Ruthlessness

Dear Friends,

Our Theme for September is:

September is finally here and our TENTH! 🙂 in-person ISM Retreat is only a week or so away! 🙂 As can be seen from the Flyer, Ruthlessness is one of the central topics of the Retreat and I am most looking forward to learning more about it in a friendly exploration. If I have to single out for myself something, I am very eager to learn more how laughing on my folly helps with my Ruthlessness. From the Flyer:

Yet, ruthlessness starts with oneself, and so it does not mean telling everybody off – though the idea might be compelling at times 🙂 – and it does not need to be grim or harsh.

“Compress time by learning to laugh at your own folly. Only then will you come to realise that ruthlessness and unconditional love are synonymous.”

Enjoy Lady Elizabeth’s deep and strong sharing!

With all my love,
(BH)
Milen

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Dear Friends,

Happy Month! Happy September!!

Spring is in the air, for some – I miss it! – and the sense I get around me here in Europe is that summer is drawing to an end. I hear the lament, “I have only 5 days summer holidays left!” As if, all of a sudden, a season could end “just like that”! Lol! An unusual experience for me as the temperature has dropped by a mere few degrees from the constant 30’s C – oh, and we have had some rare rain 🙂

So, as we move into this seeming transition between seasons, our theme to look out for for September is “ruthlessness”.

I am no stranger to working with this concept as I have walked into many traps in my lifetime where I have not heeded the TRUE meaning of this word.

For example, check the dictionary definitions of “ruthless”: –
merciless, pitiless, cruel, heartless, hard-hearted, hard, cold-hearted, stony, with a heart of stone, cold-blooded, etc etc.

Whereas the etymology of “Ruthless” comes from the old German word “ru” that meant “pity” or the Middle English verb “rewen,” which meant “to feel pity”.

Therefore, to be ruth-less is to be pity-less.

So for me to practice ruth-lessness, I need FIRST to take MY-SELF to the point of NO pity. Only then can I be of service!

“RUTHLESSNESS MUST BEGIN WITH YOURSELF. ONLY WHEN RUTHLESSNESS HAS REPLACED SELF-PITY CAN YOU ACHIEVE THE SOBRIETY NEEDED IN ORDER TO DISCRIMINATE WITH WISDOM.”

At the beginning of my teaching career on this Path, Théun frequently admonished me about the NEED for my being ruth-less. And the critical way he got the message through to me was that being ruthless does NOT mean being heart-less, as per socially conditioned approaches. That ruthlessness without heart is none other than cruelty! And therein lay the solution to my dilemma in working with people.

In many instances when I could have been of service I had held back so as not to be “cruel”. With hindsight my LACK of action was in and of itself wherein the cruelty lay.

But the biggest lesson in all of this is that if I want to be of service, I NEED first of all to detach – and to do that I need to be ruthless with myself! If I do not act in this state of awareness of detaching, I will identify with the other person and any guidance I provide thereafter will of consequence be muddy! Muddied with my own stuff! Not very life supportive, is it?

“Real love is born of ruthlessness, which starts with detachment — a detachment that enables the hunter to hunt his prey successfully. The hunter is able to be ruthless and detached because he knows himself so well, and he knows for a fact that he does not plunder his world.”

This past week a very close family member W was sharing with me how her dad T was about to visit her to share the shortfall in his income and to seek support. W is a single mother who lives from month to month, and she shared that her 80 plus year old parents’ financial situation is putting her in a very difficult position. She was in a huge dilemma over this.

I felt the pull to help, very strongly. I was observing the conflicting emotions in me as she was sharing. The biggest pull was pity for both parties. I had to make a conscious effort to detach, knowing that “the greatest crime one can commit against any human being is to pity them”! It is cruel and arrogant to pity someone as not being able to handle their challenges on their own.

In this case I know the background to the financial challenges. W was heavily into drugs and drink, and she nearly died a couple of times. And who was equally in denial in his own way and landed up enabling the addictions? A most well-meaning financially successful papa who kept taking pity on his daughter! So having bailed out W financially on countless occasions until W was at death’s door – once again – his son stepped in, took charge and got W into rehab, again! This time she woke up.

Today she celebrates 15 years clean and sober.

But… the ripple effects are still here.

It is not up to me to interrupt and interfere in their journey of adjustment. So by the end of W’s sharing, I could say to her exactly that. With all my heart. “Part of me wants to step in and “save” you and your dad, to take over your challenges. But how arrogant, how cruel will I have been?”

I could see all the ensuing emotions this triggered in W and she ended the conversation with her deepest gratitude for me making her big enough to tackle her own challenges.

“RUTHLESSNESS AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE ARE SYNONYMOUS.”

So this month I am now working with ruthlessness of myself to see what chickens are coming home to roost in my own life …with the awareness of course not to feel sorry for myself along the way! 😉

Have fun with the theme this month, my friends!

With all my love and light-ness,
Elizabeth