Introduction
In this session, Q’uo addresses the problem of the stubborn persistence of certain wounded affects, in this case, those of disappointment and resentment. An attempt is made to uncover the structure of the psyche such that these issues could pose such a great difficulty for those who seek to heal and to become whole. While those of Q’uo do not feel it possible to give a complete answer in the form of a formula for overcoming these wounds, a few gentle suggestions about how one might address the condition are offered.
Group Question
How does one heal disappointment and resentment?
Channeled Message
(Steve channeling)
I am Q’uo. I am Q’uo, and we greet you in the love and in the light, through this instrument. We are most delighted to be with you upon a day when you have put the yearning of your hearts on the line, and asked us to blend our yearnings with yours in the hope that this communication across density might have a healing effect for you who, within third density, reach out in that anguish of third density which, we find, virtually no one can escape. We are pleased to offer our thoughts, but ask, as we always do, that you exercise your own discrimination, and to bring what energies we have to offer you to the athanor of your own open heart where you may determine the quality of our offerings according to you own powers of discrimination. We trust that you are prepared to do this for us, and upon that basis, we feel free to speak.
The question that you have put to us is one which we find to be highly relevant to those who seek within your dimension, and who share the character of the experience that has become typical of your particular planetary context. We are asked to address how it might be that love may provide healing when dealing with the affects of disappointment and of resentment.
We would begin by pointing out that, as we have said before to this group, love itself may have two meanings. It may have the meaning of an ontological principle central to the creation, or it may have the meaning of an activity which you, as a third density being, may undertake, or an experience which you may undergo.
Now, as we have always said, the two concepts are not identical, but they are fundamentally related in certain very intricate ways. And we would suggest to you that the query which you have posed to us, relating to the apparently negative affects of disappointment and resentment, requires that we bring these two concepts of love — the ontological and the more particular activity of loving — together in a state of convergence. For, we would say, to begin with, that, when we talk about love as a healing force, we are referring to the ontological meaning of that term, whereas, when we talk about love as an activity, we are referring to a particular and optional undertaking which you, as a third density being may find appropriate and may find yourself called to in respect of other selves: other selves that, it is said, you love or have loved.
The experience of disappointment in love can be a very compelling one, as indeed, can be the experience of resentment, which arises when an expectation formulated within the experience of love has been disappointed and a wound taken to the one who has loved cuts very deep.
We will address ourselves first to the less intense form of the wound of which we speak, and that is what is expressed in the term “disappointment.” We would suggest, in the first place, that disappointment itself relates to an expectation that has not been met. One says one is disappointed when something one thought should occur or ought to have occurred has in fact not occurred, and this, in the context of which we speak, refers to the behavior of one whose reciprocal relation to the love which you have offered through your conduct has not materialized, or not materialized in the manner in which you had hoped or feel you would have reason to hope.
And so your love has been disappointed. And in your loving, you have allowed an openness to a circumstance which the expectation of which has left you vulnerable to being wounded. And you have taken this wound inward.
Now, here we come upon that sense of love which shears off from the active engagement which you have engendered in your conduct, to the ontological structure of your own particular being, for we will say to you that that being is a being of love, ontologically speaking. It is a being in which love is not just a constituent factor, but we would go so far as to say, the primary constituent factor. You are a being formed out of the very clay, so to speak, of love itself. And, when it comes to pass that a wound is taken in the love which it has been yours to project in the world of manifestation to another being of love has found itself unable to achieve the hoped-for resonance in that meeting of love with love, the wound or disappointment can resonate all the way down to the core of the being. And, yes, it is true that the degree of that wound has a certain proportionality to the degree of love that was felt in the first place.The more the love, the greater the potential hurt or disappointment when that love has not been met with love reciprocal.
So, one is asking, therefore: How can wounds of love be healed by love itself? Is there something one can do in the modality of loving which heals that wound that has sunk deeper than that modality of loving can, at the time of the effort expended to heal the wound, reach?
And we would tell you that, though we are not experts in the matter by any means, it has been our experience that that is well nigh impossible to do.For, that which is more superficial cannot have a primordial effect upon that which lies deeper.
No doubt the effort has been made, and made again and again. And yet it seems that there is something resilient and resistant about such wounds as reach all the way down to the core when a mind/body/spirit complex, such as you are, has discovered the wound, and attempts to be the agency of the healing.
Now, this will bring up the question of how will fits into that agency, and will tell you that is a very big question, and we are not prepared to address it at this moment. But we will leave that simply as an element at play.
We perhaps achieve a deeper understanding of the extent to which disappointment in love can reach all the way down to the core of the being when dealing with the other affect you have brought to our attention, that being resentment.
Now, resentment is an affect, yes. But we will say of resentment that it is also something a little bit more, a little bit different from the range of ordinary affects because it has a way of insinuating itself into the manner in which the being itself is oriented, in the first instance, toward itself. And we might call resentment, in the sense in which we intend here, a kind of spiritual scar. It’s something a little different from a scar, in the sense that it contains a kind of energy. But it contains a kind of energy in such a way that it is ill inclined to move: it is stuck. And, in that configuration, it motivates a repetitive effort to get unstuck, but one that seems to go in an endless circle.
The manner in which this is experienced is that what are recognized as feelings of resentment bubble up to the surface of consciousness where they find expression in a variety of ways, very often in phantasmic ways, as imaginings of how one might right the wrong tend to populate the mind. One feels that the universe is not quite right, because the way in which one is integrated primordially with that universe in the aspect of ontological love has been somehow disrupted. One could easily think that the scar of wounded love has taken over a good portion of the being, so as to choke off the capacity to draw from the infinite resource of love itself as one sallies forth into the world, meeting, perhaps not only the one believed to be the source of one’s wound, but a great many others as well, so that one’s whole field of experience bears the mark and coloration of this disturbance.
So, we have gone to rather great lengths to diagnose the condition, and we will tell you that, in our understanding, that is the easy part. For the healing of scar tissue cannot be superimposed as an act of an agency that does not itself reach all the way down to love primordial. Healing in this case cannot proceed without reaching down to love primordial, so that it is love itself which does the healing.
And while we know of no technique by means of which this can be accomplished, we hope that there are yet words of inspiration which we may offer, but we propose to make that attempt not through this instrument, but through the one known as Claire. We are those of Q’uo.
(Claire channeling)
I am Q’uo and I am with this instrument. In some ways, it is easier to work with more attention-grabbing feelings, such as betrayal or outrage. These feelings benefit from being intentionally worked with through actions, such as allowing the feeling to wash over oneself to reveal its nuances, to exhaust itself and then to fall away. Through a reasonable finite number of efforts, one can learn to release the feeling of betrayal or of outrage. Yet, after these feelings have been released, the scar remains.
In attempting to reach down to that ontological core where the scar can be softened, it helps to have a sense of the expectation that was disappointed. After all, many of your expectations, especially the ones that produce disappointment and resentment in an ongoing way that resist healing, the kinds of expectations at play in these situations are expectation for a meaningful mutual construction of an experience together, perhaps a life together, of a relationship with a fellow in which each affirms to the other the existence of the Creator within the other. We may affirm to you that this kind of expectation is not itself without merit. There are undoubtedly relationships that you maintain that you bring this expectation to bear upon. And in fact the expectation becomes the constitution, the foundation of the relationship. It exists because of this mutual expectation that this relationship will be a center of spiritual gravity for those in relationship. So you can see how the baffling of this expectation becomes such a deep wound. And that the loss of expected fulfillment, the loss of a future itself must be grieved.
In this regard, the grief that one must work through resembles grief over someone who has in fact left your illusion. But what complicates the grief is that the person is still in fact in the illusion. And so on the one hand, one grieves what cannot be, and simultaneously hopes that maybe yet it can be still, in some future that one can yet imagine and also dares not hope to imagine. It is a fundamentally confusing experience. Letting go of a possibility that one can see very well remains yet possible is difficult when that possibility itself, when clung to, perpetuates the chafing of the scar, prevents the wound itself from healing.
How does one allow an other self who was to be a partner, a spiritual partner to the self, how does one allow that other self to go on independently of the self, dissolving that partnership that was to be, fully and completely? In truth, the full and complete dissolution of this partnership that was to be may not occur within your lifetime. Indeed, the catalyst that bears upon you is always more than you will have the chance to process in your lifetime. Healing the wound itself fully and completely may not be the goal to aim from. Rather, it can remain on the horizon while you attend to the grief as it arises and subsides. And arises yet again. And then perhaps eventually subsides. Those of you who have lost a loved one from the illusion itself will know that grief never really ends, nor is the loss, the emptiness produced by the loss, properly filled by a new fullness that may arise in life, as joyful as that fullness may be.
But we do not think that these kinds of wounds should be thought of as disabling in a spiritual sense. The loss of what was to be is also the promise of what may yet become in a different form. The expectation you had for that relationship was not, at bottom, unreasonable. The reasonableness of that expectation is why the disappointment cuts so do, why the resentment lingers. That reasonable expectation can be brought into view, can be appreciated more clearly for what it is, can be crystallized as a promise of some future and then pursued with this clearer vision in view. This is not easy work, nor does it alone heal that wound, since grief, as we have said, has a way of lingering. So we encourage you to accept the fact of your disappointment and the fact of your resentment. And to find a distance from which the individual in whom you are disappointed and toward whom you feel your resentment, a distance from which you can still wish the best for that individual without reopening the wound. Perhaps this is the most we can suggest to you by way of loving in action. And at this time, we would transmit our contact to the instrument known as Jeremy. We are Q’uo.
(Jeremy channeling)
We are those of Q’uo and commune at this time with this group through this instrument and wish to build on the idea of acceptance, the role in which acceptance is involved. It is in a way the opposite of expectation. It is well to examine your expectation, to turn it about and view it from those different angles that place one in a different setting of relation to the object of expectation. In doing so, you are engaging in the first steps of an acceptance that can drive down to the core of one’s heart.
For what you are accepting is not precisely limited to the disappointment, and is some distance from the phenomenon of resentment as we of Q’uo have tried to define it. For what is an expectation, and what role does it play in the seeker’s path, in the evolution towards more refined states of consciousness? Yes, your relationships are involved in this growth, and so it must be reckoned with that the setback of the expectation spurned or disappointed is very much a setback in the manifesting project of love.
You are not incarnate to always be satisfied, and this you know quite well. And yet, how it can frustrate to have the idea of the self that the expectation rested upon dashed. And how difficult it is to release that possibility as we explicated through the one known as Claire. You have brought this expectation into your heart; otherwise it would not sting in its frustration, and we would offer that the positive use of disappointment, regardless of whether it metastasizes into that redundancy of searching for resolution that resentment reflects, is in recognizing the contingency of the self being built up.
We give this instrument a vision of the Jenga tower with the block removed. You were so intent on building upon an expectation, of relying upon something outside of the self, and of working on something greater than this expectation, something that the object of the expectation made possible. You must reckon, we would suggest, with this overextension. It is not that grief is inappropriate; it is often the case that the grief is slightly misplaced from where it is most grounded, for you are not simply disappointed with another at the end of the day, and you do not fumble about for a closure that retreats from every attempt to grasp it. You have a role in this.
It was somehow your misjudging, your inattention to a missing block in the tower, and you have been pulled back from your aspiration in some way. In short, my friends, you grieve for yourself; you are disappointed with yourself. And while you may not resent the self, what keeps the cycle of explanation that one reiterates in one’s mind over and over and yet over again, but the way to square it with the self? Because it is not solely located within the other, but also in the self.
We have hinted at the idea that a more full-fledged idea of healing love obtain and bubble forth from the spring that has dried. This is not within your perfect control any more than the object of expectation so [disappointing to you] was under your thumb. And therefore, you must abide in [an] alternative relation to your aspiration. That form of acceptance will usually, my friends, be mediated by some amount of time.
Time itself is a mystery in that it seems to foment transformation in an unpredictable manner. That is at the root of the contingency of self and the disappointment of one’s goals. The pieces fall into place on their terms. The wise seeker understands this, and yet what can be done if one finds oneself in a chaotic mess? There is nothing to be done in such a situation, and disappointment brings this into quite stark relief–so stark that the retreat of resentment may often be a part of healing.
There is no concrete expenditure of energy in the realm of consciousness that can sustain itself indefinitely because it is all driven by the shifting winds of the will. And it is with the will, with the perseverance through a confusing illusion, that one wrestles. After all, my friends, plenty of disappointments in your life have not degenerated into gnawing resentment. So there is a vast spectrum of ways in which one recovers ground under one’s feet.
This makes it very difficult to give any concrete direction to the painful yearning behind this question to us. We could simply tell you to accept, but this is not doing justice to your confused state. Accept what? The self? The other? Have I not strove to do this at each and every turn? Have I not bent over backwards to make this striving towards something greater, something I looked to my brother or asked my sister to participate in? Is my will insufficient?
Well, on one point, we can be very clear, and that is that the proof is in the pudding. Your will is insufficient in certain projects of striving towards greater vistas of awareness. The acceptance goes not just to the self as is, but in the same sense that the disappointment and resentment calls to an impossible outcome, your acceptance of self must call to the most possible self, the deepest self. There is a regrouping to be accomplished when one is fixed on sallying forth into the great way of life.
Nothing is more troubling than to turn around and retread one’s steps. Try, at times, to feel into that frustration, not simply with the other but with the self, for there, we would suggest, there are openings into the undying fountains of love that by [their] very nature waking conscious goals paper over. The overextension of one’s will is just as instructive as the lesson of applying too little will, and at a certain point, one concludes that the object of disappointment or of resentment was perhaps pre-incarnatively designed to teach this.
Now, we would ask your forgiveness in that this insight we have provided will never remove the sting of disappointment in the grinding agony of resentment completely. But allow time to be a friend. You cannot predict the transformative event, and this is for the absolute good.
Faith, my friends: faith will help you to abide in suffering, to work with Brother Pain. And we should also point out that there are methods for greasing the skids to the deep self, as it were. Meditation, contemplation, releasing oneself from a fixed resolution and opening up will get one there at some point. And until that occurs, do not lose hope in the power of vulnerability, in the role that other selves can play in their friendship with you. As long as you can continue to let the candle of love burn, you will not let this entire phenomenon lead you down a different path, and that, my friends, is the operative concern for us of Q’uo.
With that said, we have taken far too long with this instrument, and with apologies to the group, pass our contact to the one known as Steve. We are those of Q’uo.
(Steve channeling)
I am Q’uo, and I am with this instrument. We are well satisfied that our thoughts have been adequately conveyed by this group at this time, and therefore we ask of this instrument no clean-up duty, if we may so put it. We are grateful for the fact that you have called us to your circle of seeking, and would look forward to our next opportunity to be of service in those humble ways which we are capable of providing.
I am Q’uo. Adonai, my friends.