Is Being Mean to Others Part of “Being True to Myself”?
I’ve often described spirituality as the personal process of always being true to yourself, or at least involving this to a large extent. However, in the process of trying to be genuine and respect your feelings, you may at points find yourself at odds with your own anger, resentment, frustration, etc. These emotions can be strong, powerful, intense, and may at some point have you question if these two are part of being true to yourself, and how legitimate it is to express them.
First things first: I don’t care about what anyone says about spirituality or enlightenment, in this reality you’ll experience anger, fear, distress, uncertainty, etc., no matter your level of awareness. You aren’t incorporeal; you’re a human being, living in a human body, navigating a human-shaped reality. On one occasion you’ll be blissfully detached in very high awareness, on another you’ll feel affected by the person behind the store counter not meeting your eye contact. Feelings are part of being human; the rule of thumb with them is that trying to dismiss, deny, and/or suppress your feelings will never wield beneficial results in an emotional/spiritual sense. This doesn’t mean every little thing you feel is of the same importance, but you should take care not to ignore/suppress systematically how you feel. Thus, a core component of spirituality is the willingness, sometimes challenge, to acknowledge how you feel, and handle your feelings, if and when necessary, using your discernment: expressing them, letting them be, moving beyond them, shifting your beliefs, interpreting them as a sign that a situation doesn’t serve you anymore, being a motivating factor for change… and so on. Whatever the situation asks for. Whatever is a suitable answer.
Now, whenever in spirituality or mysticism you hear/read about the importance of being true to yourself, this means following your heart; being authentic relative to what goes in your heart; honoring the truth that your heart holds in your choices and behavior. Now, the heart, by definition, *never* wants to hurt others. It isn’t part of your heart or spiritual essence to go about creating suffering for others. The heart is the seat of the Soul, and the Soul Itself is never invested in making others feel anything other than what is constructive, productive, benevolent. The heart only ever aims at potentiating the personal progress of others or benefiting their experience in some way. This is how the Soul wants to serve, and how it will always want to do so.
The point where you may begin to wish to inflict suffering onto others is when you cross the line between being authentic into VENTING.
When you’re in pain to the point you wish to direct that pain to others, that’s not coming from the purity of the heart; it’s just that your heart has been hurt to such an extent that this hurt is all you can feel. But there may come the time when you’ve gone through such neglect, suffering, toxicity, and unfairness, that you just want to let it all out, perhaps to the point of having others “taking it” instead of you. Especially when you’ve spent a long time pretending you were okay and nothing was going on with you, all the while you were experiencing pure neglect, pure lack of support, pure disconnection, and being expected just to carry on doing so indefinitely.
In those circumstances, the discovery of VENTING can feel so good that you mistake it for your authenticity, what your heart and Soul want, feel, etc. Further, you don’t want to go back to bottling everything up inside again; so you may forego any self-moderation to mind the sensitivity of others. Any moderation will just feel like the old habit of invalidating yourself. So you may say something like “well, sucks to be you, I’m just being myself!”
Don’t get me wrong: VENTING is nice! VENTING, in the specific sense of expressing outwardly, giving body to your pain and anger, *can* be part of your spiritual process. You can reach such levels of stored pain that expressing that pain is the only thing you can do to acknowledge it. And there will be appropriate times for catharsis, for letting it all out, and even for telling it “how it is” to another, without it necessarily becoming a negative, harmful action.
There will be certain moments in life where you’ll have to own your truth as it is, and express it fully to another. And where not doing so will be a disservice to the other person, who needed to see, hear, and know your truth. Other times, you may be unable to stuff things within any longer, and it all just comes pouring out, sometimes in unintentional, involuntary, and/or emotional ways.
I would go so far as to say that in your spiritual path there *is* leeway for adopting a more frank and straightforward manner of communicating, that bypasses many of the more superficial, pointless modes of behavior that are prevalent in society. This will lead to a balancing act of expressing yourself assertively, avoiding falling back into old patterns of self-dismissal, while also not crossing the line of disrespect and aggression towards others in the process of doing so. This is a balancing act and a learning curve that, I would say, are normal in the path of Spiritual Awakening. “In speaking my own truth, how far can I go in being honest, and past which point am I being inappropriate?” Finally, one way of venting/processing pain is creativity. Art can be cathartic; art has always been a fertile arena that allows individuals to express their invalidated pain, which is connected with and thus validated by its audience, without aiming those feelings directly towards/against any one individual.
In short, dealing with stored pain isn’t easy. Admitting it is only barely the first, often difficult step. After which there will have to be a path, a process, that aims and coping with that pain. And in that process, a degree of assertive energy and/or creative expression can sometimes develop, and even be an inevitable consequence, as one finally tries to bear the brunt of their pain (as opposed to suppressing it), without this meaning that intention is going to be inherently, systemically, harmful.
VENTING only becomes harmful to a significant extent when you start leaning onto it as a crutch. Emotionally, assertiveness can be construed as a form of power, as well as relief, pleasure, etc, since it’s how it feels. So you can use your own suffering to justify being harmful to others, to lend you the power you never had. This is when you become the “mean person”: you’ve just adopted a belief that justifies and encourages being harmful to others.
Somewhere in your thought process — possibly heavily affected by anger, distress, etc — a part of you may think like this: “It’s how I feel, so it must be genuine; it must come from the heart”. Seemingly lending legitimacy to the belief and behavior that disrespects others. But this is a fallacy: pain and suffering are indeed stored in the heart (and you’re invited to address and heal them) but pain and suffering block the inherent values of the heart rather than being a genuine part of them. Further, in a spiritual sense, nothing can be used as a justification to cause harm — not even your pain, for all its depth, for all its unfairness. Any belief that justifies lack of compassion towards others, for any reason, has crossed the line between owning one’s truth, into having you step outside of integrity.
VENTING can be a necessary part of your spiritual process, and in your spiritual path there may be leeway to discover and explore it. There’s always a way to be true to yourself and express what goes inside, while staying in balance and integrity. But in expressing yourself, you must still hold tightly to your discernment and the truth of your heart at all times, never letting them go under any circumstance. With that effort, you’ll learn where the balance between sincere expression and compassionate respect. But the same suffering can’t be a justification to bypass the need to hold that discernment and stay in integrity. The moment you believe otherwise, you’ll easily veer into toxic, harmful, and destructive behavior.
This text was originally published at: https://www.heartki.com/is-being-mean-to-others-part-of-being-true-to-myself/
