Feeling Distant? Guess Who Moved?

photo credit: metoc

I saw a mes­sage once on a church bill­board that said, “If you feel dis­tant from God, guess who moved?”

This is a rel­e­vant ques­tion — not only in our rela­tion­ship with Source, but also in our rela­tion­ship with oth­ers. We sep­a­rate our­selves from our­selves, oth­ers and Source when we blindly believe the painful sto­ries we think

Here’s an exam­ple:
Dur­ing the early years of our rela­tion­ship I would go to the movie with my hus­band, Daniel. But instead of being able to enjoy the movie I would make myself mis­er­able by think­ing unhappy thoughts about him.

For exam­ple I would think thoughts like:
“I wish Daniel would hold my hand. He never holds my hand. He just doesn’t care about me the way I care about him. I feel so unim­por­tant to him. If he really loved me, he would reach for my hand or put his arm around me. That man over there has his arm around his woman. I wish my hus­band would show his love the way other men express love for their mates …” etc.

After the movie, on the drive home, I would begin to voice my trou­bling thoughts (mis­ery should be shared, right? ) with com­ments like:
“You know honey, I noticed that guy in front of us had his arm around his woman … why don’t you ever reach for me like that?”

And you know what Daniel was think­ing? “Oh man, here we go again! I can’t ever get it right with her!”

Do you think he sud­denly felt inspired to want to hold my hand more? Or less? Do you think he sud­denly felt closer to me? Trust me, those sorts of con­ver­sa­tions with my hus­band never got me the results I thought I was going after — they only dis­tanced us more.

Going to the movies with Daniel is a totally dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence today (and much more fun!). Our time together dra­mat­i­cally improved once I began to notice that I was the one, not him, who was caus­ing my inter­nal unhap­pi­ness. It was the painful sto­ries I told myself about him that made me mis­er­able, not what he did, or didn’t do for me.

Once I real­ized that it was my unkind thoughts about Daniel that dis­tanced me from him, I began to explore kinder ways to treat myself (and him). I decided to start look­ing for ways to turn my neg­a­tive thoughts into their oppo­site and find evi­dence to ver­ify those more pos­i­tive thoughts instead. The results have been amaz­ing — and lasting!

Today, when­ever I start up a men­tal rant about how some­one should or shouldn’t be treat­ing me, or about how they aren’t giv­ing me what I need, I stop, notice the emo­tional energy I am gen­er­at­ing with those thoughts, and change my men­tal focus.

Instead of going deeper into how wrong some­thing is I look for evi­dence that things are the way they need to be. I focus on what is work­ing, rather than what is not. I look for what I am being given; I look for the mes­sage or grow­ing oppor­tu­nity being offered to me through that sit­u­a­tion. I look for what in me needs my atten­tion and refine­ment. These are the places I focus on instead of resort­ing to my old vic­tim reac­tion of try­ing to con­trol the peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions around me.

Yes, that bill­board was right — it’s not Source that moves away from us — it’s us that moves away from the peo­ple we love — and when we move away from those we love, we move away from Source.