CAN YOU TURN RESENTMENT INTO GRATITUDE? – November is a month when we remember to give thanks and be grateful. We are naturally grateful for things that go our way or make our lives better and happier. It’s easy to express gratitude in these instances. But what about other things that are difficult and seem like their purpose is to destroy us or make us miserable? In order to see any sense in it and to prevent becoming stuck in it, we need to expand our awareness. And that requires certain conditions: time, inner silence, patience, and trust.

EVERYTHING IS FOR US, NOT AGAINST US

When something stressful or bad happens, we tend to think it’s against us and we have to fight it. What we also think is that we didn’t want it and we didn’t create it. However, this interpretation means we have not understood the experience yet, and there is an abandoned or disconnected part of us that is ready to be seen, accepted, and included in our awareness. Our self-awareness wants to expand inwardly.

We have lots of little parts of us that are beyond our awareness. We are here in our bodies to discover these parts of our deeper Self and become more and more whole. However, there is a veil, sometimes a thick veil, that separates our awareness from our subconscious. These unknown parts of us want to be seen and accepted so desperately that they use a “hammer” to break through the veil. Otherwise, we would never pay attention to them. And we feel it as a bad, difficult, or offensive occurrence in our lives.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE TEACHING

I learned from Native American spirituality that there is a positive and a negative teaching. A positive one is when straight knowledge is handed to us “on a plate,” and we just absorb it. Negative teaching happens when there is an obstacle or adversity on our path. Its role is to reach deeper inside our being and wake up a beautiful part of us that we don’t know (yet). Thanks to this outer darkness we find the opposite inside, which is the light. The negative teaching is more difficult, but in the end, it feels more valuable because it is our own wisdom we discover from within. Nobody gave it to us.

DIAMONDS IN DISGUISE

Behind everything that feels to us as bad, evil, or tragic, there is a piece of our essence that wants to emerge. The deeper it dwells, the more scary it seems. Birth is usually accompanied by some kind of pain. Pain forces us to dig deeper. By analogy, the less resistance to our deep Self we have, the less pain we need in our life to get to know these parts of us. We are all conquerors, expanding our boundaries and life’s territory by acquiring more knowledge, more experience, more confidence, and more understanding, making the range of life wider. The same applies to our inner world. There is so much undiscovered territory inside of us. However, before we can see the diamond, we look at its disguise, which feels ugly, bad, or evil. And here we arrive to our virtues.

TRUST, INNER SILENCE AND PATIENCE

If we stop at the level of the disguise, we will suffer and become victims, sometimes even perpetual victims. We will complain about life, other people, fate, God, the planet, the government, and what you have. So we need a strategy.

First, think about the intelligent force that creates everything with passion. It is always at play, always supports its creation, and always wants us to thrive. But there is a gap between this intelligence and our understanding of it. When we don’t understand something, we automatically resist and distrust it. This creates a bigger gap, more pain, and cuts us off from support.

We can fill this gap by acknowledging the discomfort and unhappiness we experience. We don’t need to accept the circumstances, but we need to validate how we feel. Always. This turns our attention inside, and that is the key because without looking inward, we won’t be able to truly move forward. It starts the “engine” of flow and builds trust.

Second, we acknowledge that we don’t know everything and that’s OK. By releasing the insistence on knowing everything instantly we clear our mind from producing false and distracting thoughts and ideas. The mind becomes more silent and open to the truth.

Third, by trusting the creative force and clearing the mind from harmful fantasies, we create patience. Patience does not assume becoming oblivious. Patience moves us through the distance from the now to the moment when we meet this part of us that was abandoned and wanted our love. The more patient with ourselves we are, the less time we waste, because we don’t create things that are irrelevant. We are open to what IS.

Only then, after everything unfolds, can we understand the path, appreciate its wild road signs, and feel gratitude for arriving at another hidden room in the inner temple where our essence lives. Nothing is more moving than getting back a piece of your own essence.

If you are in the middle of something difficult and there is no way you can feel grateful for it, that’s OK. Take one step at a time. First, focus inward and acknowledge how you really feel as a human being in this situation without blaming anybody. Your own self will be grateful to you for being present, and you will feel this gratitude. And sometimes, that’s enough to change the world. After all, it’s about your greatness and not about how bad they or things are.

I invite you to learn more about the relationship with your deeper self in my book You Are the Dream of the Universe.

A must-have “Operating Manual” for

the human being

Take an unprecedented journey into your deep inner self in a revolutionary

look at self-awareness!

• Contact Katarzyna “Kasia” Dodd.
• More articles from our Executive Contributor, Kasia.