Positive Energy Guide

Emotional Forgiveness:
Forgiveness–as a heartfelt feeling–brings release and relief. By releasing grudges, bitterness, harsh judgments, resentment, self-pity, rage, anger and hatred we are more fully alive, and present in the moment. Maintaining these emotions blocks and drains energy. Energy can flow freely and renew us as we truly forgive. This experience is one of having more open space in our lives. Having fully forgiven, it does not matter whether we remember or forget—the topic no longer arouses us.

At its root, forgiveness is a function of FEELING. Most of us like very much the IDEA of forgiving. The real-time ACT of releasing negative emotions requires finding these difficult emotions inside—actually feeling them. You can’t give it away if you don’t own it. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty as this post series continues.

Forgiveness and compassion are like two hands that wash one another. Forgiveness invites the flow of compassion. Compassion opens space for forgiveness. Both rely on the free flow of feeling.

Emotional forgiveness does not require scouting around in your memories to dig up lingering grudges. Accessing and attending fully to experience in the present can pull up past issues, like following an echo back up the canyons to someone’s shouting mouth. Digging deeply into moment-to-moment experience exhumes the past-within- the-present. Discovering issues here-and-now increases our motivation for resolving them; we are present to the ways issues actively interfere with the free flow of feeling in current relationships.

The need to forgive does not necessarily show up in the guise of grudges or resentment. Here are a few clues that indicate a background stuck emotion:

• Emotional coldness
• Subtle disengagement from the present moment
• Inability to be wholehearted
• Vague irritability
• Boredom
• Hyper-rational states or “being in your head”
• Lack of emotional engagement
• Projection of one’s own feelings onto other people

Transcendental Forgiveness
Transcendental forgiveness means forgiveness that helps us to go beyond ego and personality. It involves a transpersonal element. In other words it takes place in the realm of greater-than-self, and involves connection. Transcendental forgiveness relies on our ability to allow agencies beyond our personality to influence or assist us.

These other agencies may simply be the kindness and wisdom of the people around us. Whether we believe in God, angels, guides, masters, Nature, Spirit, or simply the principle of grace is not at issue here. What IS crucial is to attain a frame of mind and heart during which we are willing and open to connect with others. This state allows positive and expansive energies to participate in our personal experience. We have opened ourselves to intentional influence.

Transcendental forgiveness is a state of grace. Like real love, it is not available on command. While we cannot control it, we CAN take both internal and external actions that serve to open us up to greater-than-personal experience, inviting the expansive feelings we encounter to roost within.

There are a number of different ways to invite ourselves to experience forgiveness. The easiest way to do this is to be around someone who generates the actual energy of forgiveness and to attune to that person, like tuning an instrument using a tuning fork.

I will share some direct experiences with the Energy of Forgiveness in Part 3.

Which modes of Forgiveness do You most relate to? What do you notice when you think about the other modes?

Please also read the “comments” and share your own. We will have some meaningful and important discussions in this series.

Forgiveness is a prized promoter of ease, grace and healing. We appreciate the state of forgiveness as a strong positive. What does it take to get to genuine, full-on experience of forgiveness? This post series explores forgiveness in depth.

Sometimes it seems like there is a chasm between those of us comfortable with forgiving and those who find forgiveness almost an abstraction. For me, forgiveness is a challenging topic to write about. What challenges me most in these posts is that I care to stimulate useful insights for people at different stages in your work. Rather than preach to the choir, I will to go into the nitty-gritty with this topic. Actually forgiving can require us to work deep.

If we are to make a real difference that impacts day-to-day experience, we need to move past preconceptions. Forgiveness is one of those words like “love,” which mean vastly different things to different people. One person may mean releasing a claim to seek revenge. Another may be contemplating divine grace. Our interpretation of forgiveness—what we conceive it to be—shapes our experience.

Let us first consider everyday-type experience and then explore the kinds of experience that promote transformation. We learn and grow personally from ALL types of forgiveness.

Transformation occurs when our Inner Work uproots who we have so-far believed ourselves to be.

Forgiveness occurs in several different modes of experience. The way we relate to forgiveness depends which mode we are operating in:

• Social
• Mental
• Emotional
• Transcendental

Social Forgiveness
Social forgiveness can be achieved with minimal introspection. You decide to release a claim upon another for a particular unpleasant, unkind, or hurtful action, situation, statement or gesture. You agree not to retaliate or to condemn them, and to move on in a peaceable or usual manner.

Social forgiveness can be purely selfish—or not. Some “forgive” as social lubricant, from fear of conflict, rejection, or abandonment. Giving up being mad about something because a loved one will not like it or acting ‘nice’ while the victim pot simmers in your depths is not real forgiveness. “Forgiveness” that is denial in disguise, or making nice to get what you want, does not promote personal integration or robust intimacy. Real forgiveness comes from inner strength.

“Forgive and forget” as a strategy works better for some personality types than others. If you tend to hold grudges, releasing the memory of prior events may be an asset. But if you tend to allow others to hurt you again and again, forgetting may reinforce weakness. You can forgive the action or event—and simultaneously study people’s nature and tendencies. Thus you can accept people’s limitations and even love them while maintaining boundaries that work for you. (We explored the how-tos in the Trust series.)

Mental Forgiveness
Mental forgiveness can remain barren and intellectual. Forgiving in theory–can at its best lead to deep understanding. Deep understanding naturally brings about forgiveness as we become able to identify with and relate to the person we aim to forgive. Understanding unfolds as we recognize the fractures and forces that drive someone to non-ideal actions. Understanding goes even farther when and if we are willing and able to identify similar fractures and forces within ourselves, whether or not we act them out.

Sincere thinking, visualizing, imagining, and wishing may establish direction as we contemplate what has occurred. Thought can birth intention. Mental forgiveness alone may change your attitude, expand possibilities for interaction, and make room inside for different experiences. If mental forgiveness makes a blueprint for change, feeling drives the bulldozer. The more deeply we dig into our own hearts the more powerfully we can forgive, for we begin to recognize others in ourselves and ourselves in others.

Inayat Khan who brought Sufism to the West said, “The depth of mind is heart, and the surface of heart is mind.” (Sufism is a spiritual approach that honors all religions like beads on a string. The string represents Truth, which runs evenly through them all.)

We’ll head into Emotional and Transcendental Forgiveness in Part 2.

Please share YOUR insights about forgiveness in Comments, below.

Unexpressed feelings need to be defined and shared to establish durable and productive structures in relationships. ~Jeff Jawer

Practicing Trust is the third post of a series that supports understanding what it takes and howto develop trust in relationships. This post suggests behaviors that build trust, and lists key characteristics of trustworthy people.

Behaviors that build the ability to trust:

Learn to trust what is actual, not what you hope may be there. What we need to trust is OUR RESPONSE TO life, not that life will be a certain way.

Become reliable in caring for yourself. This greatly aids forming solid relationships. We trust ourselves when we are not willing to sell out our values or perception to try and get love or care from people we cannot trust.

Limit the WAYS you involve yourself with people to the extent that you trust them–or to your ability to manage your risks. If you can afford to be hurt or are not easily hurt you have more room to extend trust.
Stay alert to signals and sensations that tell you whether or not to trust. Keep your intuition at peace by listening to it and responding.

Sustain good communication. Clear up misunderstandings. Avoiding discomfort causes “emotional drift.” Emotional distance opens the door to situations that can compromise trust. Defining and sharing feelings builds intimacy and trust.

Maintain realistic expectations based on mutual agreements.

Practice discussing difficult topics “in a container of love.”

Make trust a priority–not as a demand but as something lovely and valuable that you craft over time.
Allow trust to grow naturally, without forcing it. Once you have it, take great care to repair damaged trust through communication.

Clearly define for yourself the particulars of your basic need for trust. This will be different depending on the type of relationship. For me basic trust in intimacy requires that the person is committed to truthfulness, does not cause pain intentionally, communicates their needs constructively, and can return to a caring frame of mind fairly quickly after an upset. Knowing what you are looking for makes it easier to trust yourself in relationships because you have a basis for evaluation.

Release relationships in which basic trust is not possible.

Remember that trust is a learned skill. Be compassionate with yourself in the process.

Enjoy trusting. Savor and accumulate this form of wealth.

Key Characteristics of Trustworthy People:

• Authentic
• Actions and words match
• Able to say “no” respectfully and “yes” dependably
• Keep agreements or renegotiate if necessary
• Able to admit it when they do not know something
• Able to be both flexible and reliable
• Show genuine feeling for you if they need to let you down
• Willing to make compromises but never compromise core principles or personal integrity
• Consistent ethics, positive values, or principles inform their behavior
• Willing and able to tell you things you do not like to hear–kindly
• Able to disagree without needing to argue, or to have friendly arguments that lead to increased understanding
• Let you know how they feel, where they stand, and how you stand with them
• Able to recognize, accept, and enjoy the differences between you

After considering others, be sure to turn the same list around on yourself.

Can you be up-front about what you do and do not trust in yourself and your friends? How and when do you intentionally build trust through communication?

“Trust one man with your money and another man with your wife.”
(Old Persian saying)

When you think about whether or not to trust, ask yourself, “Trust TO WHAT?” To return aborrowed book? To keep a confidence? These things are hard for some people and easy for others. To never hurt you, read your mind, and put your needs and interests ahead of their own? This is unrealistic.

Example: I have a friend who is unreliable about time. I trust her to keep me waiting and to inconvenience me. For this reason I do not set myself up by making time-dependent plans with her. We may take separate cars or meet at her place instead of mine. I make back-up plans. She is exceptional, creative and funny. I trust her sense of humor, her heart, and her loyalty.

An important distinction about trust is supported by this Far Side cartoon: Mr. Chicken is on the couch reading the newspaper. His wife has just rushed up to the door, breathless. She has a leash in her hand. The front door has just been slammed behind a large, panting dog. Mrs. Chicken says, “You raise a dog from a pup and what do you get!? A chicken killer!”

This cartoon is practically a parable. Healthy, adult trust takes into account the nature of the other. In wisdom we trust someone to act according to his or her character, history, and context.

Wanting to be liked can set you up for misplaced trust, especially if you have a friendly but vulnerable nature like Mrs. Chicken. Those who abuse trust are keenly attracted to a trusting heart. It’s their food.

If you want someone to hunger for you, go ahead and lay out absolute trust like bait. Don’t be surprised if the person you attract goes all werewolf on you down the line! Here is the antidote to holding out food that attracts people who will hurt you: Get clear about the difference between needy, compulsive hunger and genuine love. This will greatly increase your ability to trust yourself.

Trust takes time and experience. It is rarely possible to develop trust when someone is on“honeymoon behavior” to win your approval or get you to be with them. A big gap between on-display and everyday behaviors is a red flag. Real tasks that require complex decisions and have actual outcomes are essential for establishing trust. We do not get to know one another deeply by enjoying entertainment together.

Enjoy a gradual and extended courtship while you discover the deeper nature of friends and loved ones. Take notice of potential issues, but focus on what you CAN trust.

My life is graced with several rare gems who I can trust wholeheartedly. These wonderful people make good mirrors. They provide honest and loving feedback and help me to stay true to myself.

In Part 4 we explore HOW to develop trust in relationships and key characteristics of trustworthy people.

Who do YOU trust? How did you develop this trust?

A trusting nature is considered fetching; attractive. What makes trust so appealing? How do we increase trust without becoming too vulnerable?

Trust has several different faces. Healthy Trust: When we trust ourselves to effectively evaluate and respond to other people, being trusting reflects emotional health. We are able to allow others to take actions that displease or frustrate us without taking this personally. Genuine trust is attractive to people who are ready for healthy relationships. We telegraph confidence because we trust ourselves to resolve issues.

Unhealthy Trust: The face of wound-based trust is different. If we cannot trust ourselves to represent our needs and keep ourselves safe we tend to go into the either/or experience (see Part 1). We may seek to achieve or maintain relationship by extending blanket “trust.” When the alternative is distrust we may want to hold onto the “trust” and overlook indications that trust is warranted. Along with the need to be liked, approved of, wanted, or kept safe by another person, we might give away “trust” to try and make someone feel a particular way about us, or about his or her self.

Such efforts almost always backfire by causing us to distrust ourselves. Unhealthy trust is attractive to people who are not emotionally healthy. Excessive vulnerability advertises that it is safe to take advantage, care-take, or do both, according to the person’s nature.

This post series began with a comment by a friend about “placing love and trust in persons who have not earned it.” Her thinking is a good starting place. She is taking responsibility for learning, and recognizes that a process needs to occur for trust to develop. She has noticed that we need to carefully observe the way others treat us. Let’s take some involved concepts a step farther:

Words can be powerful. The word “earning” can introduce complications. Expecting someone to earn trust smacks of making them work for it while you hold trust ransom, like a prize for performance. Trustworthy sorts shouldn’t have to work hard to prove themselves to us. They can simply be themselves and allow us to observe who they are and what they do. We see them demonstrate behaviors that build trust. That is less about earning than about living through a variety of situations and seeing whether they respond with natural and consistent integrity.

My friend may not have fallen into this word trap, but I hear a lot of emotional-wound-talk to the effect that so-and-so had to EARN IT! This was past the point of no return for the relationships concerned.

Almost everyone wants to be trusted. Immediate, unqualified trust is tempting. We want to give it freely like love. We want to give it over completely and get the establishing-it-part beyond us so we can enjoy absolute trust and feel safe and all that good stuff. But life and people change from circumstance to circumstance. Even for highly intuitive people, real trust is built brick by brick.

Unconsidered trust is like living on credit–inflated. We can extend trust like a line of credit, and increase it as trust develops. If we extend trust way out ahead of actual, direct experience we make ourselves vulnerable. Yes, vulnerability IS essential to intimacy. Healthy vulnerability; openness. There is a difference between healthy vulnerability and leaving ourselves open to being used by ignoring signs and signals, substituting wishful thinking for clear observation. Hurt and disillusionment that follow inflated hopes are like penalties and fines for missing payments. What we need to pay is: Attention.

Sustainable, flexible, trust is full of possibility. It is a learned skill.

In Part 3 we’ll begin to look into specifics about Developing Trust.

What do YOU trust in yourself?
Can you trust yourself to negotiate honestly for your needs in your relationships?

Trust carries a positive energy that allows relationships to thrive and promotes growth in special ways that cannot occur without it. In this post series we will explore trust. Learning to discern the genuine energy and experience of trust from fear-based hopefulness makes a great foundation.

As ever, grafting a positive image or energy on top of a root twisted with issues is fast and easy. Real and lasting mastery come from learning to establish the genuine thing—in this case trust–starting at the root. Let’s take a look at real trust and the dynamics that compromise it.

This post series builds on the previous “Inner Work” and “Betrayal” series. If you have trust issues or are serious about working on yourself, find these series by scrolling to bottom of the Home page and clicking on “3” and “2.”

Trust is a reliable, solid, clear feeling, not flighty, flimsy, or ungrounded. When we trust we feel supported. We experience trusted relationships as adequately defined. We know where we stand. When we trust we may also feel respectable or respected.

Distrust may be simply factual—an observation without emotional weight. You know you do not trust the person, accept the situation, and base your actions on the way things are without distress.

Let’s begin with basics for understanding issues with trust:

Distrust complicated by emotional issues and frustrated desires is a different beast. Factual distrust now carries the freight of negative emotion. Unresolved distrust can linger around as suspicion, or escalate to paranoia. It can feel slithery, dirty, painful, unfair, vulnerable, and so forth. Emotional distrust usually involves wanting someone to be different than they actually are. Events from your past add intensity.

HOW we think enters in. Thinking of trust in all-or-nothing terms probably implies influence from inner wounds. Young children think in either/or. Either/or thinking is therefore a really good clue that an issue has been triggered. (See Inner Work series for details.)

Blanket (total or absolute) distrust offers an escape from the endless and exhausting mental and emotional processing characteristic of suspicion. If blanket trust is the only alternative, distrust appears to be the only safe stance. Thinking in opposites can also give trust the allure of a peaceful island in a sea of seething distrust and uncertainty. The more uncomfortable your distrust the more inviting it seems to push it all away and just trust.

In either/or thinking we may unconsciously prefer total distrust to uncertainty. Uncertainty is scarier than slamming the door to possibility by being sure something or someone is no good. Either/or thinking is a hedge against uncertainty and insecurity. It occludes options that bring up potential uncertainty. The false certainty of black and white substitutes for the clarity developed by learning to recognize subtlety and to manage uncertainty.

In Part 2 we delve into Healthy and Unhealthy Trust and we start to explore avenues to healthy trust.

Where do YOU go inside when you wonder whether someone can be trusted? How do you manage your uncertainty?

“Let despair and disillusionment ravish the garden of your heart. You will replenish it once again with the seedlings of self-sufficiency and contentment. Life never is, never was, and never will be anybody’s Beloved.” ~Meher Baba

If you feel disillusioned, seek and discover advantage in losing illusion. (See previous posts on Disillusionment.) Sharpen your sense of what is real for you right now.

Release resistance. This reduces pain. Accepting losses makes them more bearable.

Remember that simply having a body and a life is an opportunity. If you were plopped down in different country with nothing but the clothes on your back the days you have left would still be a gift.

Allow yourself plenty of time alone. If you need to, allow yourself to retreat from social life for a period of healing. Give yourself time to reorient, slowly and gently. Make loose plans down the line to do something you can look forward to when you think you will be ready.

Avoid making anything up–about yourself, about others, about your state. Stay with your process without labeling it as a negative state such as “depression.”

(I love this suggestion.) Let people know, “I’m a little IN right now,” rather than defining yourself as depressed, not wanting to connect, etc. This gives you room to feel, express, and grow.

Release your goals like an out-breath. You can pick them up in another season.

When you’re ready, set up short periods of simple interaction that doesn’t ask much of you, such as sitting with someone while they do a household task.

Keep to basics as much as possible: Sleep, walk, eat. Nourish, nurture, get light, get massage.

Focus on details in nature, like flowers, clouds, waves, the leaves of a tree responding to wind. Spend time in your garden or pick flowers if you like.

Release self-blame about being betrayed. You may have had cues or clues. You may have had inklings or premonitions. You may have ignored your guidance or felt shamed for doubting someone. You may have been clueless and feel stupid. Feeding these feelings distracts you from doing effective Inner Work and moving forward.

Ask not What caused this but What can I use it for.

Take breaks from thinking. If you cannot stop your brain, listen to audio books.

Find the sweet spot between avoiding feeling and indulging feeling. Allow feeling to surface into your awareness and run through your body. Giving sensation to feeling allows it to express through the body, completing its process. Do not dramatize it or keep it active by repeatedly reliving the past. Feel it fully and let it flow out as you feel it.

Acknowledge pain with compassion and use it to craft your inner world. Pain is a keen tool.

Use music or art to keep your expressive flow open.

Be compassionate to yourself in choosing with whom you discuss personal issues. Gently decline unsolicited advice.

Rearrange anything in your home or office that has become stagnant. Clean things out, throw things out, wear different colors, change your bedspread, cut your hair.

Practice forgiveness—but first accept your grief. Forgiveness is glorious. Premature forgiveness can be a spiritual bypass. Any spiritual practice used to avoid feeling is an agent of denial. Forgiving does not mean that you condone what someone has done. It means that you release claims and resentment to obtain peace.

Positive focuses for the mind:

• In what ways does this betrayal serve my best interests?
• What illusions am I releasing?
• How does my orientation change without them?
• What needs am I able to satisfy gracefully if I consider my resources?
• What positive qualities and values are important to me in relationships going forward?
• What new possibilities are opening for me?
• What am I newly free and able to do?

Be loyal to yourself. This will bring more happiness than trying to maintain relationships with people who have issues with loyalty.

Last time I was betrayed I actually had some positive feelings about the experience. I sensed that the betrayal was a real opportunity to support myself fully, and even to accept support from others, who noticed the betrayal and stepped forward on their own. I felt a breath of relief as I released a burden I had been carrying. The burden consisted of false hope that a close friend would allow himself to trust our connection.

Inside You
They say, We cannot go barefooted in that courtyard.
There is nothing but thorns through there.
Love answers, The thorns are inside you.
Be silent, and pull what hurts out of your loving’s foot.

Then you will see gardens and secluded rose bowers,
and they will all be inside you.

~Mevlana Rumi (Translation by Coleman Barks)

What are YOUR best tips for emotional renewal and recovery?

Please share this post with those who need support.

Inner strength, peace and clarity of mind result from knowing and accepting who we are. Self knowledge gives us the ability to chose actions with which we are wholeheartedly aligned. Moving beyond betrayal depends on knowing what drives us. Whether or not we have inner conflict, we can make loving choices when we are in touch with ourselves.

Even principled, powerful men or women with upper-level business and social skills sometimes experience themselves as being unable to say “no” in more personal relationships. Intimacy can set off submerged issues. Those who fear intimacy feel conflicted about it. Part of them longs to be close while another powerful part works to undermine that intimacy, to reject the vulnerability. Control issues can make the fearful part of them resent or even hate those who love them or come too close for “making” them feel vulnerable.

A person of fairly good character, in conflict about vulnerability, may resist expressing uncomfortable feelings until fantasies of acting out blossom into actions that betray others. Efforts to act honorable can contribute to denying negative feelings and they override candid expression until their discomfort busts their seams. Then the built-up energy is expressed in inappropriate behavior.

People do not betray because we are doing something wrong. They are just as likely to betray if we do something right! And if they do, you can bet they are in conflict. Here are two examples:

• When we are able to be more vulnerable and open than another person, they may feel threatened if we get close.
• If you are virtuous it can bring up conflict in others. Those who want the feeling of virtue may judge themselves because they cannot live up to what they see in you, like alcoholics who caustically criticize people who do not drink.

To understand betrayal, accept and pay special attention to your own tendency to betray. If you are honest with yourself–and even if you never actually act it out because you recognize the consequences–you may be able to find a whiff of temptation to betray. Sniff out your conflicts and you can act intentionally instead of acting out.

• What forces, fears, feelings, drives, and conflicts operate within you when betrayal crosses your mind?
• What part of you feels weak?
• What do you actually need in those moments?
• What would you have had to admit, to yourself or to another person, to be open about your needs?
• Do you need the other person’s approval?
• What, exactly, are you afraid of?
• What did you tell yourself that blocked up your compassion?
• What is the most loving way you can meet your needs?
• Are you willing to feel compassion for your weaknesses?
• How can you use the challenge of sorting out betrayal as an exercise to develop your personal values and clarity?

Which of the above questions do YOU find most useful? Why?

While one of my brightest and most loyal-hearted clients wrestled with an inner conflict about his marriage, I had an interesting window into our humanness. As we explored feelings, actions, and possibilities it stuck me that we were skimming the water line between the airy realm of the mind and the deeper waters of the heart.

I noticed in a new and immediate way that these two realms have quite different physics, laws, subtle structures, and sensations. I sensed almost physically the way these different “realities” touch–like the great expanse of sky kissing the sea, stirring together surface-to-surface during storms but never merging or become like one another.

I was tracking my client’s buffers—the residues of trauma; invisible walls that keep threatening feelings and memories apart from awareness like a sheet of one-way glass in a fish tank. His buffers were thin. Like pointing from a boat into the depth; at certain angles of light we could see in. From the realm of mind we watched the movement of emotion like fish beneath the surface. He had enough awareness to stay with his feelings while using his skills to go up to bat for his needs. He remained loyal.

On the heels of these observations I saw the way unprocessed trauma–with thicker and more numerous buffers—can make balancing thought and feeling nearly impossible. Buffers cause thought and feeling to alternate without awareness, so they cannot modify one another--different realms a mirror surface away. Our motivations can be invisible to us even while they take shape in action.

Conflicts build up inner pressure when parts of us do not have a voice. The actions that spring from these hidden parts are not consistent with our stated values. Frightening feelings and unthinkable motivations activate the buffers that make us unaware, turning these hidden parts into exiles. So unresolved trauma can make us emotionally and spiritually deaf to the effects of our own actions. Survival mechanisms have no principles.

Reclaiming the brighter legacy of our humanity by becoming self-aware results from courageous Inner Work. As we explored in my post series on this important topic, we can develop an unshakable habit of deep yet detached self-observation.

Yet even Inner Work does not guarantee that we integrate buffered material. I am thinking of someone who excels in self-observation yet fails to apply it when triggered. He has an allergy to psychology, denouncing it frequently in favor of spirituality as a superior practice.

The role of psychology is to assist us to approach and manage the trauma hidden beneath our buffers. Once we are able to feel, identify, and interact with the issues that trigger us, drive us to dissociate, or make us act against our values, Inner Work on its own may be enough. If we cannot approach buffered issues we need frank, experienced assistance to reflect us to ourselves and free our inner exiles.

We all know people who do what they think or fear is expected of them to hold on to relationships. They resent their weakness while blaming the other person and feeling controlled. When we lack the inner strength to remain loyal to our own needs, feelings, ethics, boundaries or beliefs, attempting to be loyal to others brings up traumatic inner conflicts. These conflicts usually originate in childhood and reside behind buffers.

We may experience the other person as interfering with our ability to take care of ourselves or get our needs met. What is usually going on here is a lack of self-honesty and awareness about real needs, and about who is responsible for our care. We can ask others to participate in meeting our needs, but not to read our minds or to step in without a direct request.

Even in actual situations that force us to choose between our own needs and those of another, we can be forthright, sincere, and loving.

What do YOU do when you feel like someone is stopping you from doing what you want to do? Can you take responsibility for your feelings and remain loving even as you free yourself?

When we are loyal to ourselves, we are able to be loyal to others. At a very basic level, betraying others occurs after first betraying one’s self. When we are out of touch with our real needs–especially if we sell ourselves out and do what we think others want us to do–we are much more likely to betray. Betrayal can be a skewed attempt at self-care, with a hostile twist.

Betrayal can be blatant, or diabolically subtle. Cheap and obvious betrayal like cheating on one’s spouse or misrepresentation in business may reflect low standards and values. More shocking are betrayals from those who believe themselves to be upholding positive values. Some go to great lengths to convince themselves they are taking care of themselves or doing something emotionally healthy while creating real life dramas in which they betray.

I recently watched an intelligent professional, able to manage and guide businesses, who appeared powerful and spiritually motivated, betray a dear friend when an honest conversation would have achieved her aims without causing pain.

When betrayal seems out of character, what else is going on?

When someone betrays you it reflects on their ethics, maturity, level of spiritual development, and ability to sustain compassion. It is not a reflection on your worth, or even a matter of whether or not they love you. It is more a matter of whether they love themselves enough to face their own issues honestly.

There are psychological reasons why we betray. Issues mask feelings and motivations that the primary (conscious) personality feels a need to deny. “Triggers”—experiences that re-ignite these buried traumas—make us behave in irrational and unconscious ways. We are so much more complicated than our conscious experience.

Betrayal involves control. The betrayer keeps the betrayed person in the dark while s/he devises and starts to execute a plan, letting consequences shock or shatter as these acts set up a drama on the stage of life. This ploy is sought to ensure that the betrayed has no power. At some level of experience the person who betrays feels powerless, and may imagine that betrayal is a powerful act.

The false power of betrayal emotionally bankrupts those who rely on it. An emotionally healthy person with inner strength can and will discuss with close associates any decisions that could hurt or shock them, in advance of acting on these decisions. Out of respect they give the other person time and information, allowing them to prepare for changes.

Rational as I am, I ask myself why we do not import the skills polished in business into more intimate relations, to negotiate respectfully for what long to receive. Before risking damage to our connections with others and our self-respect, why do we not till the richest type of soil for what we’d love to grow, or woo those we love as we did initially to win intimacy? The careful, fruitful efforts we extended before we felt entitled to receive were so much more effective than acting out. But we may not be as intentional as that, or as aware of what drives us.

Betraying someone we love IS self-betrayal. We are connected. Hurting a loved one hurts our own heart.

Can you sense inside YOU the part of yourself that would betray under any possible set of circumstances? What does that part feel like in your body? How do you talk to yourself when that part rears its head?