Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
While I am a Christian in belief, I also read about the beliefs of various other religions and philosophies because I think there are valuable lessons in the writings of each of them.
Lately as I have been increasing my study of “mindful” meditation. Since this was first practiced by Buddhists, there were some interesting points about Buddhist beliefs brought up by the author in a book I read called Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This book is about mindful meditation for stress reduction, and is not a religious work.
In the Buddhist tradition, the causes of unhappiness are Greed, Aversion and Delusion. I am going to expound on these three a bit.
Greed
Greed is our desire to have something which we think will make us happy, be it a new car, a career as a singer, or to have someone love us. We have this big desire for something; anything. Actually, that feeling of unrequited desire can definitely cause unhappiness.
I think about how “greedy” I was that my children would grow up to be successful men, happy, caring and loving men. How much unhappiness did I bring on myself for having this “greed”? I think about how I spent so much time wanting to be loved by the psychopaths in my life.
Jon Kabat-Zinn says:
That doesn’t mean we cannot desire things or that we should not have goals or ambitions. It simply reminds us that we generate less suffering in ourselves and others when we are aware of how attached we may be to our desires and then let that awareness modulate our thoughts, emotions and actions.
Aversion
Aversion is the flip side of greed. Aversion comes from whatever you don’t want, don’t like, and/or would like to change. Many emotions are encompassed in aversion; anger, rage, fear, hate, and even smaller emotions like being irritable or resentful. In learning about aversion, in other words, being unhappy at how things are, I have spent too much of my life being unhappy because the world wasn’t what I wanted it to be. By acknowledging that the world or situation isn’t what I want, but not allowing those emotions to overwhelm me, I can spend less time being unhappy.
The author says:
Mindfulness of aversion is profoundly healing, because it offers us a way to at least momentarily dissolve the self-imposed but unconscious straight jacket of such automatic and unconscious reactions ”¦ it allows us to see that we have very real choices ”¦ and whether we are really better off with our emotional reaction.
Delusion
Delusion, or the trap of self-fulfilling prophecies, is the exact opposite of wisdom. This is believing what we want to believe rather than seeing the reality. This delusion, this illusion, is what keeps us welded to the psychopath and believing that they will change.
The author says about Delusion:
We can always marshal any evidence we want in support of a particular view and then believe it even if it is patently not true.
Boy, if that doesn’t sum up the delusional life I led trying to believe what I wanted to believe about the psychopaths in my life!
Overcoming the unhappiness
However, we do not have to fall prey to any of these problems, we can control how we react to whatever is happening in our lives, good, bad or indifferent. I’ve realized in the last few months I have engaged in all three of these toxic things in my personal life and I have suffered for it in stress reactions, poor health, poor sleep, and depression. But I am determined to dig myself out of the abyss in which I have sunk by doing what I know is good for me, what I already know to do, and to study other positive things I can apply to my life. I am not powerless. Knowledge is power….if you use it.
Dr. Viktor Frankl lost everything except his life in a Nazi prison camp. After he was released, he wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, “everything can be taken from a human being but one thing— the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances; to choose one’s own way.”
Joyce, oh, what a FANTASTIC article and one that I really needed to read, this morning.
Everything that you have outlined makes absolute sense. From the “greed” of wanting the divorce agreement to be “fair,” to the “aversion” of taking steps to recover myself, on every level, to the “delusion” that I am unworthy and undeserving, it all makes sense.
“Mindfulness” is something that I wasn’t taught, as a child. It wasn’t taught in the family dynamics, it wasn’ taught in schools, nor was it taught in the religion that I experienced as a child. In the family, I was taught shame. In school, I was taught more shame. In the religion, I was taught sacrifice and more shame.
I’ll add this to my long list of “MUST HAVE” readings.
Again, thank you for posting this article!!!
Brightest blessings
Truthy, you are very welcome, and as always, will say I wrote this article as much or more for myself as for anyone else. It resonated with me when I read the Buddhist teachings they very much resonated with me as the root of my unhappiness in life, and they are so concise and precise that I wanted to ponder on them more and in doing so I wrote the article.
The emotional and spiritual aspects of many religions have wisdom that we can apply to our lives even if we are of some other faith, or no faith. Wisdom is wisdom no matter where it is found. I even recall some philosophy and wisdom that my P sperm donor introduced me to that I still use to this day.
Even very evil people have lessons they can teach us, so where ever a truth is found, whether in the teachings of religion or a belief system or from the mouth of a psychopath, we should examine it for validity and then embrace it as truth, or discard it as untruth. The examining it for validity is an extremely vital part though, just like when we were kids we were taught shame and to put all other’s before our own needs, as children, we were not able to examine that for validity, but as adults we can now examine it and see that it is a false concept, and discard it.
To me the quest for new and positive learning is a life long process, and healing and growing is a journey not a destination. But, the more I learn, the more I realize the amount I know is not a pimple on an elephant’s butt of what there is to know. LOL
Just wow! Most excellent insight indeed! Thank you!(
Just wow! Most excellent insight indeed! Thank you! 🙂
OxD, you wrote: “Even very evil people have lessons they can teach us, so where ever a truth is found, whether in the teachings of religion or a belief system or from the mouth of a psychopath, we should examine it for validity and then embrace it as truth, or discard it as untruth.”
This needs to be on every fridge. The “truth” isn’t always pleasant or warm-and-fuzzy. But, lessons are to be learned in truths about ourselves, and about life and living.
Brightest blessings
Hi Oxy,
I was having a bout of insomnia last night. Wide awake at 3am, like I’d drunk a giant pot of coffee. Don’t know why. Nothing much is going on in my life to stress me out, or trigger me.
But everything came up for me in my sleeplessness. I was anxious and fearful during the night. I am sure everyone here can relate to how BIG things get in the middle of the night, when the world is quiet, but our minds are chattering away.
And then this morning what did I think of doing? Googling ex-spath. Then I hopped on Lovefraud for a dose of reality…and here’s this article. Perfect. Thank-you Oxy.
What I see in myself is that when I get stressed by something: insomnia, bad news, illness, hunger, loneliness…..I think of making contact. Just ‘checking’ up on him online. I do that when I am low, not when I am ‘level’. And you know what I want to see? (here’s the greed part for me)….
I want to see some evidence of his failure.
The reality is I won’t find that online. I will only find the illusion of who he pretends to be. But what is interesting to me is that it is when I feel depleted that I crave evidence of his punishment.
When I am full I have no thoughts in this direction. My greed for justice, or whatever I want to call it, is not there. And my delusion that I will be able to SEE his failure is not there. Instead, when I am strong I KNOW the truth.
Being mindful of my weaknesses, my greed and delusion, is going to save me from piling a whole bunch of extra triggering and pain on top of a sleepless night.
Oxy, I wish you well. I thought about you a bit in the wee hours. Glad you are taking care…xo, Slim
My P sperm donor was one to “lecture” about various subjects and his views of life. Though he was entirely self educated, he was well read on many subjects. He loved to pontificate and I was in awe and listened. Of course some of what he said and believed was pure trash, but other things he said were very true and I had not been exposed to those ideas before I met my P sperm donor when I was 16.
I love to read and read mostly non fiction and enjoy a wide variety of reading and learning. It is interesting to me how many different things we can learn from reading the ideas of others…whether it is a book about the benefits of meditation on our brain like in the book I reviewed about “The Emotional life of your Brain” or the book about “mindful meditation for beginners” or the Bible, there are wonderful things we can learn and apply to our lives.
Even the book “The 48 laws of power,” which is essentially a play book for psychopaths, has much in it that we can learn from, it is a “hard read” because it is so triggering and it is a big book as well, and it took me months to completely read it because if I read more than a page or two at a time it was very stressful and triggering. The same author wrote “The Art of Seduction” and is a play book for men to deceive women and get sex. I actually have not read it, but have heard about it.
I prefer reading books that are more positive, but even “Without conscience” by Bob Hare is triggering actually.
First we learn about THEM, then we learn about US, so I am in the learning about ME stage, I may not know everything there is to know about psychopaths, but I know most of the red flags, and I know ENOUGH, now I need to work on knowing myself, so that is what I am doing. Even an old dog can learn new tricks.
Dear Slim,
I’m glad that you found insight, as I did, in the Greed, Aversion and Delusion aspects of what makes us unhappy. I think the concepts are VERY PROFOUND and worth keeping in mind when we are unhappy….we can see if we are being greedy, feeling aversion, or are delusional.
Good for you for NOT making contact! When you feel the need, come here and read instead. (((hugs)))
SLIMONE!!!!!!!!! Wow……just………..wow. You wrote, “I want to see some evidence of his failure.” That statement is brutally honest and absolutely insightful. I almost had the urge to google the exspath, recently, and I stopped myself before I did. You are 100% spot-on! It would be a search for his failure, and it will never happen.
Really, a profound and utterly honest insight, there. THank you for putting a name to it and posting it!
Brightest blessings
I am so thankful to see this subject. I discovered mindfulness when pursuing methods to “change my brain”. I had worked SO HARD to get into the state of delusion, that if I just did “IT” right, then my spath would be pleased and we would live happily ever after. I pretty much lost myself by the time I dragged myself out of that marraige hell. Mindfulness a wonderful method, and reminds us to give ourselves grace, and to give grace to others.
We live in a world where some of us blame ourselves for that which we had no control, and we blame others instead of holding them accountable for that which they have control.
Thank you Oxy for bringing this subject to LF. It is INVALUABLE.
KatyDid, who learned to just BE.