Don't Take Anything Personally

It has been years since I first read "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz, and since that first reading I have read it several times. I am feeling today that perhaps my time is coming to read it once again. Its wisdom is simple and eternal, looking into four simple practices that can change your life. I have just pulled it out, and am reminding myself of these four agreements:

*Be impeccable with your word - Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

*Don't take anything personally - Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

*Don't make assumptions - Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

*Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

I have come back to these ideas over and over again, and can usually figure out where I am needing to work by which agreement I am forgetting in the moment. But right now, I can see that I am doing pretty well with three of these. There is one that is a tender spot, a trigger, that is needing to be taken deeper into my awareness, the second agreement:
Don't take things personally

In this moment, I can hardly comprehend how it is possible to not take things personally in close relationships that are so deeply personal! I am so grateful for the people in my life who are serving as valuable mirrors in this process. I am also grateful for those who can love and accept me through my process of growing and learning, who can reflect to me what I need to see without trying to change me. In this moment, I am still fresh with morning wakefulness, and feel these little epiphanies that have been left as gifts of the dreamworld, though I don't recall my dreams from last night. Epiphanies about what it means to be strong and full of love and resilience. Epiphanies about what it means to be vulnerable instead of being fragile and sensitive. Epiphanies about deep acceptance of myself and others. Mostly right now, I feel this energy moving in my body, as things are being rearranged. I am grateful for this time to sit with this shift, and to explore these epiphanies more fully.

I am remembering a passage from Pema Chodron's book "Practicing Peace in Times of War" - one of my new favorite books:
If you dissolved your aggression, it would mean that other people wouldn't have to walk on eggshells around you, worried that something they might say would offend you. You'd be an accessible, genuine person. The awakened people that I've known are all very playful, curious, and unthreatened by things. They go into situations with their eyes and their hearts wide open. They have a real appetite for life instead of an appetite for aggression. They are, it seems, not afraid to be insecure.
I am thinking not so much of my own aggression - which there surely is plenty of - but my own sensitivity to life. The ways that I do take things personally. Sometimes, my sensitivity feels deep and psychic, utterly beyond thought and reaction. I feel energetically overwhelmed by a person or a situation. Sometimes it is purely energetic - there is no exchange that serves as a catalyst, but merely contact with a person. Sometimes it feels energetic as well as situational - I feel like I have entered a toxic dumping ground of energy, whether with one person or many, or even within a particular environment. In this case, I am now starting to see how the initial felt reaction is then made worse by my own thinking, largely unconscious, sometimes becoming vaguely conscious. Many times, though, my sensitivity occurs in direct response to other people and interactions with them - sometimes directly personal, sometimes not overtly personal at all. And there I go, taking things personally. I follow the downward spin, caught up in my emotional response, followed by thoughts, followed by more emotion, followed by more thoughts. Pema Chodron talks about this a lot in "Practicing Peace:"
In Tibetan there is a word that points to the root cause of aggression, the root cause also of craving. It points to a familiar experience that is at the root of all conflict, all cruelty, oppression, and greed. This word is shenpa. The usual translation is "attachment," but this doesn't adequately express the full meaning. I think of shenpa as "getting hooked." ...Once you begin to notice it, you feel like this experience has been happening forever. That sticky feeling is shenpa. And it comes along with a very seductive urge to do something. Somebody says a harsh word and immediately you can feel a shift. There's a tightening that rapidly spirals into mentally blaming this person, or wanting revenge, or blaming yourself. Then you speak or act. The charge behind the tightening, behind the urge, behind the story line or action is shenpa.

Shenpa is the response of taking things personally. Pema Chodron continues:
Now, if you catch shenpa early enough, it's very workable. You can acknowledge that it's happening and abide with the experience of being triggered, the experience of urge, the experience of wanting to move. It's like experiencing the yearning to scratch an itch, and generally we find it irresistible. Nevertheless, we can practice patience with that fidgety feeling and hold our seat.

I read these words, and I feel a few things within me. One is the voice of the warrior in my spirit. She says, yeah! Let's go! I will sit here in my discomfort and do nothing until it is utterly burned away. I can take it. Another is the voice of the indignant one within me. She says, I will not sit around for this! I will not take in other people's judgment and criticism, I will not stay here for this bullshit. I deserve better. Then there's another, saying The world is too much, I can't take it anymore, there is nothing but harshness and insanity all around me, and the pain is unbearable, I crumble. The first voice is the voice of my spiritual warrior, the one who wants more than anything to face life, to face the world, to face myself, and to jump into the fire of love, letting all else be burned away. The other two are reactive voices, voices caught up in shenpa. One aggressive, wanting to fight a righteous battle, the other weak, wanting to collapse into despair.

Right now, I can see how much of my life in the last six months has been spent with that third voice. I have felt overwhelmed by life, by the series of major life events that have triggered great despair and fear and broken me down. I have felt swallowed in darkness within myself, and within the world around me. I have crumbled, hopeless. I have feared everything I can imagine fearing. I have felt the depths of sorrow and suffering. I have been lost in an existential crisis so deep and gnarly that I couldn't even remember where I had come from. I did not expect to survive it. And here I am anyway. In emerging from this crisis, the second voice kicked in pretty strongly, trying to take back my power. Instead, I now see how I have sometimes been like a wounded animal, hiding in her cave to lick her wounds and slowly return to strength and health. I have taken steps into the world, trying to return to life as usual. I have met with resistance in myself and others, and I have taken things very personally on occasion. I have been up to my eyes in emotional reactivity, completely triggered, caught up in my own limited story. I have felt inclined to want to crumble back into my cave, not moving for days, just barely breathing enough to stay alive. Some days, it seems like anything and everything can cause me pain. The wind blows in a certain way, and I am in tears. Old anger or pain is triggered by a passing thought, and I am lost in it, seeing the whole world reflect the story that this thought creates. I have floated back and forth between weakness and collapse, and righteous indignation, alternatively attacking others and withdrawing into myself. And I see now, in this moment, how I bite the hook, how I take things personally, how I let this escalate to war within myself.

In the last week or so, the first voice has been emerging with greater and greater strength. The voice of my own strong, abiding Spiritual Warrior Self is returning. And she wants to look deeply into this process of taking things personally. She wants to explore it with openness and curiosity. And so, I return to Don Miguel Ruiz:
Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them. He continues, As you make a habit of not taking anything personally, you won't need to place your trust in what others do or say. You will only need to trust yourself to make responsible choices...you can travel around the world with your heart completely open and no one can hurt you. You can say "I love you" without fear of being ridiculed or rejected. You can ask for what you need. You can say yes, or you can say no - whatever you choose - without guilt or self-judgment. You can choose to follow your heart always. Then you can be in the middle of hell and still experience inner peace and happiness. You can stay in your state of bliss, and hell will not affect you at all.
I long to live this way. I don't completely understand it yet. But I feel it stirring deep within me. I love the idea that I can be so centered in my heart and my truth that I am always in the flow, never retreating in pain. I love the idea that one day I will be able to laugh at those who judge me and criticize me, not taking it personally or believing that their opinions could be true. I love the idea that someday I might be able to stand in the face of utter madness and un-love, and hold love and peace and truth and justice and light and joy in my heart, and in the world. I want to be that healed!! I want to allow myself to carry that healing for the whole world, with no exceptions. So, today I begin.