Finding the Gifts in Dysfunction -Lynne Forrest.

Some­times there is con­cern expressed that we might actu­ally mis­lead or make mat­ters worse by look­ing for the gifts in every sit­u­a­tion, espe­cially when we’re seek­ing the pos­i­tives in painful rela­tion­ships with those who may NOT have our best inter­est in mind. The con­cern is that seek­ing to find grat­i­tude for such sit­u­a­tions in our lives might mis­lead us into ratio­nal­iz­ing and/or deny­ing injus­tice and abuse when what we need to be doing is pro­tect­ing ourselves.

Indeed there is a fine line for many in mak­ing the dis­tinc­tion between ratio­nal­iz­ing as a way of deny­ing dan­ger as opposed to find­ing the gift in painful sit­u­a­tions … so I appre­ci­ate the word of caution.

And I want to clar­ify for those of you who may have won­dered sim­i­larly by first ask­ing a cou­ple of ques­tions for you to consider?

The ques­tions:

Is it true that we can­not find or focus on the gifts we received in a painful sit­u­a­tion with­out deny­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of it being a dan­ger­ous one for us?

Is it true that it is safe only to appre­ci­ate the rela­tion­ships in our life with those whose inten­tions we trust are honorable?

A brief, but rel­e­vant, aside:

Do you know the story about the scor­pion and the frog?

It is this:

The scor­pion was drown­ing and begged the frog, who is not threat­ened by water, to give him a ride to dry land… but the frog refused, saying,“You will sting me if I help you!” “Oh no,” said the scor­pion, “I would never hurt you, why, I would be so grate­ful to you for sav­ing my life that we’d be best friends forever!”

Finally against the frogs bet­ter judg­ment, he con­sented to give the scor­pion a ride on his back to dry land. Well, sure enough, as the scor­pion slid off the frog’s back onto dry land, he gave him the frog a killing sting.

The frog, in the throes of dying, cried out, “WHY did you sting me after I helped you? I risked my life for you and this is the thanks I get?!”

To which the scor­pion replied, “It’s sim­ple … I did what I did because I am a scor­pion, and that’s what scor­pi­ons do!”

Now, regard­ing the story’s rel­e­vance to the ques­tions asked above:

The story reminds us that all of us, peo­ple and scor­pi­ons alike, do what we do because we believe what WE think. How “safe” or “dan­ger­ous” we are to our­selves and oth­ers is deter­mined by our own belief sys­tem — it’s our beliefs that deter­mine our nature.

That means if some­one believes they must hurt oth­ers to be safe or to pros­per, they will treat them in hurt­ful, destruc­tive ways .. i.e. they will be hurt­ful and abu­sive to those around them.

Does this mean we must with­hold our love from them?

Might it be pos­si­ble to under­stand that a person’s mis­be­hav­ior is not AT or TO us, but that they treat us the way they do sim­ply because they believe their own dis­torted thoughts? How would know­ing that affect the way I see them? Feel towards them? Treat them?

I have expe­ri­enced that we can remain lov­ing and kind to them with­out putting our­selves in dan­ger to do it. Sort of like if Mr Frog had said, “I under­stand you are a scor­pion and I know that means you will have to do what scor­pi­ons do, and I do not need to judge you for that, but, nor am I will­ing to endan­ger myself by giv­ing you a ride on my back … not because I don’t respect or care about you, but sim­ply because my job is to love and take care of me.”

We can take care of our­selves, say no when we need to take care of our­selves, and STILL not need to attack or blame or feel vic­tim­ized by the “scor­pi­ons” in our life — who, after all, are just being true to their own nature based on what they believe they must be and do to sur­vive, just like the rest of us are doing too.

Here’s what Real­ity teaches us:

There is not a sin­gle per­son in our life that is not there by design. There are no coin­ci­dences. And since

Real­ity is ALWAYS work­ing with us, for us, we can totally rely on know­ing that the peo­ple in our life (both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive) are there to bring us gifts — of insight, aware­ness, com­par­i­son, or in end­less ways that are too many to count… It is up to us to reap the har­vest — but if we are busy judg­ing, blam­ing, defend­ing our­selves from them, as if we made some kind of ter­ri­ble mis­take to have landed them in our life, we will not be able to har­vest these gifts and grow­ing opportunities.

It boils down to this:

We are ener­getic beings. What that means is that we auto­mat­i­cally attract to us the peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions that are a fre­quency match to our own belief-created fre­quency. If we have painful beliefs that say we are worth­less, for instance, or that says peo­ple can’t be trusted not to hurt us, then we will trans­mit an emo­tional fre­quency that will unfail­ingly attract to us the kind of per­son who will demon­strate or play out for us those unhappy beliefs. In other words, they will treat us in ways that prove us right!

When we begin to under­stand that there is no coin­ci­dence about who is in our life, when we come to see that the peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions we have in our life are here as mir­rors that reflect our own lim­it­ing, self-destructive thoughts and beliefs, then we can choose not to resist them, and we can instead start using our encoun­ters with them as oppor­tu­ni­ties to clear and refine our own belief system.
THIS is when we come to appre­ci­ate the many ways they serve us, regard­less of how they treat us! It does not mean we have to tol­er­ate, min­i­mize, deny, or jus­tify abuse … it just means we do not have to turn them into enemies.

Accept­ing their gifts has noth­ing to do with deny­ing their unkind nature, nor do we need to allow them to hurt us — it is our job to pro­tect us, not theirs. After all, why would we, in being kind and lov­ing to our­selves, allow any­one, includ­ing our­selves, to hurt us?

Accept­ing the gifts that come from dys­func­tional rela­tion­ship is to under­stand that we attract these peo­ple into our life, not because we are stu­pid, weak, or sick, but because, see­ing our own unkind beliefs play out in a phys­i­cal rela­tion­ship with another is the way the world works with us to help us ele­vate our own consciousness.

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Lynne Forrest is a non-traditional practitioner who has been in private practice for twenty six years, and the author of a new book, Guiding Principles for Life Beyond Victim Consciousness. Find her on the web at www.lynneforrest.com or www.lynneforrest.com/blog. These articles are copyrighted material. All rights are reserved. No part of these articles may be reproduced by any means or in any form whatsoever without first obtaining the written permission of the author. Permission for reproduction may be requested by contacting Lynne at Another Way Center: (423) 698-0814.Read the original post here: http://www.lynneforrest.com/articles/2011/06/dying-to-live. Original post: http://www.lynneforrest.com/clearing-story/2012/07/finding-the-gifts-in-dysfuntion