Overcoming Resentment and Its Trauma

We all begin life as happy go lucky free spirits. Little children are naturally full of joy and happiness. But as the years go by, we increasingly become nervous, stressed out, preoccupied, and even depressed. What has gone wrong? Obviously we lost what we once had.

We tend to blame others for this loss of happiness. We blame our parents, our mate, society, our job, and finally we might even blame ourselves. What has gone wrong? What has happened is that there has been an evolution of misery, beginning at a certain point and then spreading to blanket our whole mind. Let's look at what happened, so that you might see what the key to recovery is. You see, where you lost your carefree spirit was in a moment of upset, resentment, or shock. It’s at a moment where you reacted to some external circumstance. In that instant, the outside got inside. And then from its new home on the inside it gradually began to take you over.

This process is replicated every time we become upset and resentful, when we lose faith, or when we lose love. Now, understand this: it is not just upset alone that ruins our happiness. Upset or even trauma to the body does not have the power to ruin your state of mind.

What ruins your blessed and carefree state of consciousness is when some outside event gets to your soul. How does something or someone get to your soul? It happens when you fall from faith or fall from love. It also happens when you fall from a detached viewpoint and get pulled into something that is too important to you.

I will look at each aspect in detail from different perspectives with the hope that the process of falling and the reversal of that process will become clear to you.

I'm sure you've heard that it is not so much what happens to us as how we react to it. You know this by now through actual experience. Things happened to you that didn't bother you at all. Yet other things, even seemingly small and inconsequential, continue to bother you. Some things have haunted you for years.

Let me restate the important point: physical trauma or injury cannot, of itself, harm your state of mind. Nor can mere words, of themselves, harm your state of mind. What harms our state of mind is when things get to us. At first we may not realize that they really got to us. But later it becomes obvious when we fret, worry, relive the past, dwell morbidly on it, fantasize about how we will get even, or when we become dejected and depressed.

Along with the mental and emotional upset, unhappiness and depression come associated physical problems such as headache, stomach ache, high blood pressure and so on.

The depression and the physical symptoms are the result of a chain of wrong reactions going back to the very first one. Once we reach the final stages, it is already late in the process. It becomes increasingly difficult to recover, as our condition and symptoms grow more advanced. It is much easier to recover earlier in the process. But if you are like most people, you have been reacting wrongly all your life, that's how you got to where you are now.

So what is needed is to learn the secret of remaining calm in the moment of stress, so that you won't over-react in the present, creating more issues. You also need to apply the same principle of remaining calm in the moment of stress to observing your symptoms. Because if you react wrongly to your own symptoms you worsen the problem.

Remember what we said, it is our conscious reaction that results in the life destroying hang ups, addictions, bad memories, post traumatic stress syndrome, depression, and loss of confidence. It is the loss of love via resentment and judgment; and it is the loss of faith, due to the collapse of faith in good and the triumph of good.

Now you can see why we must meditate for the objective state--where we are slightly distant, where we have a gentle attentiveness to the wordless guide of intuition within. When you are in this state, events do not sneak up on you. And even if something unpleasant should occur, it remains outside. You sense it, are puzzled by it, but it does not get inside.

In this blessed state, we may be concerned about something (but not worried). We also realize that we don't know what to do about it (and this innocent wondering and true concern) is the silent cry of the soul to God. In this state, the soul is above temptation, being subject only to God.

While we are yet in the flesh, our bodies are subject to the natural stresses of life. Plus, we will surely encounter cruelty, betrayal and deceit. We may encounter physical injury. But none of these need affect the soul. We can feel pain without resenting the pain. In fact, any bad we encounter will work for the good. It will cause the truth loving soul to cling even closer to the Creator.

The marvelous practice of being slightly distant to stress and the remnants of stress is available to the sincere seeker who learns the proper meditation. For more information or to listen to and download a free version of the meditation. . .

To read the rest of this life changing article, send us an email to request a free emailed copy of our April 2008 Newsletter, Overcoming Resentment and its Trauma.