"A huge part of our task becomes noticing unskillful reactions and learning to let them go. This is not a denial of some part of our self. It is simply the abandoning of actions that cause harm and suffering (mostly to ourselves). When we pick up a hot utensil on the stove, we don’t have to think about who we are before we drop it, or who we might become if we dropped it, or become afraid that we would not be authentic to ourselves if we drop it—it’s painful and we drop it!Most of us only make such a mistake once. It’s the same in the heart, except that the hot utensil has been in our hand so long, maybe most of our life, that we’ve forgotten what not buring feels like or don’t know who we would be without the burning, we are afraid to put it down. This may sound absurd, but when you think how hard it is to stop being defensive in the face of criticism, or to let go of self-judgment, it makes sense. But that doesn’t mean easy.” Sean Felt
I saw this posted on Facebook, and find that it is the perfect paragraph I was seeking to explain how it is easier to hang on and continuing doing the same hurtful thing instead of letting go and changing.
It seems incredibly insane to want to hold near and dear to you things that cause you pain, but if the only ‘normal’ you have ever known feels this way, it isn’t painful it is love.
Which is why it is so very difficult to get people to drop the burning utensils, for they have become calloused and acclimated and have forgotten what not burning feels like.
Not burning feels like an enemy when it is actually your friend.
This flipped upside down reactionary response to clutch hurtful things and steer away from cool non-hurtful ones, creates a journey filled with self inflicted pain for we don’t know how to let go.
As incredible as it seems it is ‘easier’ to hang on than let go.
It is the only self we know, this painful hurting self, we fear being a pain free self.
I have found that it is incredibly hard to let go and drop that which hurts you, when you had labeled hurt love.
I wasn’t dropping abuse… I was dropping love.
It seems so silly that you will not release yourself from hurt, but we don’t call it hurt we call it love.
And in this flipped out state, our reactions are the opposite of what is normal. Clutching hurt we push away from real love.
We live as this anomaly, upside down and inside out.
It’s not easy to change this, it will take Herculean efforts to return your self to normal responses, to reset your reactions to what hurts and what doesn’t, to feel normal while pain free.
I M Perfect lady 