After having similar experiences and feelings I found that a great deal of it was influenced by the stories I was telling myself. I would constantly replay conversations and past memories of perceived failings, longing for do overs, if only, should have, could have, a consent stream of negative self-talk.

Of course I was aware of all the self-help advice to change the stories and think positive however I wasn’t able to do that.

Like you my attempt at meditation and positive thinking would end badly as I got overwhelmed by past memories and associated negative self-talk. Worse I added the failure of not being able to create a better story or positive thinking to the list to make myself feel worse. (It occurred to me that I might be addicted to feeling bad.)

I wasn’t able to replace the negative stories with positive thinking but wondered if I could just stop telling story’s in those moments.

I set the intention to noticed when I was telling my victim or villain stories and the stop. Instead of filling the space with analyses or “positive” thinking, I would take a breath and focus on doing what I was currently doing.

It was odd as I started to notice an empty space in which in which I could be a detached observer and better respond to the experience.

I had to be careful as I didn’t want to become detached from my experiences or feeling and become apathetic. It’s a difficult balance as the lure to detach fully from feeling is a temptation for me.

However by not filing every space with a stories, replays and analyses, positive or negative, it has helped in creating a space where it became possible be and not get lost in frantic inner reactions.

I still at times feel empty, lost and detached, dead to my experiences, however by stopping the self-talk and not filling the space in I am less likely during those times to use the experiences to spiral deeper into the pit, essentially beating myself up for beating myself up, for beating myself up, for feeling bad, for feeling bad, for feeling unhappy, for feeling unhappy….. (Which is what I was addicted to, feeling something by feeling bad about myself)

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Peter.

I have not read the book but recall an article where the letters were used as evidence that Mother Teresa had lost her faith.

Essentially the authors of the article equated doubt and the experiences of absence of G_d’s grace, love, justice, dark night of the soul if you will as the loss of faith.

Perhaps anticipating such misunderstandings a part of the reason that she wished to keep her written struggles to herself.

I disagree with the authors of that article as ‘fear is to courage’ as ‘doubt is to faith’. That it is in times of doubt that we exercise faith, often in the process discovering what or faith. Times of certainty does not require faith.

In her service I do not wonder why Mother Teresa experience times of absence of G_ds grace, justice, love and even doubt as to G_d’s love and goodness. Yet she continued to act and serve ‘as if’. Acting in with certain intention in times of doubt and uncertainty. That is not a contradiction.

The paradox, or is it irony, or is it miracle… that for many of those she served she became the experience of G_d’s presents, grace, goodness… In her experience of absence she became the experience of presents for others!

I find that amazing.

It is in times of doubt when we discover faith.

Fear is to courage as doubt is to faith.

Doubt is a door.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Abre la puerta
Her name is Hope and she’s 12 years old,
going on 20 to life. She is god at 5 feet tall.
Abre la Puerta, open the door
and let her in, give her food.

Old Florence lives in the parking garage
at the university with her bags and packs
on the floor all around and she washes
her 84 year old body in the sink at the library
with a piece of flannel from her deceased husband’s pajamas.
Abre la Puerta, she’s god.
Florence is God, there’s a God named Florencia.

Remember that old abuelita, your grandest grandmother?
How she staggered toward you on legs so thin?
You were just a baby then and she smiled all over your infant self
and when you rose young and steaming from the void
that was God in her abuelita form, crying with joy just to see you,
“Que, que, que babybita” she’d say to you.
“Oh look at you, you babybaby you…”

“Look,” says God, “she talks.” God talks baby talk.
She opened a door in her belly for you.
Your grandmother is God. God is a grandmother

And you remember that red room where you grew? That was God.
And remember the warm hands that received you? That was God.
And you remember your father’s hands holding your face,
as though it were some kind of jewel that might break?
In that moment, he was God.

Your mate who snores, well… God snores, you see.
Your mate is God, who can never find his socks.
And your lover who burns for things you cannot give,
that is God also.

Your mate is God.
God is a housewife in mudface and hair curlers
at the door waving goodbye in a housecoat.
God wears a housecoat.

And, oh, the world that is young and has loved so deeply
and been betrayed, whose skin hangs like rags
and whose arms have no muscle and whose eyes have lost luster;
open the door of your heartaches and step through the door of your betrayal.
Pass through the hole that is left in your heart.
Pass through because it is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Do you remember that your legs are el anillo, the ring that circles the lover?
Your legs make a door, pass through the door,
Abre la Puerta pass the bulb through.
Open the door, the most sacred of doors,
the trail through your belly and the road up your spine.

Remember, fire is a door.
and song is a door. A scar is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The forest on fire is a door
and the ocean ruined is a door.
Anything that needs us
or calls us to God is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Anything that hurts us,
anything that needs us opens the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

All of these years of seeming indestructibility,
the grandfather of your world dies
and his heart explodes
and yours breaks into a thousand pieces.
These are doors. Open the doors.
Abre la Puerta. Pass through these doors.

The world is a tribe of one-breasted women.
Walk through the door of the scars on their chest.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Over the edge of the world you go,
into the abyss. You march in time.
And put the best medicine in the worst of the wounds.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The lake in which you almost drowned, that is a door.
The slap in the face that made you kiss the floor, that is a door.
The betrayal that sent you straight to hell, that is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Same old story, all strong souls first go to hell
before they do the healing of the world they came here for.
If we are lucky we return to help those still trapped below.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Hell is a door caused by pain.

Opening a flower, rain opening the Earth
the kisses of humans opening the heart of the world
these are doors.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The scar drawn by razors, that is a door.
The scars that are doors are opened, are opened.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The scars drawn by chainsaws across forests, those are doors.
The poem of new life that comes every dawn,
the soaring of sun, that is a door, the grave is a door.
The door to hell is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Your grandmother, your grandfather,
your mother, your father have died leaving a hole in your life.
Step through that hole. It is an opening.
That hole is a threshold. That hole is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The other day I overheard someone tell another person who had suffered a theft that karma would catch up with the thief and punish them. Karma a kind of universal police force of justice punishing the wrong doer. I joked if the person wishing bad karma on the thief as a form of justice wasn’t creating bad karma for themselves.

The joke begged the question:

Was Karma a force for justice, a way of balancing the score, a construct that allowed us to feel ok with the confrontation of the problem of why bad things happen to good people?

Was the idea of karma a reward punishment theology where as long as I did everything right and obeyed all the rules I would be rewarded and not punished?

I don’t think Karma is about justice or reward and punishment. My understanding of observation about the concept of karma is more like the filters through which we view our experiences. (Or that limit our experiences)

I believe we become the stories we tell ourselves and our karma greatly influence the stories we are able to tell and so the experiences we have.

My own experiences has been that it is very difficult to change a story we tell ourselves about who we are. Past lives, Nature and nurture, many of the filters through which we view life through were defined and influenced before we were born, or reborn, and more often than not remain unconscious.

I wonder could the theology for reward and punishment be an example of a karmic filter that needs to be overcome.

What if the “reward” of good karma wasn’t that only good things happen to us but that we become capable of seeing through the illusion of “the good” and “the bad”, reward and punishment, (the problem of opposites?) and doing so able to live life as it is, realizing that as it is, is good, and good, LOVE.

In your post you write about your expectation that being a good person meant that others would not disappoint you, in essence rewarding you for being a good person. (Disappointment becoming a filter shaping your experience)

I get it, I’ve been there, and it sucks.

I wonder if it’s possible to create some space and re-evaluate the reward and punishment thinking and how that filter has colored your experiences.

How would your expectations of reward and punishment been experienced by those you are in relationship with? Did they experience your love or your expectations?

What if the choices you make to be “good” were made not for any expectation of reward but because they were right (as best as you know them to be) in and of themselves? Decisions made because they came from your authentic sense of self and as such reason enough?
A way of loving yourself that allows for mistakes and wrong turns with the intention that when you learn better you do better. Image living life without such self-created tensions or anxieties of reward and punishment?

It is in my opinion that it is our karma, our filters, that make it difficult to authentically love ourselves and loving ourselves, love others, setting in motion the limits of our experiences.

There is a hermetic saying that as above so below, as below so above. We are influenced but also influence – the reality being that we are influenced (by our karma/filters/nurture/nature/others) far more easily then we influence.

It is my belief or maybe it is a hope, that learning to authentically love ourselves creates the space to reshape our karmic story and so create the relationships that we yearn for. A reward not for following the rules and doing everything right but because it is, life is, and we are.