A Tension Between Spiritual Practice and Western Culture

I’m experiencing a dissonance between my spiritual practice and what I’ve learned throughout my life in the Western culture. A recent incident with a person left me feeling angry and hurt. I’ve been struggling to discover the best way to deal with it. Western culture says I should talk with the person and share my feelings—I should get it off my chest. Spiritual practice says that anytime I have a problem with someone else, the real problem lies within me—only by changing the energy I bring to the situation can I change the difficult situation with the other. Basically, the spiritual practice says that we can’t get others to change and when we decide someone else needs to change what we’re doing amounts to judging. And when we judge we are living by our ego, not our spirit.

Resolving the conflict by focusing inward only, using spiritual principles and practice is a dramatic change for me. It goes against everything I’ve been taught. If I don’t convey my feelings to the person, then surely I’m must be “stuffing” my feelings and the eventual result will be an eruption of unresolved emotions. Yet, there is a gentle tug telling me that by working on fixing myself, letting go of past stories (or pre-conditioning to certain situations), and taking my ego out of the picture then I won’t actually be stuffing my feelings. Instead, I’d be going to the root of the problem.

Being resistant to this tug, I spoke with another person deeply involved in spiritual practice. This person reminded me of the many times when I did share my feelings with others. The outcome was that I felt better, but really nothing changed. The other person didn’t change (why should they?). The only way to get a different outcome in a difficult situation is to change the only thing within my power—me. (Interestingly, this relates back to something I wrote here on June 27th, the “Don’t Push My Buttons” post where I talk about rewiring the buttons so they do not elicit the usual response. Others can only get under my skin if I choose to let them.) Further conversation also revealed that if I can diminish my ego to the point where I’m comfortable allowing the other person’s ego to dominate, then there would be no hurt in the situation. This requires me to take being humble to a level I didn’t even want to believe existed. It is scary, but I know it will be rewarding.

I’m going to resolve this issue using the spiritual approach. After praying, meditating, and talking to others about this I have faith that the right action is further spiritual growth on my part. I will focus on changing my energy in order to resolve the tension over the long term.

There is a caveat to all of this: Nothing is absolute. Some situations require that we discuss our feelings. For instance, my wife and I have great results when we let each other know when one of us has hurt the other. Since we love each other we take the other person’s feelings to heart and modify our behavior. And neither abuses this powerful communications tool. However, there are other times when sharing feelings will not result in change and may even cause greater conflict. When we encounter such times it may be an opportunity for us to grow personally.

I will close with the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.