Stepping Back From Toxicity

There are times when it becomes more painful to stay in toxic relationships than to leave them. It's a shifting of consciousness thing, a place where you end up with two people who are on such completely different perspectives that it is almost like they become strangers speaking foreign languages.

I am an absolute believer in being the trooper, making things work in relationships, and being a true chameleon, I can do it. But there is a time when it is no longer conducive to any kind of quality of life and you have to let go.

This is not an anger thing, this is not an "I said this, she/he said that" thing, it really has nothing to do with fights, misunderstandings, or personal levels of contentment and satsifaction that have not been reached. Those are communication issues, resolution issues, issues of a different nature.

This is a different thing entirely. This is when the person across the table really is a stranger. This is when, despite your every honest effort, the person the person across from you will not accept personal responsibility. This is when it is not possible to speak in the same "language," you become too foreign.

This happens alot on a spiritual path. Meditation and other spiritual practices raise your level of awareness. At first, alot of people get cocky about that, which itself isn't healthy. But eventually, when you've practiced for a long time, instead of judgment (I'm better than you because I am "spiritual"), you become compassionate - and this is the place where that foreignness starts to seep through.

In a state of compassion it becomes painful to watch people watch people sabotage themselves all the time. In the state of compassion it becomes painful to watch people bury themselves behind drugs, or rhetoric, or alcohol, or whatever it is they are hiding behind. In the state of compassion it becomes painful to watch people obliterate themselves instead of love themselves. And at some point that painfulness becomes toxic.

Change is an integral part of life and it is our personal responsibility to change and grow with life experience, to reach towards the experience of joy and happiness in life. You can't change someone else and, ideally, you shouldn't even want to change someone else. But it is the point when you can so clearly see that they refuse to change the things that hurt them that you have to step back, step away.

Sometimes you just have to step back from the toxicity, and give yourself that chance to reach towards the experience of joy and happiness in your own life. Really ythe only thing you can do is to stay in your compassion, be graceful, be kind, be compassionate - and let them go.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2009 Darshan F Jessop