Tell Giselle: After a betrayal, then what?

A person who learned some ugly facts about a friend wanted to know why it is some people can overcome a betrayal while others can never seem to get over it.

G: Betrayals are like taxes and death in that they come with a price. Betrayals have the added feature of upending the innocence and trust in current and future transactions involving love, family and friendship. Though the specifics of all betrayals carry their own unique signatures, they do share the components of confusion and uncertainty.

Those come in the form of the question: now what do I do? Some people are more capable of answering that question sooner rather than later, and with a greater sense of conviction that they have arrived at a plan or answer that they can live with. Part of those abilities comes from having similar past experiences, but a larger factor has to do with one’s capacity for forgiveness.

Forgiveness, I have come to realize, is the most powerful virtue. It can help one get through, and fully recover from, unpleasant/unwelcome, painful situations and even severe traumas. Forgiveness’s force is what makes it possible to take the suffering and/or shock of any life tumult and have it morphed alchemically — diminished in size to a scar.

What had once been seemingly intolerable heartache can be the rocket fuel of valuable change. Any painful moment then will be seen as an opportunity for what it may take to elevate one’s spiritual growth toward greater wisdom.

How this transformation occurs requires both self-honesty and humility. Here’s one way to consider the alchemical process: think back upon any time in your life when you deeply disappointed a parent, mentor, friend or lover. The failure on your part, to display any quality that had previously held you in high regard or seated you deep in their heart, may simply have been out of your ignorance, rather than out of malice.

Your “misstep” that caused them to question their trust in you or loving feelings toward you, could have been because you were being inconsiderate, thoughtless or just plain distracted. Your own issues and ignorance just got in the way of treating them better than you had.

But whatever it is that influenced you at that time, that resulted in you not being the more ideal human to them, still has the same effect: hurt feelings.

Betrayals hurt as much as they do because they often come out of the blue. The suddenness shakes us out of a norm that we had grown familiar with or had acclimated to, and was our default setting for functioning in relative stability.

Those who are able to shorten the time of being in the feeling of instability and disorientation are the ones who are willing to see that they too have been imperfect in their behavior. It is that capacity for self-forgiveness that enables any of us to be able to quickly forgive others for what missteps they have made.

Without that grounding in self-forgiveness — the recognition that despite whatever goodness we want to believe we possess we are still going to make many wrong or ill-informed decisions – we are limited in our capacity to grow in peace.

So, after any betrayal it will behoove you to rapidly step out of yourself, your pain/shock/fear/disappointment/confusion, and immerse yourself in the awareness that what is happening here is way more than what you think or feel about it right then. This is because a betrayal is a reflection/example of a misstep that requires at least two or more people. Each player, including you, had a part in creating or supporting a dynamic that is ultimately bringing more Truth to light, and that light is what sets you free, aka holds the keys to your wisdom.

Therefore, welcome any betrayal that becomes exposed, as the spiritual gift that it can be.

That is not to say “go out and be a betrayer,” or “be complacent in enabling betrayal” or “actively cheerleading betrayal.” Rather it is to say that in order to receive the spiritual gift you must first acknowledge that within the sudden polar shift of your reality is a new and improved reality being birthed through self-forgiveness.

It is through your understanding of your self-forgiveness that you will come to know that no matter the size of the betrayal, whether enormous or slight, you can readily see yourself (at some point in your upbringing and evolution) being reflected in the weakness of character or spiritual insight in the other person who manifested the hurt.

Email Giselle with your question at GiselleMassi@gmail.com or send mail: Giselle Massi, P.O. Box 991, Evergreen, CO 80437. For more info and to read previous columns, go to www.gisellemassi.com.