How to Turn A**holes into Angels
We all go through conflicts in our lives, no matter what cultural background we have or what kind of financial situation we are in. Even the smartest, wisest teachers experience conflicts in various areas of their lives.
The way we, humans, are wired is that we try to avoid conflicts at all cost. It is so because they always involve pain, physical or emotional. So it is very natural for us to do our best to escape direct confrontation, even at the cost of our well-being and emotional stability. What do we tend to do when a conflict arises? We suppress our emotions, “bite our tongue,” don’t allow ourselves to express our feelings. And by the law of this Universe, the lesson, involving that emotion, will come back with new strength, like a boomerang, repeating many times, until we decide to make a conscious choice to figure it out and resolve it. The truth is that there is no safe place on this planet where you can hide from your suppressed emotions, except, perhaps for a cave tucked somewhere away from people. But if you are sitting there and not attempting to face and process your emotions, then the moment you come out of there, there will be a lineup of explosive opportunities patiently waiting for you.
When I came to this country, I was happy to leave some obnoxious people behind thinking that I would never have to deal with their stuff. And what do you think? Sure enough I came across a person, who resembled the energy I was hoping to leave behind, even looked very similar to that one specific obnoxious person. And I thought, “Uh oh. I better look deeper into what could’ve attracted this energy and deal with it.” So I did, and it never came back. But it was pretty weird for me to see that happening because I thought I was on a safe ground.
It is important to understand that when we suppress an emotion, trying to avoid pain of confrontations, we perpetuate it, and it will come to the surface with every chance it has. Moreover, suppressed emotions are like crazy glue for all kinds of diseases and mishaps.
If you look from a different angle, conflicts are actually opportunities to resolve and heal hurt emotions that triggered them. So at the same time they could be opportunities to expand our awareness and gain a deeper understanding of a particular subject – if we face our emotions and resolve them.
I’ll share another story from my life. I had a difficult connection with one of my close relatives – there was a lot of tension to say the least. Very often I felt emotionally drained after speaking with that person, and it would take me quite some effort to regain my inner balance afterwards. There was this intense emotion, feeling unheard and unappreciated, that I did not understand completely nor allowed myself to fully express. So I would ignore it. But it didn’t want to ignore me for sure. Sometimes I tried different approaches, looked into past lives, and what I saw there made a lot of sense, yet I did not have a clear idea of how to stop that draining pattern. And even though I limited my interaction with that person, we were still bonded by that suppressed emotion. In fact, the interaction did not disappear completely as I was replaying it in my head whenever I thought of my relative. And, as science tells us now, our brain cannot tell the difference between something actually taking place or just us thinking about it, especially if it is something emotionally charged. So pretty much every time I had this battle happened in my head, my vibrations were sent down the drain, and I felt miserable. Trying to find a solution to my sanity, I decided to switch my attention to something else once those thoughts would appear. And it worked for some time. I just did not let myself think about that person. Did I solve the problem? No! The neglected emotion was still there, highly explosive, waiting for something to trigger it.
And when next time you-know-what hit the fan, I chose to let myself express this emotion and let my opponent know how our interaction made me feel at that moment. I felt such a relief after I did that! But it was not over yet. The next thing I did was going into a meditation. I basically imagined that he was in front of me, and I asked him to forgive me (from the bottom of my heart) for anything I had said or done to him that hurt him in some way, going in all directions of time. Next I forgave him for everything he did or said to me that hurt me, again releasing this energy in all directions of time. I made sure that each step was deeply heartfelt. This way I released the energy stored in that negative connection and sent blessings to this person. It felt as if a ton of weight dropped off my shoulders. Besides it was so empowering to finally free myself from the negative energetic bond I carried around for so long. You can also use this Polynesian formula for forgiveness. It is called hoʻoponopono: I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you. The key is to be fully connected to your feelings and genuine intention to forgive, making sure it comes from your heart. Try it and you will be amazed with results! This method did miracles for me numerous times. Sometimes even in the most hopeless situations, delivering results as quickly as a couple of weeks and completely shifting the energy flow with people involved. We often don’t realize that change in our environment begins with us changing our attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs.
This is a simple solution that is actually not new – just another approach to the power of Forgiveness, something Jesus was teaching some 2000 years ago. And yet healing potential of forgiveness is timeless – it simply never gets old.
When we have complicated problems in our lives, we tend to think that they require complicated solutions. This type of thinking makes us feel intimidated and creates a lot of resistance, which only perpetuates our suffering. Any solution begins with us wondering if there is one. And I want to assure you that it is always there somewhere. You just need to align with it and follow inner guidance leading towards it. Then it involves taking action, which often lures us out of our comfort zone. Pretty simple. Is it easy? Most of the time it is not but so worth the effort!
Conflicts always carry an opportunity for healing our emotion (or a bouquet of emotions) that in most cases triggers it because we are able to reconnect with this emotion that could’ve been otherwise suppressed deep in our psyche. Conflicts bring these emotions to the surface in a “raw” state when we are most vulnerable. Yet this “raw” condition allows us to truly connect to these emotions to heal them. You will know if you were able to heal an emotion or not because when a transformation takes place, it gives such an incredible boost of energy and expands our awareness when we feel elevated and free.
What this healing process does is removing the buttons that our opponents love to push so much, and as a result we stop reacting. We don’t become emotionally numb – we become aware.
I encourage you not to run away from conflicts but to look at them as opportunities to heal and empower yourself. It is a way of self-refinement and self-mastery.