Letting Go of Unhappiness and Finding Self Control, Peace of Mind and Confidence through Overcoming Resentment and Negative Emotions

Patience, Love and Understanding Prevent Emotional Trauma. A willingness to forgive opens the door to emotional and spiritual recovery

In a recent poll of teenagers, they were asked how they spend their time. Each category was given a percentage. Activities such as work, time spent on the internet, study, athletics, family, and entertainment were ranked.

Time spent with family, of course, came way down on the list. Then they were asked if they could make a change in how they spend their time, what change would they make?

The surprising result (but not so surprising to me) was that most teenagers, if they could make a change, wished they could spend more time with their family.

Despite a teen's silence, apparent nonchalance, resistance, or what they say--most teens would like to spend more time with their family.

I was going to write a long article about love and understanding, but I already have plenty of books, articles, and audio that elucidate my thoughts on the importance of love and understanding. Plus the little story I just told is a powerful message to parents and everyone about how important love is.

So I won't write anymore about it today--My title says it all.

Patience, Love and Understanding Prevent Emotional Trauma

Ponder it and see how you know deep down in your heart that it is true. See how a lack of being properly loved by others led to your anger and resentment, rebellion, and suffering. And see how a lack of love on your part for both others and for yourself made things worse.

Now let's talk about the second half of the title--a willingness to forgive opens the door to emotional and spiritual recovery. We spend so much time as individuals and as a society dealing with symptoms.

Millions and billions of hours and dollars are spent dealing with symptoms of people's failing to love and have understanding for each other. All the drug abuse, violence, divorce, broken homes, depression and suffering have their roots in a failure to find love and understanding. Think about it. When you were a kid or a teen, didn't your unhappiness usually stem from your parents not having understanding for you?

Then you went to school and there was tease and bullying, and all kinds of peer pressure and academic pressure--again a result of others not having love. Some kids were nice, but others were cruel and teasing. Even many teachers, coaches, educators, and various authorities just somehow didn't have understanding.

Some of them just pressured you to to succeed. Others talked at you instead of to you. Some were nice, but they were weak. You were left to fend for yourself in a cruel world.

College and the work place were not much better. There was a lack of wise authority there to protect and guide you. You were on your own, so you turned to peers. Some were nice, supportive and cared. But alas, they were also suffering from the same issues you were.

You looked to your mom and dad, but they were struggling with their own issues and may have had little patience for you. Your dad may not have even been there. And if your parents were decent and did the best they could, somehow they were weak, and their love was not strong enough to protect you and then tutor you in how to deal with life's pressures and teases.

You become angry and resentful. You felt empty. And you looked to the world for love. First you looked for love from other people, and what you got was use. You then may have turned to food, alcohol, drugs, or lowly pleasures for their kind of love. Each time you felt degraded and were worse off for your indulgences.

Perhaps you compensated with big muscles or by throwing yourself into athletics or study, and you may have developed a hard self protective shell. Either you conformed to please people, or you went the rebellion route. Full of anger and hostility, some rebel and turn to crime, gangs, and drugs. The love from the drug dealer and the gang leader are pitiful substitutes for the real love you had needed.

Often we turn to boyfriends and girlfriends, and before you know it, there are all sorts of issues there, such as use and abuse, anger, breakups, and other complications.

If you are lucky, you survive the peer pressure and avoid the gangs and drugs, and end up married to a decent person.

But soon the unfinished business from the past--having not been loved properly and having been corrupted--comes alive and comes back to haunt you. Soon you find yourself arguing with your husband or wife, just like your parents did. Perhaps you feel unhappy and can't help but blame your spouse.

And all along the way, if we are not hating and resenting someone else,then we are turning our hatred on ourselves. We are full of self loathing. Our resentment now also prevents us from loving ourselves.

So now we come to the second half of the recovery equation. It would be nice if we had had parents who were filled with wisdom and grace in the first place. And it would have been nice if other people had understanding. If our parents or other authorities had had real love and patience, they might have gently corrected our ego needs and greeds. They would not have teased and challenged us to be ambitious.

They would have protected our innocence, and given us space to grow to whom the Good Lord intended us to be.

But alas, most of our parents and other authorities, though they may have done the best they could, did not have love and understanding themselves. They could not give what they did not have.

When you deeply realize this, it will help you forgive them for having failed you. Sure, our friends may have been kind and supportive. But their kind of support only fed our ego selfishness. Besides, they were just as lost as you. But now that you are an adult, it is time to move forward. If others failed you, as they surely did, you failed others too. If others did not have love for you; you did not have love for them either. Instead, you resented and judged them.

In fact, because you were born with a fallen ego, even if your parents had been perfect, you probably still would have resented them anyway when you didn't get your way. So we all are tempted and our love was found wanting.

Others failed us and we hated them for it. Then feeling empty and unloved because of our secret hostility and resentment, we looked for something to fill the emptiness. We looked to social approval, boyfriends, drugs, alcohol or marijuana to fill the emptiness. But others used us, the drugs betrayed us, and through getting the wrong kind of "love" we were corrupted.

So what is the answer? It does not matter what others did to you, nor does it matter in what particular ways you failed in the past.

What is important now is that you find objectivity--the ability to stand back and look at thoughts, emotions, and circumstances and see them in the Light of Truth.

Right now you are too caught up in struggling with your own problems and lost in emotions. You need objectivity. Things are not as hopeless as they seem, but in order to realize the solution, you need the ability to stand back from the issue, the symptoms, and problems, the issue and the struggle.

In brief, you need to get out of your emotions.

We all have access to the inner light. This inner Light is how we realize things without words. We call it intuition, common sense, or a gut level knowing. When we have such an insight, it is wordless. We just know or sense something.

But what we don't fully grasp is that the way we can even know at all is because we are seeing in the inner Light. Knowledge is one thing; but understanding about that knowledge is another. The emphasis is always placed on knowledge, but without understanding it is useless. What we need is understanding both for ourselves and for others. And understanding comes from the Light we all have access to.

This inner Light is a wonderful thing, actually our most precious possession. It is not some far out mysterious thing. It is how we have common sense and intuition. It is how we realize. An animal cannot REALIZE but people can.

We were all close to the light when we were little children. But we fell away from it when we became emotional and our ego looked to the world to fulfill it.

We doubted what we knew in our hearts, and we believed and followed others instead. They promised to fulfil our ego desires, but it was only later that we may have become aware that we had exchanged our most precious gift for tawdry trinkets from the world.

You see, not only is the Inner Light our source of intuition and protection, but it is also the source of all true creativity, fulfilment, inspiration, revelation, and love.

Now, the solution to all your problems lies in finding your way back to this inner Light and learning to relate to it properly.

Once you become friends with the inner light (which now feels like conscience), you will have peace with God and the light will be a lamp unto your feet, providing private counsel and just in time guidance for the rest of your life.

Fortunately it is not difficult to find and relate to the inner Light. All that is needed is the right intent, coupled with and a little technical support on how to find and relate to intuition. The intent needed is a burning desire to know the truth and a willingness to admit our wrong when the truth reveals it.

The tech support we need is the proper meditation, such as the one we offer as a free download at the Center for Common Sense Counseling, which shows a person how to become still and observe thoughts and emotions without being caught up in them. It also shows you how to extend contact with intuition to emotions and the body, so that you inherit self control.

Now, when you practice the simple meditation with the right intent you will calm down and become less reactive. You will also discover a new patience with others and with yourself.

As you calm down and become less reactive, the first things you will see in the Light of intuition is the truth about your wrongs. You will see your errors, and seeing them in the Light you are sorry. You experience a quiet sadness about what you see. You may have tears rolling down your cheeks. This is called repentance. You experience a sad glad. You are sad about what you see, but you are glad to come clean. You are being repented in the Light.

Seeing and mourning your wrongs, you stress the compassion of the spirit. And God extends His forgiveness.

After the brief pain, you feel shriven and clean. Joy returns and a quiet peace of mind. This process repeats itself many times over the days and weeks. Each time the pain is less, but the error being observed is more subtle.

The turmoil and the writhing you now experience in your being is because you are undoubtedly still trying to save yourself. You have been resenting what your conscience keeps trying to make you aware of. So you have conflict with conscience, and tension and writhing because you resent the Light for making you aware of your own wrong.

All you need do is stop trying to resist the Light. Instead let it rub your nose in your wrongs.

Now, having experienced the touch of God and having experienced forgiveness, you can also forgive others. You see that they are just as lost as you have been. You see that they are victims too. When they were little children, no one had the right kind of love for them either. No one was there to guide them properly.

You see that your parents were doing to you what was done to them. They could not help themselves any more than you have been able to stop yourself from hurting others.

Your new found understanding makes it easy to have compassion and forgive. And when you forgive others, God extends His forgiveness to you. It was a lack of the right kind of love from others that you reacted to and which sent you on an erring course. It was your resentment of others that separated you from God's love from within. Now you have come full circle. You have discovered God's love because of your willingness to know the truth and to forgive others.

Now you will be able to go out into the world, and instead of being a victim, you become a survivor and more than just in recovery. You become an overcomer. You become a child of God, and you extend a little light into an otherwise dark world.

"Resist not evil. Overcome evil with good."

If you need help getting out of negative and morbid thinking (which is the result of reacting wrongly to people in your past and which continues in the present due to resentment and unforgiveness), a good place to start is with our complementary mindfulness meditation. You are undoubtedly currently lost and sinking in thoughts and images--worrying, reliving the past, and getting trying to bury the past by losing yourself in drugs, drink, marijuana, food and daydreams and distractions). Learn to meditate and you won't have to keep reliving the past and you won't have to try to escape into images either.

The attitude of being willing to know the truth, plus the proper meditation, permits you to become objective--no longer involved in seductive or frightening images and thoughts. You become the observer of thought, and you inherit, in the blessed state, the ability and the power to no longer be subject to the daydream stream. You will be able to face past traumas without reacting to what you see. You will be able to decisively deal with it and never have to relive it again.

You will also be able to face situations that remind you of the past with fresh eyes and forgiveness. The meditation is free to listen to or download.