From out of the blue, someone has criticized me.  There was malice in their tone of voice, a wish to hurt.  I am disturbed and offended.

If I can not contact anything real in myself, one of three things is likely to happen:

1)  I will ignore the whole thing, and the “hurty feelings” will pass.  (“They’re not worth bothering about.”)  Or, I will explain to myself why they don’t understand me.

2)  I will get angry at the person for their tone of voice (“Just who do they think they are, anyway?”)  Or, I will “get them back” for what they said.

3)  I will feel vaguely guilty, or I will take the implied defect of my character “to heart”, and wound myself with it. (“I’m no good, and this sort of thing proves it.”)

If I can contact something real, the disturbance will neither diminish nor increase.  It will stay with me, and the message contained in the words that disturbed me will gradually soak in.

My mind may never grasp what transpires, but some tiny thing in me can be transformed.

.                    Lou Gottlieb                          5/11/1986

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This paper is about the possibility (if the disturbance is severe enough) of not ignoring, not getting angry, not wounding oneself, not analyzing, but instead letting the disturbance act in me, cleaning me out, regardless of the cause.

This is the hidden face of suffering, its beneficial face.

Only conscience can guide us when we seek this hidden face, because we are so identified with what we take to be ourselves that we will not permit this picture to be marred in any way.  (If we were really what we picture ourselves to be, we would realize that no attack on that reality could damage it.)  There’s a wonderful sense of sureness when we open ourselves to the cleansing effect of suffering.

Try it—you’ll love it (but may not like it at all).

Lou Gottlieb            12/7/2017