Loving Difficult People at Difficult Times: A Path Towards Enlightenment

Copyright © 2013 C. E. Herman.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-8315-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8317-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8316-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917523

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/09/2013

Contents

Acknowledgements

Today, Be enough and Relax

Chapter 1   Overview

Chapter 2   A True Story: Introducing Vincent

Chapter 3   My Own Journey

Chapter 4   A Different Type of Journey

Chapter 5   How to Love Destructive People

Chapter 6   How to Love Someone Who Has Chosen a Most Difficult Path

Chapter 7   How to Love Outstanding People

Chapter 8   How to Love the Person You Chose as Your Pater Familias

Chapter 9   How to Love Earth-Mates

Chapter 10   How to Love People Who Reach the End of the Road

Afterword

Citations and Recommended Reading

Acknowledgements

T hanks to my guides who entrusted me with the writing of this book and to look at the stars at night. Writing has been cathartic. Thank you, too, to Sonia Choquette for the channel she has kept open to the spirits. It enables many people to understand and follow their paths in life.

Thanks to Jacqueline, who entrusted me with the story of her son and with the communications she shared with him when he was back in spirit. They have given this book an extra dimension.

Thank you to Felicity for the workshop she gave the volunteers working at the hospice where I work and whose concept she attributes to the late Ronnie Honner.

Thank you to Rebecca for tearing my book apart and teaching me all about the golden thread. Despite the onerous task of completing a very complex PhD thesis, she has manifested time to read these humble beginnings.

Thank you, Gayle, for a wonderful friendship and for reading my book and giving me the confidence to send it off.

Thank you to my family for being who they are and to my boys in particular for having chosen me as their mother. It is an honour.

Today, Be enough and Relax

T here is a little fluffy, furry koala sitting in the small red gum just across from my window. He lives on his own. All day, every day, rain, hail, or shine, he snoozes or munches on tender green leaves, sating on eucalypt. Complete contentedness with basic necessities.

He is.

His presence fills me with joy.

Chapter 1

Overview

W hen a couple of years ago it was suggested to me by my spiritual guides that I could write a book about how to love difficult people at difficult times, I baulked. I had never written a book before and never felt I had writers’ skills. Who were difficult people anyhow?

I then took a good look at myself: How often was I still ruled by my emotions? How could I possibly write a book about a subject I had not mastered myself? But ideas germinated and then started flowering. Maybe I did have something special to contribute that would soothe the hearts of those who suffered. I chose to settle down to the task.

No one can learn to love difficult people, and especially at difficult times, before they learn to accept and love themselves. How can I even start loving others while I am still rejecting myself? How can I love another controlling person while I am still battling to eradicate this aspect of myself? How can I admire people of a certain size when I am plagued by self-loathing for my own body?

It is a very long road to travel. Trudging over hills and valleys, skirting potholes and ravines, through mist and foggy heath, yet happy to rest and contemplate some of the great views it offers, we journey on.

As I could speak only of my own experiences from within, I searched for answers in my relationships with the members of the family I was born into: my brother, my sister, my mother, and my father. They were all difficult. I also delved into my relationship with the person who has walked these last thirty-five years with me, my husband. In every case, I noticed that the essential ingredient to loving them was understanding what motivated them, observing the traumas they were being or had been subjected to, and lauding their efforts rather than judging their actions or adding meaning where meaning was not intended. I was to observe and open my heart like the flower opens her petals to catch the sun.

There are many other difficult relationships, as many as there are people: you may work for an unreasonable boss, or discover that your husband is cheating on you or that someone is embezzling from you. I have not dwelled on relationships that were not in the trove of my own personal experience because I could not speak of them from within. Yet in every case, difficulties seem to arise when people have not first learned to recognise and love their own magnificence or have forgotten to consider and understand the deep motivations that prompt the other.

From my own experience, I also relate some big moments, those instances where the universe so clearly guided my life to the point where I am at now, aged sixty-five, having finally learned to appreciate and love myself. It is often easier to see the hand of God in hindsight, so in the late afternoon of my life, I am better and better equipped to observe it. Is it not the wisdom of the aging?

I believe that a great number of difficulties arise from differences and that differences lead to misunderstandings. In this three-dimensional world, we are all faced with different challenges; we are born in different circumstances; we have different personalities, motives, and intentions; and we travel different paths.

Yet, once we recognise from within that there is another dimension to ourselves, another dimension to each and every one of us, that our essence is our soul and that at the soul level, we are all equal and all one, differences dissolve. The attitude of accepting and loving all people as a matter of fact, be they difficult or not, and at all times, be they difficult or not, suddenly emerges as the natural way to feel, the only way to live.

It is at that level that we find a magical Open, Sesame key that unlocks the door to the treasure of wholehearted, unreserved, unconditional love.

Once the caterpillar has turned into a butterfly, the butterfly can no longer be, think, or act as a caterpillar. Truth before this spiritual awakening suddenly takes on a meaning from within, a new meaning from the intrinsic core of one’s being. All the tools that were honed and sharpened before take on a new polish. It now becomes obvious and easy, in theory, to love oneself and others like oneself.

This book is about love. It is about compassion. It is about getting to the place of inner stillness and cherishing it; it is about developing an open heart, a hearth burning off the embers of all our resentments, our suspicions, all the fears that prevent us from fully appreciating the joy and the peace that is the inheritance of each of us.

***

Being human, I could express my most private convictions only with human tools.

But I was going to receive the gift of a most inspiring contribution: Vincent. His amazing human journey is related in the next chapter by his mother, Jay, and the wisdom he has communicated to her since he has passed on is inserted throughout these pages where it best fits my journey.

This book is one but glows from the light of two matches whose flames unite. One match is lighted by someone who is in search of truth. It is my groping at an infinite-dimensional truth from this three-dimensional world: how to love difficult people at difficult times. The other match is ablaze from Vincent’s fire, the fire of a spirit who is in the know and shares his truth in response to his mother’s questions when she or friends of hers have problems loving difficult people at difficult times.

Chapter 2

A True Story: Introducing Vincent

Never again would I be able to judge others,

because I am equal to all others.

T he universe stepped in as it does, surreptitiously, to the point.

In 1987, I was introduced to a French couple who had come to Australia for a term of six years for professional reasons. They had two children: the younger, a boy by the name of Vincent, and the older, his sister, Clémence.

Vincent’s mother, Jay, a practicing medical doctor in France, knew very little English, so she left the medical field when she arrived in Australia. This gave her time to undergo further studies as well as look after her family, entertain for her husband, socialise, and still have valuable time out to step away from the frenetic pace of life and be open to opportunities. Jay soon became an acquaintance, then a friend.

I remember numerous cups of coffee in quaint cafés hidden in narrow, picturesque streets of the city. In those days, a good cup of coffee was a rare commodity in Australia, and only avant-garde establishments offered it. We particularly loved a very atmospheric one: its high-back wooden seats, lined with rich, dark red upholstery that smelled of polished leather, formed isolated compartments like those you can still find in old steam trains. Each cosy booth gave the comfortable feeling of being private, and we would settle in happily and chat for hours about our children and about life in general. Being a mother of four very different boys of approximately the same age as Vincent, who must have been twelve at the time, I thought I knew it all as far as boys of Vincent’s age group were concerned. Was I wrong!

Jay had a story to tell, and I was a good listener.

Jay was puzzled. Vincent’s life experience was, to say the least, out of the ordinary. Jay and her husband were doing their utmost to foster the capacity to listen to him and to welcome his difference, because even though he did not conspicuously stand out, they were finding the conversations they were having with their own son very challenging.

I remember her saying, "Vincent is not a difficult child. Yet, we find him difficult to understand because his human life experience is so different.

He is an ordinary child. He behaves like a child of his age. Here in Australia he goes to school like all the other boys his age. He’s not brilliant but he’s fairly good. He does have a slight problem of dyslexia that hampers his spelling of words. He’s good at maths. At home, he also does a correspondence course with France (CNED). So, as you can see, he has little time to play. Evenings and holidays are devoted to the CNED studies and the homework it involves.

Is that really necessary? I queried.

It’s required if he wants to reintegrate into the French schooling system when we return to France, but it’s a great deal of schoolwork for a boy his age. Mind you, he loves to relax playing cricket or basketball. He has a passion for cricket. He spends hours watching matches on television and invites a friend whenever he can to come and play with him. He also loves animals, especially our cat Chicco, who sleeps on his bed every night.

I did not want to interrupt the flow of Jay’s story, so I kept very quiet. I was far from expecting what was coming:

"One night about two years ago, the cat suddenly went wild. He woke up Vincent, who, half dazed, let him out of the room and went back to bed, leaving the door open behind him. Clémence had left her bedroom door ajar. The next morning, Clémence came to me and said, ‘Mum, Chicco woke me up last night. He was like mad. He shot into my bed and dug as far down under my blankets as he could. It was difficult for me to go back to sleep after that because of the strong white light in the hallway. Can you check whether the standing lamp or the porch light was left on?’

"I answered spontaneously, ‘It could not have been the standing lamp. And the porch light was off when I went to bed; anyhow, it would not have shone as brightly as you are describing it.’

Vincent then timidly piped up to me, ‘Mum, please do not think I’m crazy. I was wide awake last night. When I opened the door for the cat and returned to bed, I saw a very bright ball of light in the hallway and it was full of geometric symbols. It only disappeared when the sun came up.’

Jay went on:

"I was perplexed. Both children had noted this bright light, and the cat had reacted to it, even behind Vincent’s closed bedroom door. My husband had already left for work, but I felt the need to phone him before taking the children to school. The phone was dead. There was no ringtone.

So I took the children to school, and when I returned home, I went to my neighbour’s and asked whether I could phone from there. Her phone was working properly, so I assumed the problem to be specifically related to our line. I called a technician. He searched for the fault: locally, at the terminal, at the exchange. Finally, he said to me, ‘This breakdown is a total mystery to me. I’m sorry but I really don’t know what can be done about it.’ And just then, as he was ready to leave, the telephone rang. It was my husband calling. The technician jokingly said, ‘My God, there is a ghost in this house!’ I too laughed. He could not understand what had happened. As for me, my phone was working, and as long as the problem did not reoccur, that was all I cared about.

I must admit that all this felt absolutely weird and totally out of my grasp. I thought I was open to the wondrous. Had I not done years of yoga and Zen weekends in my youth? But this was bordering on the spooky. I felt out of my comfort zone. It was giving me goose bumps. Yet Jay was a very serious and intent type of person. She was also a medical doctor. I knew her. She would never invent this. Jay resumed:

"Everything went back to normal for a while. But a few days later, Vincent woke up in the morning, totally exhausted. He said to me, ‘Mum, I don’t know what’s happening, but I feel really tired this morning; do you mind if I stay home?’

"I replied, ‘You might be starting the flu or you may simply have had a bad night.’

"He answered, ‘It’s very strange. Last night, there were three shapes at the foot of my bed, and they radiated a very deep blue.’ With his hands, he outlined their shape. ‘And it felt as if they were speaking to me, without words, but I understood it all. They told me to follow them. They took me to a place that was so beautiful and peaceful, I just can’t describe it. They told me they were there to teach me and would often come back to take me to this place. While it was happening, I felt as if something was changing in my body. It’s too difficult to find the words to explain it. But I think it might be why I am tired. That’s all I could remember when I woke up.’

I told him not to worry, that he must have had a dream and to go back to bed and rest.

By this stage, I was riveted.

"A few days later, the same thing happened again. Edith, you know I’m a doctor. So I started asking Vincent many questions: ‘Have you had a fall? Did a cricket ball hit your helmet? Did you knock your head anywhere? Did you faint? Did you vomit? Are you light-headed? Did someone give you something to drink?’

No, nothing like that had happened.

Looking at me, Jay went on:

"I decided two things: to go and see his teacher and ask him about Vincent’s behaviour at school, and to send him to the doctor because I was afraid that it might be a sign of the start of a brain tumour.

"So a couple of days later, I took him to the doctor. The doctor said, ‘There is nothing wrong with him neurologically. He has good coordination; good tendon reflexes; he has normal superficial and deep sensibility; the eye examination shows nothing abnormal; there are no problems with balance, etc.’ I was only half reassured, but the doctor saw no need to have an electroencephalogram or a scanner at that stage. I watched Vincent closely.

"I also went to see his teacher, who reassured me: ‘Don’t worry about Vincent. He is a gentle child who loves acting the clown. He does it even if I tell him off. But on the whole, he is calm and attentive. He cooperates with the others. He might not be a genius, but he is a good student. I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. He is well regarded by everybody. There is nothing strange about his behaviour, but I can keep an eye on him if you want me to.’

And his teacher added, ‘Mind you, Vincent obviously loves animals. We have a python at school, and this python always chooses to curl up on his desk. Vincent seems very happy about it and lets the python stay there during class. He even does his homework beside him!’

Jay