The Valley of Comeuppance
IWANT TO STATE VERY CLEARLY, RIGHT AT THE START, THAT THE LESSONS OF THIS VALLEY ARE UNDOUBTEDLY the most difficult to recognize and the hardest to accept. The experiences which take us into the Valley of Comeuppance are those that we bring upon ourselves when we are unaware of the powerful impact of our thoughts and words. The drama, hysteria, heartache, confusion, anger, and depression often associated with the lessons and experiences of this valley are the direct result of our resistance to admit to ourselves, “I had something to do with the situation I am in.” It is in this valley that we are tested, pushed, and prodded in order to determine our willingness to remain victims, doormats, martyrs, flunkies, and fools. The issue with which we come face-to-face in this valley is looking in the mirror of self and realizing that whatever we see, really see in and for ourselves, is what we will experience and live through.
The primary issue for Black women, like everyone else in life, is that we do not understand the laws of the universe. It may seem as if we are downtrodden and beaten down. In some cases, this is true. In most cases, particularly those issues with which many of us struggle, we simply do not understand the rules of life. When I was broke and destitute, the issue was not that my welfare check did not provide me with adequate funds. I discovered the main issue which kept me in poverty and lack was a misunderstanding of the laws of prosperity and ignorance of the spirit of money. In addition to being totally unconscious about those two things, my very own mouth kept me in a state of poverty.
Wealthy people never talk about how much money they have. On the reverse side, you always hear how broke a broke person may be: “I’m so broke I can’t buy a mosquito a hair net!” “I’m so broke, I can’t remember what money looks like!” We are never broke! We are only temporarily out of cash. When we speak of being broke, tired, fed up, or any of the minor dilemmas we face daily, the laws of the universe immediately go into effect. They create for us those things we believe exist and ultimately speak into existence. In response to our “being broke,” we may experience a broken heart, a broken home, a broken leg, or worse, a broken spirit. The universe does not care that we are ignorant of its laws. It creates what we demand. We create with our thoughts. We create with our words. In our ignorance, we create the very things we do not want.
I once worked with a support group for Black women. One woman had a habit of talking about how fed up she was with her husband, children, job, and life. “I’m fed up! I’m just fed up with all of it!” Sound familiar? A few weeks after the group started meeting, this same woman began to complain about being constipated. The constipation grew into a block in her intestines. Several months later, she ended up in the hospital. Her small intestine was impacted and it became necessary to have a portion of it removed. During her recovery we talked about it. As the woman spoke in detail about the events of her life, it became very clear that she was in fact fed up. She could no longer digest what was going on in her life. She did not know what to do and she did not know how to let go. In response to her affirmations and her emotional state, her elimination organs shut down. Her issues came up as a physical condition. Common declarations used by Black women, such as “I’m sick of this,” “I can’t take this anymore,” and “You make me sick,” frequently show up as physical conditions. “Your body believes every word you say.” In addition, the law is always operating, creating and bringing into existence exactly what you think and speak.
In the Valley of Comeuppance, we come face-to-face with our thoughts, words, and secret feelings as conditions in our lives. If you think you cannot take it, make it, stand it any longer, it is a guarantee that your life will be plagued by situations and people who will reinforce those thoughts. Some of us think we can fool the universe by saying we can take it when we are thinking we can’t. Forget it! Remember, spirit searches your heart first. Your thoughts and words must be consistent. When they are not, the universe acts upon the most dominant influence, which is your mind, not your mouth.
More often than not, we are responsible for the creation of the very things we hate, fear, and struggle to get away from. Because we are ignorant as to the operation of universal laws, our tendency is to hold people and conditions outside of ourselves responsible. How many times have you said, “Look what you made me do!” No one can make you do anything! Your body responds to your mind regardless of what is going on around you. After a few moments of reflection, you will find it is a sure bet that somewhere deep inside, you did not want to do what you are doing. In response to the mere thought, you messed up somehow. When you do, you want to blame someone else. We do not realize we are held responsible for everything we think, say, and do. It all comes back in the mirror of self somehow, someday, someway. When it does, we find ourselves in the Valley of Comeuppance.
You know you are in this valley when you find yourself surrounded by negative people, in negative situations, having negative experiences. You cannot figure out what is going on and why it is going on with you. If you are addicted to drama, struggle, and hysteria, you begin to fight, to struggle, to run away from the very things you have created with your dominant thoughts, words, and actions. This is an active valley; consequently, whatever you do serves to intensify the situation. If you are not aware, if you are not willing to surrender, to change your words, actions, or thoughts, the situation will persist. The Valley of Comeuppance is a potential Spiritual Special Ed valley because we so often fail to recognize how we contribute to our own drama and hysteria.
Waiting until the last minute to do something and then being dissatisfied with the results is a ticket into this valley. Affirming thoughts such as “I’m so stupid!,” “I don’t know,” and “I’m too fat!,” which then result in somebody saying the very same thing to you or treating you in the same manner, is a function of this valley. There are also some more difficult examples to recognize. In 1979, someone lent you money. You did not have the money to pay them back when you promised to pay it back. Rather than telling the truth, you ducked and dodged the person. You felt bad, but what could you do? You were broke. Eventually the person went away. You never repaid them. In 1993, you lent someone some money. She did not pay you back when she said she would. You called, but she was ducking, dodging, giving you excuses. Of course you are furious! You need your money! For the life of you, you cannot figure out why this person would do this to you. You forgot what you did in 1979. Furthermore, you fail to realize that when you withhold from the universe, the universe will withhold from you! It will catch up with you and come up, somehow, someway, someday.
I had a friend who staged car accidents. She did it to get the money. If another car were to slightly bump into her car, she would scream whiplash or lower back pain. Once, she was crossing the street and a car tapped her. She lay down and swore she could not move. Over the course of a number of years, she collected thousands of dollars from her “injuries.” About two years ago, she fell on the ice, threw her back out, and has a great deal of trouble bending over and walking to this day. When she starts whining and complaining about her back bothering her, I gently remind her of all the accidents she has had. Perhaps she should use some of the money she got from them to get some help now. She gets angry, but I recognize the law in operation.
A belief will keep you stuck in a situation, afraid to move beyond your perceptions. Your thoughts and words actually come to life. When we see them, we cringe, blame somebody else, and fight against them. Unfortunately, the law is at work, showing us who we are and what we have been thinking. There is nothing in your life but you and that which you create in your inner self. It does not matter how ugly it is, how terrible it may seem—it is you! It looks like you, walks like you, talks like you, shakes its finger in your face just like you. If it is not you, it is a lesson. If it is a lesson, do not give it the drama or hysteria required to keep it alive and growing in your life.
Remember, detach! Do not get emotional. Deny it the right to exist by keeping your thoughts and words positive. Find what principle you must practice to eliminate it and move on. If a negative situation persists in your life, rest assured that it is you, some part of you, which needs healing. If you cannot or will not take the time, make the effort, to figure it out, you are probably in the Valley of Comeuppance. If you choose to fight rather than learn, you will find yourself in Spiritual Special Ed … again!
Karen hated her job. Actually, she hated her supervisor who served to make the job unbearable. Each day, she went to work expecting a negative exchange or confrontation. It was rare that she did not get exactly what she expected. All of Karen’s friends hated the supervisor too. Their nighttime telephone marathons were spent discussing what she did, what she said, and how she looked—which frequently led to off-color presumptions about her sexual preferences. If she was not so bad one day, it was suggested that she had used fruits and berries. If she had gotten on Karen’s nerves particularly badly, everyone assumed her attitude was caused by intimate dealings with baseball bats and pepperoni. Everyone knows that most supervisors on most jobs are hatched in hell to become sexual deviates and porn queens. They try to fool us by holding down nine-to-five jobs.
Karen was never threatened with termination. She did not resign. She spent six and a half years in mental and emotional warfare with a woman who gave her rave reviews and timely raises, but who obviously hated her guts. Karen never made an effort to ask the woman whether or not she had a problem with her. Instead, she talked about the situation with her friends. It never crossed her mind that her attitude was the major cause of strife between her and her supervisor. She chose to blame the other party. It was not until Karen developed severe hypertension that she was prepared to take the bull by the horns—which by the way, can be very bad on the nails in addition to being quite dangerous.
Karen blamed her hypertension, chronic eating, betrayal by her best friend, and failed relationships on the stress caused by her supervisor’s treatment of her. When her best friend told her neighbor that Karen was a fat, lazy pig who did not deserve a nice guy like Mitchell, Karen was stunned but not surprised. She had always known that she should not trust women around her man. When Mitchell married her ex-best-friend’s sister, Karen spent three weeks stuffing her face with chocolate cake and ice cream, on top of her regular visits to the fast food establishments. In discussing her problem with the friends she had left, she decided that her supervisor was really a white witch who stuck pins in a doll named Karen. She went to a reader who confirmed her suspicions and gave her some moth flakes to sprinkle around her desk. Everyone knows that supervisors are afraid of moth flakes! Karen swore for three days that the woman was acting better, but she hated her anyway.
Karen had graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English. Since teaching was “hard work,” she had taken a job as a clerk-receptionist in a fast-paced medical benefits and insurance claims firm. Her job was to receive and open the mail, answer the telephone, and pass the mail on to claim-adjusters who would process the paperwork. The supervisor, the senior claims adjuster, relied on Karen to get the claims date-stamped and on her desk. It was also Karen’s job to get the checks in the envelopes and to the mail room, which was thirty feet away from her desk. Most of the incoming calls were from frantic benefit payees. If they were calm and polite, Karen responded in kind. If they were hurried, confused, or the slightest bit annoyed that they had not received their check, Karen would leave them on hold. She would not be treated like “that” by anyone.
Karen was extremely intelligent but quite insecure. Her constant battle with her weight made her even more uncomfortable. She thought that her employers thought she was too fat and too stupid to do anything besides open the mail and answer the telephone. Only those adjusters who were nice to her got anything other than their mail from her. In addition, most of the adjusters were white, non-college graduates. Like Karen, most of the receptionists had some form of college education but could not seem to get ahead in the firm. Karen told her girlfriends how deep the Black-white thing was at work. They all agreed, “they” always think they are better than you are just because of who they are. Unfortunately, Karen and the crew did not understand that when you think for them, you end up thinking like you think they think. It is real simple. What goes on in your mind comes out in your life.
Mitchell was Karen’s third beau in four years. She did not seem to have a problem attracting men. Sustaining a relationship was a completely different issue. Karen liked hardworking men—men who did not mind spending money on her or giving her money to spend on herself. Karen was smart. She knew better than to ask a man for money outright. Instead she would complain about her low salary. It was in the low thirties. She told them of her need to look nice at her front-desk position and her desire to “outdress” the snotty little white girls who got designer clothes at a discount. While she was complaining, whining, or crying, Karen fixed her beaus candlelight dinners. She ran them nice, fragrant baths. On occasion she would reduce herself to a foot massage or back rub. As she told the crew, “Men are so stupid! They really think you rub their feet because you like to do it. I only rub feet when it will bring me an Andrew Jackson. I do not rub feet for George Washingtons.”
Mitchell was different. He did not come bearing or offering gifts. He told Karen how annoying her complaining was. He also let her know he thought she was wasting her life and her talents by not putting her degree to use. Mitchell worked at the post office all day so that he could go to school at night. He had a dream. He wanted to own his own business. He talked about it constantly. In her weaker moments, Karen would become engaged in Mitchell’s dream and help him plan the future. Mitchell liked to go out, so they frequently had their conversations on the way to the theater or a sports event.
Mitchell taught Karen how to drive and helped her celebrate when she got her learner’s permit. When she was in her whining or complaining mood, he would go home and call her the next day. Karen knew he was good for her and good to her, but he was a man and all men are dogs. Karen knew it and the crew knew it. They couldn’t seem to figure out what role the supervisor played in making him a dog, but they knew it would come to light eventually. Mitchell called off his relationship with Karen on the very day her supervisor accused her of being rude to the callers. Of course, Karen had no idea what she was talking about.
In addition to being insecure, Karen was frightened, bitter, and angry. The unabated work she did, the failed relationships, the constant battle with Big Macs and Lay’s potato chips—all supported her feelings of unworthiness. Karen’s motto was, “It ain’t gonna work so it doesn’t matter anyway.” When confronted with an exciting opportunity, she recited her motto. When a challenge or obstacle arose, she affirmed what she thought to be the truth. By age thirty-two, Karen had given up on herself and her life. The most exciting events she faced were the daily mental sparring matches with her supervisor, which she hated and enjoyed immensely.
Here is the scenario: Your best friend is trashing your name in the street. Your beau is cruising around town with your ex-bestfriend’s sister. You are eighty pounds overweight with chronic hypertension. You are in a state of panic, depression, and confusion. A friend suggests you go to someone for counseling. When you get there, that person tells you, you are creating this mess for yourself. This person, who does not know you from a can of paint, looks you dead in your face and says all that is going on in your life is the result of what you have been thinking, feeling, and doing. This person wants you to believe this is “coming up” to give you an opportunity to change. The person is trying to convince you that change is a good thing. With all due respect, you tell that person she is out of her mind.
When Karen came for counseling, the hypertension had resuited in so many missed days from work that she had been placed on probation. The fear of being unemployed sent her blood pressure even higher. Compounding the situation was the fact that Karen was eating like a butcher’s dog. The doctor was insisting that she lose at least fifty pounds. Karen was convinced she was starving to death when at 2:00 A.M. she could not sleep. For many people, food is the drug of choice. Food helps us stuff what we are feeling. It pushes down what is trying to come up and numbs the emotional pain. Karen had been in pain for quite a long time. Eating was the way she avoided dealing with what she was feeling. She was resistant. Karen was so resistant that her experience in the Valley of Comeuppance was a true Spiritual Special Education.
Everything happens twice, first on the inside and then on the outside. Life begins in darkness, the silent realm of spirit. A seed planted in the earth takes root. Buried in the darkness of the soil, life begins. Weak at first, the seed, determined to live, to grow, to flourish, pushes its way through the earth. It is not an easy journey. The seed cannot speak, cannot see; there is no one to assist it. Still it grows. At the end of the journey, the seed becomes a bush of tomatoes, a field of beans, a mighty tree producing apples, oranges, or bananas. Inside the tiny acorn sleeps the mighty oak. The tiny seed blooms into a life-sustaining force, a valuable source of nourishment, supported by its environment as it gives to those around it. The seed is the cause. What the seed produces is the effect.
The cause is planted on the inside. It produces what we see, the effect. No matter who or what you are, this is the universal law which governs the creation of life. As a human being, the cause of your life is the sperm fusing with the egg. You are the effect—that which grew in the darkness of the womb. In your life, your thoughts and feelings are the seeds, the cause. What you think, fused with what you feel, produces the effects, the conditions, those things which you see in your life.
The Law of Cause and Effect operates whether you plant positive seeds or negative seeds, good thoughts and feelings or negative ones. It does not matter. Seeds will produce in kind. The laws of human nature and the universe are eternal. They are the unseen forces which come to our attention as events, circumstances, and conditions. When we lack knowledge, when we are ignorant of the law and our ability within the law to create, enact, and enforce the unseen power of the universe, we perish because we are unable to bring ourselves into alignment with nature.
The Law of Cause and Effect states:
Whatsoever [you] soweth … that also shah you reap. (Galatians 6:7)
Whatever you plant, you will see in your harvest. We are like farmers. We plant seeds of thought and emotions in our lives. That which we plant will produce effects in which we must live. There can be no effect without a cause! Trees do not spring up from the earth unless a seed has somehow been planted. The seed can fall from a tree, take root wherever it falls, and produce an unplanned tree. Or the perfect site can be selected. Seeds planted with care will produce a carefully planned, ideally located tree. Conditions do not come to life unless we plant seeds to encourage them. Unfortunately, many of us are unconscious as to the types of seeds we are planting with our thoughts, words, and actions.
In the Valley of Light, we come to understand that we are the most important ingredient in the workings of our lives. What we need and want guides and directs what we do. What we avoid or fear determines how we respond. Through the learning process of light, we can see how we are in fact the cause. The Law of Cause and Effect is the foundation of that understanding. This law is the foundation of every other universal law. The cause is what we believe, how we act and react to what we experience. The cause lies within us. It is the essence of our being, our spirit. The cause is brought to life as outward manifestation based on the seeds we plant, our responses and reactions to every experience we have or have had in life.
My experiences with my father, brother, uncle, and all the little boys with whom I interacted early in life helped to shape my opinions about men. Whether they were good to me or not is not the issue. The issue is how I responded to what they did or did not do. My responses, based on my perceptions, created my opinions. My opinions, embedded in my mind, supported my expectations and beliefs. Those expectations and beliefs were the cause of every experience I had with men. My father was emotionally unavailable to me. My husband was a carbon copy of him. My brother was distant and aloof, very secretive, and verbally abusive. He was my brother. I loved him. As a result, I accepted into my life men who responded to me exactly as my brother had. After a series of abusive and unsatisfactory relationships, I began to question why I continued to draw a certain type of mate. Once I developed an understanding of the Law of Cause and Effect, it became quite apparent that I was creating, with my own thoughts, the very relationship I did not want. I was thinking, “All men are emotionally unavailable,” “Men are secretive,” and “It is all right for men to be verbally abusive.” These were the conditions created in response to my thoughts.
The same is true regarding our thoughts about women. As young girls, we are “schooled,” educated about women and what to expect from them. My aunts, cousins, and friends all warned me about women not being trustworthy, about their talking too much, about them being sneaky. I carried these thoughts in my heart and mind. I expected women to behave a certain way and they did. Back to the Valley of Courage for a moment. “What you believe will be established unto you.” The difference between belief and cause is action. What we believe causes us to act or behave in a particular way. Our own actions draw corresponding effects into our lives.
Very simply stated, if you are dishonest, people will be dishonest in their interactions with you. If you think or speak negatively about others, someone, somewhere, will return your deeds. If you cut corners, skim off the edges, behave irresponsibly, recklessly, or unwisely, the conditions you encounter will be the result of someone doing the very same thing you do. The situation will come up in your life in order to make you aware, to teach you a lesson. As children we are taught that what goes around, comes around.
From a spiritual perspective, what goes around in your mind, will come around in your life. The real kick is, it may not come from the very same people who were involved in what you did. It may come months or years later. When it comes back to you, it may be more devastating than anything you have intentionally done to anyone in your life. Rest assured, the Law of Cause and Effect always operates, creating the effects we have caused.
When I first started my own business, I experienced many delays in my cash flow. People who owed me money seemed to always be late in paying. There were delays in contract payments, delays in people paying for services I had rendered. It was very disheartening and very difficult to figure out how to continue on my path and purpose. In speaking to a dear sister-friend of mine during one particular dry spell, I was bemoaning my fate. I was owed in excess of seven thousand dollars for work I had done. My telephone was about to be disconnected and my rent was late. I asked her to pray with me in an effort to figure out the underlying issue causing the problem.
After we prayed, we spent a few moments in silence. My sister-friend asked me, Who do you owe? Who do you owe money to that you have not paid? I told her, Everybody! I owed bills I had not paid. I owed people I had borrowed from with the expectation that I would get paid for services I had rendered. Since I had not been paid, I could not pay the people I owed. Another period of silence. Finally she said to me, “Don’t think about who you owe now, think about the past. Think about who you owe, who you have not paid, how you paid when you did have money, and how you feel about paying or not paying what you owe.”
Prayer always sheds light on the subject. If you are really willing to see yourself and the light, prayer will open the way. I had to admit I had not been an “on-time payer.” Each month, I paid bills late. There were many occasions when I would allow my bills to double up. When they did, I would make a partial payment. Since I was being honest, I admitted there were times when I had the money to pay my bills and chose to do something else. At other times, I would pay what I thought was important and leave the minor bills until more substance was received. I also told my friend there had been people in the past who had helped me financially, whom I had never repaid, about which I felt very guilty, somewhat ashamed. Another period of silence.
Finally my sister-friend revealed to me that I believed in lack. She explained that when you do not pay what you owe because you believe you will not have enough left over, you are giving lack the right to exist in your life. She went on to say that if we believe that our substance, our income, is what we must live by, we are limited to what we know. When we believe that spirit is our source and supply, we know the source which sustains us is unlimited. Even when we cannot see where it will come from, we must know that it will come. We must believe we will be provided for in all of our needs. What we believe will cause us to act. When we act, we create the means by which the effects must manifest. In other words, write the check even when you do not know how the money is coming.
At the core of the lack issue for me was my own guilt and shame about owing money. By holding onto the mental images of those I had not paid, I was creating an energy in which I could not get paid. By borrowing and not repaying, I had depleted my account in the universal bank. There was nothing for me to draw on. Complicating matters even further was the fact that I had spent what did not belong to me. I was in visible and invisible debt. When you owe and you receive, you must pay what you owe. The universe does not accept excuses. The spirit of money must not be violated. If you are provided a service or given support based on your promise to repay at a certain time, the spirit of money will hold you to your word. If you have money which has been allocated for one thing and you spend it for something else, you are in effect spending money that does not belong to you. It belongs to that to which you have promised or allocated the money.
It does not matter how much you know or how much information you have: when you find yourself in difficulty, you need help. I was not about to spend another semester of my life in Special Ed. I wanted out and I wanted out now. Realizing this could be my last telephone conversation for a while, I asked my friend how to break the cycle. Forgiveness. Very simply, she told me the only way to release yourself from the mistaken actions and beliefs of the past is to forgive yourself and others. When you forgive, you clear the way for a new energy to enter.
The application of the principle with regard to the Law of Cause and Effect is very clear with respect to money. It becomes a bit more difficult to accept as we apply the same principle to those matters which are close to our heart. It is difficult for us to understand why people behave a certain way. More specifically, why they treat us in certain ways. The first thing that comes to mind is, “Why did you do this to me?” A more common response is, “I don’t deserve to be treated like this or that!”
Even when we have the strength and/or insight to release a person who has treated us badly from our life, very often we hang onto the memory. We remember the first boy or man who dumped us, lied to us, failed to return our affections. We remember all the little incidents which led us to the conclusion that Mom always liked you better than me. We remember what Daddy did or did not do. One of my greatest obstacles in life was the memory of my brother’s nasty habit of eating the last Oreo. It seemed as if he knew I was planning to devour it with a big glass of milk just before I went to bed. Purely to spite me, he would dash into the kitchen and get it. Needless to say, this supported my belief in the lack of Oreos and the compulsive behavior I exhibited when it looked like there was not enough of anything to go around.
You cannot accept until you forgive. You cannot trust until you forgive. You cannot build faith or discipline or obedience until you forgive yourself for all of the times you failed to accept, trust, have faith, be disciplined or be obedient to yourself for your own good. You cannot forgive anyone for treating you badly until you forgive yourself for treating you badly. You have been bad to you. You have failed to keep your promises to yourself. You have abandoned your plans and desires in order to please others. If you are a real Black woman, down to the bone, you have worked until you were senseless, abusing your body, taxing your mind, energy, and spirit. All Black women make promises to themselves which they fail to keep: “I’m going on a diet!” “I’m not going to call him anymore!” “I don’t have anything to say!” You have put the priorities of others over your own priorities and standards. You have abandoned you when you needed you the most. You have worn cheap shoes and jeopardized the health, safety, and well-being of your toes and feet. Is it any wonder why people and situations continue to come into your life which cause you to feel abandoned, rejected, used, and mistreated? These external events are not the cause. They are the effects of your failure to take yourself into account and forgive yourself.
FORGIVENESS IS A MENTAL, EMOTIONAL, AND SPIRITUAL LAXATIVE!
When you forgive, you wipe the slate clean. You loosen the barnacles from your brain and allow your spirit to float freely. When you forgive, you open your mind to new insights and understanding. You give up the need to be right or in control. That is the main reason we do not forgive; we want control. If we forgive, it means we release. If we release someone or something from our minds, it may seem as if we are saying, “You were right. I was wrong.” As long as we are mad with another person or because of a situation, we are in control of what people can do. We control how or if they approach us, what they can or cannot say to us. We demand an apology. If the person does not respond in the way we feel they should, we cut them out of our heart and mind. We may cut, but we do not sever. As long as we do not sever ourselves from the memories of the past, we are in control. When we forgive, we give up control.
Forgiveness allows us to see things from another perspective. We may see that, in fact, everyone is not out to get us. Even you are not out to hurt yourself, undermine yourself. People just do what they do because of who they are and what they know. You must resist the temptation to judge, to believe that people actually mean to hurt or abuse you. You must resist the temptation to beat up on yourself when you make an unwise choice or decision. Even in those cases when you encounter people who are vicious and malicious, the choice is still up to you. The choice as to what role, what part, that person will play in your life is up to you.
At least eighty percent of the Black women I know were abused, neglected, or somehow abandoned as children. Many have a love-hate relationship with one or both parents. Others cite cousins, uncles, grandparents, or aunts who treated them harshly or cruelly. As I talk to these sisters, they reveal their belief that the people who hurt them should be punished. We are not talking here about legal punishment. We are talking about torture. Whipping. Flogging. Hanging. Burning at the stake. Vividly, my sisters recall time and time again how they were hurt, who hurt them, and what they would like to see done in vengeance to cause equal harm, pain, or destruction to these folks. When I attempt to introduce the concept of forgiveness, they shrink away in horror. “Forgiveness! Oh no, you don’t understand! You don’t understand what he/she did to me!” I may not understand what they have personally experienced as a result of how they were treated, but I do know that forgiveness is the only way to free your mind, spirit, and life from the past.
Black women want to see those who have victimized them suffer. They want payback. Many refuse to forgive their abusers or molesters, the ones who abandoned or rejected them. They hold on to every little tidbit of a memory their minds can digest, vowing to see the day when the ones who “done them wrong” get their due. In the meanwhile, they fail to realize they are still being abused, abandoned, rejected, and mistreated by an entirely new set of folks because of the way they think and feel. If you keep thinking and saying men are dogs, you will attract a pack of hounds. If you really believe women are sneaks who cannot be trusted, you will find yourself surrounded by conniving wenches. With the millions and millions of people in the world, why are you attracting these people, these experiences? It has nothing to do with them; it has everything to do with you. It is not happening to you “because.” It is happening because you are the cause. Forgiveness gives the divine an opportunity to create a divine cause in your life.
Now let’s be honest. Everyone has done something for which they need to be forgiven. Maybe you stole quarters from your daddy’s pocket. Maybe you told a lie to a teacher, or worse, your very own mother. I know everybody has a grandmother, aunt, or cousin they have killed off to get a few days’ leave from work. Remember those little white lies you told to impress somebody on a first date or job interview? And let’s not forget the people you have told to drop dead or go to hell. At some point in time, we have all cursed somebody or wished harm to somebody else. Yet we can convince ourselves that we are pure as snow. Honest, upright, and innocent. Conveniently we forget that somewhere in our past, we have either unconsciously or consciously said or done something to someone which has hurt them in some way. No matter how small or insignificant we may think our offense to be, when we are called on what we do or have done, we want to be forgiven. Why, then, do we find it so difficult to forgive others?
When my father made his transition, we were barely on speaking terms. I had not seen him in months. We had long ago stopped calling one another to chat, because of something he had said and done which I believed was appalling. When I got the call that he had died at home and that I should come right away, I experienced the gamut of emotions. Disbelief. Sadness. Relief. Anger. Sorrow. Upon arriving at his home, it was quite disturbing to see the man I had loved and hated all my life lying lifeless. Once his body was removed, the funeral plans began. We were well into how many cars we would need when someone realized my father had no insurance and that of his six children, no one had money except me. The thought of taking my hardiearned money to bury this man who had created so much pain and confusion in my mind was devastating. But what do you say? I had to do what I could to make sure he got put away.
There is an African proverb which says, “The measure of the man is his children.” If your children do the right thing, in the right way; if they are honorable and respectable to you and their elders; if they provide for you in your old age or infirmity, then the community will know that you have been a good person. I was not sure what the community would think, say, or know. I only knew that my father had wanted to be cremated and that it was my duty to see his wishes were fulfilled.
It made absolutely no sense that this responsibility should fall on me. My father had a wife and a woman. He had a mother and six other children. None of that mattered. He was out of cash and needed to be buried. I refused to attend or to allow my children to go to the wake. In my own little pea brain, I guess I was trying to show him something. I was just that angry at him. At the funeral I sat stiffly, looking out of one eye, listening to everything through one ear. I did not want to be in that place, having that experience. I remember being compelled to open the program we had been given. Inside, as if it had been written specifically for me, was a poem which revealed to me the healing power of forgiveness. The epigraph read as follows:
In our deepest hour of need, the Creator does not ask us for credentials. He accepts us exactly as we are, knowing we are His erring children. He loves us. And, He forgives us. Why can’t we forgive ourselves?
As I read it, the minister spoke it aloud. For the first time in a long time, I felt I understood what had happened between my father and me. I also understood why he had affected me so profoundly. More important, for the first time in my entire life, I felt totally connected to and loving toward him. Unfortunately, it was too late for me to tell him how I felt.
The Reverend Johnnie Coleman reminds her congregation frequently, “I am the thinker who thinks the thoughts that create the things.” It is another way of approaching and understanding the Law of Cause and Effect. Thoughts cause effects. Karen was obviously ignorant of the law. Like many Black women, she forgot that when someone is treating us in a way we believe is unfair or unjust, we do not just sit around like abuse sponges, sopping up whatever comes our way. We are thinking, feeling, or saying something in response to what is going on. Sometimes, we do some pretty awful things in defense of ourselves. Karen, like many of the sister-friends in the world, did not realize that very often the negative experiences we have do not occur in response to what others do or have done to us, but are the effects, the karmic outgrowths, of our own being. In Karen’s situation, her own thoughts and emotions came up as a dark, ugly experience with her superior, friends, and the men in her life. Unfortunately for Karen, as for so many of the rest of us, the situation came up at a time and in a manner which did not lend itself to her taking the time to figure out what was really going on.
Karen had always believed she was not good enough. Her position at work reinforced that belief. It had nothing to do with being Black, fat, or female. Her criticism of her boss and the “justifiable” trashing of the woman’s character were reflected in a similar experience with her best friend. Karen never made the connection, either with her treatment of her boss or all the other people she had trashed and criticized in the past. As the youngest of five children, Karen was a whiner and a complainer. Her life experiences continuously provided her with something to whine and complain about.
Karen did not make the connection between her treatment of the callers at work and her beau’s treatment and manner toward her. She also missed the fact that her hiding of documents from her supervisor at work, which she would then produce in the midst of the woman’s frantic search, would eventually come up as Mitchell’s hiding his attraction to her best friend’s sister. Eventually he revealed that interest before the entire community. During her counseling sessions, Karen eventually realized that if the supervisor was a bat from hell who needed forgiveness, Karen herself was a rat in the corner who needed the same.
Karen had grown up in abject poverty. She had watched her mother work two jobs most of her life, wearing clothes from the Salvation Army, feeding her five children with what could barely feed one. Karen’s mother repeatedly affirmed, “You work all your life, like a dog—for what? You can’t eat! You can barely pay your bills! The people you work for, kill yourself for, treat you like a piece of crap, then you die!” Karen’s mother was angry. She was angry at Karen’s father for leaving her. She was angry at her children for needing and wanting their father. Karen’s mother was angry at herself for having five children. At every opportunity she told her children just how angry she felt. Sounds like O.P.P. to me. That is exactly what it is. Another person’s perspective invading Karen’s life. Karen, being totally unaware of the valleys and their purpose in life, hated her mother for being angry and refused to forgive her father for abandoning her. Her own hate and anger needed to be released. They came up as the motivating factors beneath Karen’s relationship with her supervisor.
When Karen’s mother died of a hypertensive stroke at the age of forty-three, Karen had vowed it would not happen to her. She would not work hard. She would not die young. She would not be treated like crap. As this was what she focused her mental energy and emotions upon, this is exactly what she experienced: not working hard, feeling as though she were being treated like crap, creating a physical condition which could kill her at any moment, being angry, hateful and spiteful in response to what she perceived others were doing to her. Karen was also resistant to change. She had convinced herself that changing her perspective would not make a difference in her life. Her resistance took her on a trip to the Valley of Comeuppance with a layover in a Special Ed experience. Karen would have to be forced to change, forced to examine herself. Think about it. Who could she blame for her body being eighty pounds overweight?
Karen’s situation was so chronic that she had to do the hard part first. Before she could forgive anyone, she had to learn to forgive herself. Karen learned how to forgive with visualization. She would sit for no less than ten minutes at a time, three times a day, and visualize herself talking to herself. She eventually accepted this was the only way to forgive herself for hating and to clear herself of the negative, combative, stressful energy which was forcing her blood pressure to skyrocket. Her resistance was based on her belief that to forgive meant admitting she was wrong. It took her quite some time to realize that forgiveness has nothing to do with another person. Forgiveness is the way to heal yourself from all that you have done to or allowed to be done to yourself, by yourself and others.
Karen had to forgive herself for hating her mother for being so angry, angry enough to tell her children they were not wanted or needed. She had to forgive herself for being angry with her father for leaving his wife and children, without ever returning to see how they were. Karen had to forgive herself for wishing harm on people who teased her about being too fat, too Black, too smart, or too stupid. Karen had to forgive herself for the unkind things she had said about and to other people who had reinforced her beliefs about herself. Once this was done, she realized that she had nothing to forgive her supervisor for.
Forgive yourself first. You cannot give what you do not have. If you cannot give yourself the mercy of forgiveness, you will never be able to find it in your heart to forgive anyone else. Whether or not you think you have done anything which warrants forgiveness does not matter. Do it anyway. I had to forgive myself for smoking for eighteen years and clogging my blessed lungs with nicotine. I had to forgive myself for being a slave to Pepsi, Häagen Dazs coffee ice cream, and extra mayonnaise on my white bread sandwiches. I knew that stuff was no good for me. I was abusing my body. I was real clear that my husband slapping me around was abusive. It was more difficult to see how I had abused myself. When I became aware, I stayed on a forgiveness diet for sixty days.
The blessing of forgiveness is that it does not give other people the permission to mistreat you. It makes you aware of what you will and will not accept as a fact of your life. When you release the past through forgiveness, it clears your channels of intuition. Hate, fear, anger, resentment, guilt, and shame are eliminated from your consciousness. You become extremely sensitive to what you hear, see, and experience. This sensitivity does not mean people can hurt you. It means you become sensitive to words and actions which provoke fear, hate, anger, shame, or guilt in your being. When you are aware, you are free to choose what you will accept and not accept from others in your presence. When you learn to forgive, you no longer have reasons to be angry. You see. You hear. You intuit. You forgive. You move on. It is really quite simple.
Forgiveness eliminates the negative thoughts and emotions which create negative effects in your life. It is the law in operation. If you do not think the cause, there can be no effect. Of course we all have those moments when we speak too soon, too harshly, or without complete information. Fortunately, forgiveness provides us with the strength to forgive ourselves and excuse ourselves to others without feeling ashamed or guilty. A word of caution about this powerful spiritual medicine. Forgiveness does not mean you can consciously or knowingly commit the same errors repeatedly, and then forgive yourself, only to do them again. Forgiveness is a function of awareness. Once you are aware of something, it is your responsibility to make the necessary adjustments in your behavior. These adjustments are sure to keep you out of the valley.
MEDITATION WITH THE MOTHER
—SIX WOMEN’S SLAVE NARRATIVES
Nature awakens in our being a feeling that we must lay at His feet that we may get the blessed approval, for we are so changeable, but God is unchanging.
Pray for yourself that your path shall be paved with light. Pray for yourself that your burdens shall be lightened with love. Pray for yourself that your purpose shall be revealed with clarity and exactness, that you may fulfill your mission as love in action. You the daughters must have a purpose to guide you to enlightenment if you are ever to know my true nature, which is your whole self.
Your purpose gave birth to you. It has molded and shaped who you are and what you do. Your purpose is the reason you live and breathe and move in your being as a woman. Your purpose knows you well. It knows your pains, your fears, and the misguided notions which dangle before you, pushing you further away from who you are and what you are here to do. Your purpose guides your heart, hands, and head. It is alive in you. It is there, within, that you must seek to know it and live it. Your purpose, daughters, is to use your heart, hands, and head in such loving ways that the world will come alive through the light that is woman, a reflection of the Mother.
Oh, but you fear so, daughters. You fear there is not enough to have, that there is too much to do, that you are not enough to be that which your purpose has ordained for you. You do not trust, daughters, that you are divinely guided, perfectly clear, nobly on purpose at all times, under all conditions. You pursue the rambling thoughts of your head rather than the roaring of your heart. You look to the world rather than your soul. You accept what you are told rather than what you know. You seek pleasure rather than purpose, and for this, you become lost, disconnected, or—worse—both.
I am your purpose. I am the softness in your voice, the gentleness in your spirit, the clarity in your mind before you were raped by the harshness of the world. I am your light. I show you the way to do that which you have come to do, with such exhilarating exactness that you have no time to fear. I am the love urging you to give, to serve, to be the love, peace, light, and joy that continues to elude you in the world. I am your truth. I am your strength. I am your value, worth, and honor. When you know me, not only do you have pleasure, you have it in abundance. Not only do you have love, you have it unconditionally. When you know me, you will know yourself. When you know yourself, you will know your purpose, that through which you will find all the joy, light, love, peace, and prosperity which the world has led you to believe is so difficult to acquire. Pray for yourself today to have the strength to discover and live your divine purpose.