Welcome to The Daily Ascent, I'm Oli Carmel, and this is the podcast I always wish existed, a bite-sized, on-the-ground spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life to help make us all a little bit more awake, alive, and ascending. So today I want to talk about something that just happened to me. I want to also remind you that healers are humans, and this is an episode where I was most definitely not myself. But I do think what happened in the middle of this is really, really worth talking about.
So to treat my recovery from my addictions, I go to a lot of gatherings where people sit in circles and they tell beautiful, beautiful truths. And I love these gatherings. I love them deeply. I feel really protective over my space there.
It's my medicine, right? And I'm sure I'm not alone if you're in some kind of community that really, really heals you and feeds you. And a while back on Daily Ascent, I talked about these circles, and I was managing an issue with my community, and I ended up leaving a particular group. And that group also happened to include someone that I had dated and loved very deeply.
And while our relationship tried really hard to end on friendly terms, it ended up on not so friendly terms as it goes from time to time. And there was a part of leaving that group that was a relief that I didn't have to be encountering his energy anymore, because it just wasn't a good feeling. I think for either one of us, to be honest. So the other night, I was at a different meeting, my new meeting that I go to, and my ex-wife got walks in.
And let me tell you something, healers are humans. My first feeling was like protection and rage. Like, this is my meeting. This is not true.
But I was like, this is my meeting. I was inside, inside voice, not outside. Get out of here. And I'm really honest with you, I did not behave in a spiritual way about this.
I just shut down. I shut down. I felt all of this protective armor go over me. And I was sitting in this spiritual group, radiating unkindness.
I see unkindness. And then to add insult to injury, he was chosen to speak. So now he's up at the podium, talking to the room, and I am sitting there, radiating on kindness. I see unkindness.
Okay. So here's where the actual daily ascent starts. Here's where I'm going to help you be awake alive and ascending. So my beloved teacher, Carolyn Mase, who I study very deeply with, she always encourages us to explore all sorts of different theologies and religions and all different kinds of ideas about spirituality, and especially to get curious about traditions outside of the ones that we were raised in.
And so as a result of that, I've started to get really interested in some of the work in the New Testament, and particularly about forgiveness and about the heart of Jesus Christ. And even though that's not how I was raised religiously, I find it very interesting, very compelling and very touching. So I'm sitting there with my ugly armor on and my rage flowing deep. And this thought just drops into my soul.
And I know it sounds funny, but it was completely sincere. The thought was, Molly, why don't you try to act like Jesus right now, instead of this very shut down, unkind person that you're being? I heard it. I heard it as though there was a loudspeaker in my ear.
So you know, I guess if you hear something like a loudspeaker in your ear, you probably should listen to it. And I did. So I just started looking at him while he was speaking, and I started naming facts facts. Okay.
He's a child of God. I really, really loved him. He really, really loved me. He really, really loved my dog, Danny, and Danny really, really loved him.
He's a man of deep, deep service. And honestly, like maybe he's having a hard time and needs to be with his spiritual family tonight, right? So I started listing all of these warm truths of who he is and who we were, not the hurt, not the ending, not the resentment, just the facts, the loving facts underneath all of that. And you know, I'm sorry to tell you, but it worked.
It really worked. My heart started to get bigger and bigger and bigger. This icy anger started to melt truly. I mean, not all the way, but and certainly not perfectly, but definitely enough so I could breathe again.
And I could be warm and loving to others and I could get the medicine that I needed from the room that I had walked into. And definitely enough that my armor loosened and that I went from having toxic smoke coming out of my ears to something that looked a lot more like who I really am at my core, right? And I'll take that. I will take that.
And so I know that we just used him two episodes ago, but I'm just really in my on-ray new in space. So you're going to have to come with me. He's this amazing Dutch Catholic priest. And yeah, and I just felt like this particular reading was really beautiful.
It's actually a prayer that he wrote and again, I'm going to use the word God here. And that's the word I use and it's just the word that new and used and I want you to feel really free to exchange it with universe or higher power or love or whatever you want to do because this is a really, really important one. God, help me to see others, not as enemies or as ungodly, but rather as thirsty people and give me the courage and compassion to offer your living water, which alone quenches deep thirst. Let me read that again for those of you in the back.
God, help me to see others not as enemies or as ungodly, but rather as thirsty people and give me the courage and compassion to offer your living water, which alone quenches deep thirst. And, you know, on accident, I was like saying that prayer in the meeting. I didn't know it, but I was, right? Because when I started naming these loving facts, right, he's a child of God, he's a man of service, maybe he needs to be here, I was choosing to see him as a thirsty person instead of as an enemy and he's far from an enemy, right?
And I didn't plan that. I didn't even know I was doing it until I felt my heart shift. And so our word of the day is soften, soften. This can be a very scary word because softening when you're hurt, when you're feeling protective, when every instinct in your body is saying, like, armor up, guard the gates, right?
That's really one of the hardest things that a human being can do. And when he walked into that meeting, the very last thing I wanted to do was soften. I actually just wanted to turn into like an impenetrable brick wall that had like firearms inside of it. You know, and when I saw him, every part of me said hard and closed, protect, you know, this is yours.
He doesn't belong here. But something in me knew that that that armor just wasn't serving me and the rage wasn't protected me. It was really imprisoning me in a place where I get spiritual medicine and in order to receive any kind of spiritual medicine, you have to be soft, right? You have to be soft.
And I was the one suffocating under my own resentment. And like, let me be clear. Softening didn't mean I was okay with everything, you know, it didn't mean that hurt disappeared. It doesn't mean we're like besties for the resties.
But like the more I softened, the more I started to feel like the whole thing is like much smaller of a deal than maybe my nervous system thinks it is, right? Like maybe the resentment I've been carrying was so much bigger than the actual situation. And that softening and that prayer and that kind of sending of love really let me see that. It made room and it loosened the grip just enough that I could see him as a whole person instead of a threat.
And in doing that, I got myself back, right? My self back. And so here's what I want you to sit with today. I think we really think that hardening protects us.
I mean, if the state of the world supports anything, it certainly is that we believe that hardening protects us and that if we build the wall high enough and thick enough, that will be safe inside of it. But the truth is that wall doesn't keep paying out. It just keeps us locked in with it. And so when I was sitting in that meeting with my armor on, I wasn't protected.
I was trapped. The anger was like a cage. And so that prayer really asks for something radical. I really want you to think about this in the context of the world that we're living in too, right?
To see the person who hurts you, not as an enemy, but as a thirsty person. Not as someone who wronged you, but as someone who just like you is walking around with unmet needs and old wounds and a deep thirst for something they can't quite name. And that doesn't like necessarily excuse what happened between us and doesn't erase the hurt probably on both sides, right? And it doesn't mean we have to have dinner, but it does something crucial.
It gives me my heart back, gives me my spirit back, gives me my wisdom back, because as long as I'm defining anything as the enemy, I'm defining myself as someone who has been wronged and that identity is the wronged one, the one with this like right to be angry, it feels powerful, but it is so imprisoning. And so, you know, looking for the humanity, naming the facts, like it's a very basic spiritual technique. It's just choosing to see, right, choosing to let the ice crack a little and choosing your softness when everything wanted me to stay protected and hard. And I got to tell you, I always think that things need to be so complicated and this is wild how easily this thing worked.
It's simple, right? And he didn't change. He didn't do anything differently. He didn't apologize.
He didn't even know what was happening inside of me. I don't think it worked because I changed and my heart got bigger and my anger got quieter and I could sit in that room and breathe and get my medicine. And so sometimes the most powerful thing you can do in the presence of someone who hurts you is refuse to let the hurt be the only thing you see. So here's my reflective question for the day.
Who are you seeing as an enemy right now that you could try seeing as a thirsty person? Try, try seeing as a thirsty person. And I am right here with you as senders. I am learning that armor isn't protecting me.
It's usually keeping me stuck, right? And so, you know, if this episode made you think of somebody who maybe wants to put their resentment down to, send it their way, the more the merrier. I would love to go or send a crew and it's just best done through as senders bringing in as senders, right? And remember, we rise together until next time.