Becoming More, Part 5, The Spirit
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t talk. I sobbed for hours at a time. I couldn’t remember what I was doing. Sometimes I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t read. I lost any sense of the past or the future. I was marooned in a time disconnected from anything I knew for sure. Reality was up for grabs and I did not know how to find safety. The rules and assumptions were gone. My husband was a stranger. It was exactly like those movies where an alien takes over the body of someone’s husband. He was calculatingly cruel, a liar, and in the full bloom of unfiltered arrogance he literally looked down his nose at me. Where was my life? The covenant I had made with my life partner that sustained me and moved me forward was shattered. Everywhere pieces lay like broken glass. If I tried to reach out and gather those pieces to put them together, they cut me. My spirit was nowhere to be found. I was dead but I had to keep walking around.
When the core of your being is exploded from within, the first suspect is the person who has that key. The results of that explosion can leave you terrified to take a step in any direction, unable to hear and understand simple sentences, struck dumb or wailing with grief, anger, and fear. You don’t know how to frame reality anymore. You don’t know what you can count on.
When it comes to where women experience the most immediate devastation and trauma, it is the arena of the spirit we must address.
In this arena I am talking about the things with which we find and make meaning in our lives. The spirit arena may be anchored to or include a religious tradition, but not necessarily. Our core values live in this arena, along with the narratives or imperatives that give them that role in our lives. Our sense of “being” is rooted here. This is where and how we ground ourselves in reality and develop the currency we will use to participate in it.
Take a moment now and jot down some of the things that are in your spirit arena. You may want to choose from the list that follow. But you also may want to name some things not included there:
Core values
Moral compass
Spiritual practices like prayer, meditation, service, fasting, study, fellowship, walking a labyrinth, silence, sweat lodge, pilgrimage, offerings
A Religious tradition
Sacred texts including religious books or wisdom sayings (oral and written)
Role model or teacher, the ancestors
Motto or personal mission
Piece of art or music
A story or narrative that inspires and interprets your life
When you have jotted down the things on your list, go deeper with each category and start jotting down some of things in each category that are part of your spirit arena. Why are they there? What role do they have? What message, teaching or wisdom do they impart?
Then, ask “Where was my man called a sex addict ‘in sync’ with my arena of spirit?”
By “in sync” I mean what about our spirit arena was the same or complementary to his? Make another list if it helps you to keep your thoughts organized. As you consider your response, remember that I’m asking what you know is true about him, not what you thought or wanted to be true, but turned about to be false.
Then, ask “Where were we not ‘in sync’ in the arena of spirit?”
Where were the critical gaps, contradictions, conflicts, etc.? How do you identify and name those things in him? For example, honesty or loyalty may be a core value for you, but in this experience, you discover they are not core values in him. Instead, they are optional for him. So, you really don’t know when you can count on either of those things.
The list that you create from this last exercise is what I call the inventory of spiritual dissonance in your relationship. I believe that the arena of spirit is where the most is at stake for you. It is the cathedral that houses your spirit. Spiritual dissonance cannot be sustained there. It will disempower and eat away at the very things of your spirit that you identified in the first question.
Let’s remember again that we are dealing who this person actually is, not who we thought he was. Taking back the key to the arena of spirit means you no longer assume anything about his arena of spirit. He has to live by the things of the spirit he says guide him in life, provide meaning, and interpret his life story in order or to know what those things are for sure. In my case, during the 18 months after discovery I witnessed his deep resentment of me and the accountability that resulted from discovery. I listened to him twist facts and misrepresent events in order to make his behaviour my fault. I watched his cowardice in the face of truth. I had compassion for his tortured soul and mind, but I no longer has respect for or trust in him.
I had loved my husband for decades. He was the only man I saw in any room. I was loyal. I was generous. I was forgiving. I was accepting of his limits. And I made his sour soul laugh. I thought he had integrity and courage. But he had no business in my arena of the spirit. He was a plunderer there, looking for ways to manipulate me, to judge me, and justify the actions that sprang from his own spirit bankruptcy. So, I took the key back. And the next time I handed it out again, it was to someone who I knew was “in sync” with the things of my spirit. And I knew because of how he treated me, how he respected the healing wounds of my spirit, how he treated his children and co-workers, the waiter, his dog, and the cashier. I knew because he moved with reverence in the arena of my spirit as if it was a cathedral—even when we had differences. There was no spiritual dissonance. He did not need to disempower, manipulate, use or control who he found me to be. And I can tell you that the difference is like night and day. It’s everything.
It is a great tragedy to find the person you loved completely has no capacity to resonate with or complement the things of your spirit. But it explains a lot. And it’s part of why most of us do have to come to terms with who he is, and who he isn’t. The greatest pain my clients describe is this kind of pain—a disorienting, destabilizing, disembodying, and disenfranchising pain that makes them doubt their very being. This is what it means to be dispirited by another person. And it’s something you wouldn’t do to anyone.
Which, of course, brings us back to the arena of your spirit. For there dwell all the reasons why you would never do that to anyone. So take back the key. Because spiritual dissonance is not overcome by you standing your ground or by you trying harder. Your spirit is at stake here. Unfortunately these men are usually so deeply damaged and without therapeutic support qualified to help them that they never really have a chance even if they wanted one. And most don’t appear to want one. It’s just too much work and if they just play along with their treatment group, they can emerge “cured” and find someone else to con.
Becoming more is about taking back our key to arena of our spirit, and it’s about giving ourselves everything from that arena that we offer to the world and the people in our lives. Yes, it’s two-way street. You give some away and you give some to yourself. And that’s how you become more. Everything in your spirit arena is not just meant to bless the world. It’s meant to bless you.
With you,
Diane.
P.S. Some of my resources were previously available on my Teachable.com school site “Still Learning”. I have moved them from that site and no longer host that school. But for anyone who has purchased video, audio, and/or print resources and had ongoing access to that site—please be assured that I will give you the links and passwords you now need to access them.
Just drop me a line. diane@yourstoryissafehere.com I would love to hear from you anyway!