. I was amazed! She was say­ing no… to me! 

The leader kept say­ing, “Lis­ten.”

Finally, after 45 minutes, the penny dropped. I got it!!!

I said to her, 

“Wait a minute! You have every right to decide how you want to relate to me, and I have every right to decide how I’ll relate to you. I get it! It’s your right to set your terms. I have no right to demand that you change so I won’t have to deal with my discomfort.”

Here’s a quote from Brad Warn­er’s, “Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Com­men­taries on Bud­dha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen’s Trea­sury of the Right Dhar­ma Eye,” a pret­ty nifty Zen based book.

Bud­dhism says that no mat­ter how we slice up real­i­ty to fit into our brains–no mat­ter what def­i­n­i­tions we come up with of same­ness and difference–reality itself remains for­ev­er unsliced, for­ev­er as it is. And it fur­ther asserts that the sliced-up image in our heads, nev­er… match­es up with real­i­ty itself. p.224

When I trap myself, this is why. When you catch yourself, this is why. Every time.

Emo­tions arise when I decide that exter­nal real­i­ty ought to be oth­er than it is, that real­i­ty ought to match up with what I want, where I think I am going. 

Thus, our emo­tions are like canaries in a coal mine.

• In my ver­sion of the sto­ry, I imag­ined that she was treat­ing me bad­ly / dif­fer­ent­ly than the oth­er mem­bers of the group—mostly, she was ignor­ing me.
• I want­ed her to like me, to lis­ten to me, to want to hang out with me.
• None of that was hap­pen­ing, so there was a dis­con­nect between how I want­ed real­i­ty to be, and real­i­ty itself.

My slic­ing and dic­ing of real­i­ty was simple—she was wrong, she was­n’t learn­ing any­thing, she need­ed to change. 

Fur­ther, I was a psy­chother­a­pist, for god’s sake, and knew best! And she smiled, shook her head, and refused to play my game.

Who knows how many hours I wast­ed, up in my head, devis­ing plots and plans. And then, more hours try­ing to imple­ment them. And at the end of the day, even if every­one there had agreed that “It’s not fair!, the real­i­ty of what my friend was will­ing to do regard­ing me was not for me to change.

Fortunately, I got it… that time… and I still catch myself on this one:

I’ve caught myself on this one time and time again. I notice a lot soon­er these days, but “It’s not fair!” is still an under­cur­rent for me.

Once I get past look­ing out­side—blam­ing oth­ers, declar­ing sit­u­a­tions to be “wrong,” I find that I am “just in it.” As in, reality. 

Real­i­ty is right there, all the time, despite our attempts to fit it into box­es of our own making.

It is waste­ful of time and ener­gy to try to force real­i­ty into the box­es we cre­ate for it. To “explain, blame, define.” 

It’s a fruit­ful intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise to think about stuff, to con­ceptual­ize, (notice the word—concepts are men­tal for­ma­tions and there­fore are not real…) but to think that real­i­ty is con­tained in our def­i­n­i­tions / delu­sions is stupid.

No one forces us into this con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing, slice and dice dance, even if it is pop­u­lar. Real­i­ty is always right there, wait­ing to be inter­act­ed with. 

(Again, notice inter-act-ed… to act with…) free of demands that real­i­ty change sim­ply because we are mak­ing our­selves uncom­fort­able. No mat­ter what is going on, we always have the choice to be present with it.

We don’t have to like it.

We can, how­ev­er, change our rela­tion­ship with real­i­ty.

There is no uni­ver­sal, “Fair!” There’s just per­son­al pref­er­ence. Remem­ber my sto­ry: my “fair” was for my female friend to treat me as I demand­ed. Hers was to do what she chose to do, from her side. 

Fair? Accord­ing to whom?

This week, notice how often your emo­tions bub­ble to the sur­face right at the point where your slice and dice ver­sion of real­i­ty ceas­es to match with what’s right in front of you. 

Have a breath, let out the emo­tion in pri­vate, and come back to real­i­ty. Deal with what is right in front of you, with­out games, judge­ments, or manipulation.

And then, let go, and move on.

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