I love Wayne Dyer! I love his wisdom and I simply can’t describe in words what I feel every time I listen to this wonderful man or when I read his books. And the story I will share with you today is a story I first heard from him.

In the Pain There Is Powerful Healing

“In South Africa, the Babemba tribe treats people who step out of line in a remarkable way. Instead of treating the person with judgment and punishment, the tribe treats the offender with love and appreciation.

If a member of the Babemba acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he or she is placed at the center of the village, alone. All work ceases, and the entire tribe gathers in a large circle around the violator.

Then each person in the tribe, regardless of age, speaks to the accused, one at a time, recalling all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his or her lifetime.

Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All the individual’s positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. No one is permitted to fabricate, exaggerate or be facetious about the accomplishments or the positive aspects of the person.

This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days and does not end until everyone is drained of every positive comment he or she can state about the person in question.

In the end, the circle is broken and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe with joyful celebration.”(Excerpted from “Contact, The First Four Minutes” by Leonard Sunin).

And here is a beautiful quote image describing the same act of love, compassion, and awareness:

Can you imagine something like this happening in our modern and civilized society? Do you believe we are capable of such a thing? All I know is that we are taught to point our finger at those who make mistakes, even if those people are our family, friends or children.

It’s true. In the pain there is healing

Why is it that we have to treat people this way?

Why is it that we are constantly judging one another, hurting them and making them feel inferior and worthless?

Why not try to understand their behaviors, why not go beyond it? Why not respond with love rather than reacting and judging?

You see, the more a person feels the need to attack others, to hurt them, cause them pain, and make them suffer the closer that person is to the edge, it is a sign that they are in real pain and that they can’t seem to find a way out. I personally have changed my attitude toward this type of people,

I became more compassionate toward their suffering, pain, anger, and frustration because I now know that there is something going on inside them, something that they don’t want to share with the world for one reason or another and they constantly feel the need to hurt those around them. There is something deep down inside them that is making them act the way they do.

It is a mask they wear because they have lost their faith, they feel the need to hide their pain and to hurt those around them and with the response they get, they are reassuring themselves that their behavior is right and that they are doing exactly what needs to be done, just what those around them deserve, because the world reacts to their behavior instead of responding and they will continue their journey on the path of self-destruction.

It is a way for them to punish themselves. They see themselves as failures, as people that are not entitled to beautiful relations, they are not entitled to love. They see themselves as not being worthy and whether they are conscious of it this or not, they are punishing themselves for this behavior.

If somebody is causing me pain, treating me in a bad way just because they choose to, if they get mad and frustrated about a simple thing that I do “wrong”, I know that it is not because of me and what I did, but because the pain is already in them and they project that on me, they want me to take blame for their problems and frustration. It’s now very important how you choose to respond to this situation.

You can either choose to make it your problem or you can choose to respond to it and see it as something that does not belong to you. It’s like a present given to you by somebody. If you refuse to accept it, it is not yours. I love how Viktor Frankl talks about this in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Between what happens to us, the stimulus and our response to that stimulus, there is a space, and in that space lies is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

It might be possible that these people don’t know that the problem is inside them or maybe they know but don’t want to take responsibility for it. Believe me, no matter how bad somebody is treating you, no matter how bad they make/ made you suffer if you respond with love instead of reacting to their behavior, what you will discover about them and especially about yourself will amaze you.

Can you believe that from the viewpoint of the human genome, we are 99.9% identical and in spite of that we choose to focus our attention on that 0.1%? Is this insane or what?

Because it is easier, we prefer to focus our attention on our differences, to criticize, complain and condemn rather than trying to see, trying to understand that we are all part of a whole, that we are all one.

Why can’t we live in a world where individuals help one another, why is it that we can’t accept the fact that we are all one and what we see in the world is only a reflection of ourselves, is only our perception, a reflection of our thoughts. We are not who and what we think we are and the world we see is not the real world.

Each and every one of us sees the world from their point of view, from their own experiences, their own perspective and nobody really sees the world as it really is.

I often wonder how the world really looks like, because I am aware that what I see is only a reflection of who I am, a reflection of my own thoughts, experiences. But no matter how the world looks like, all we need to know is that like attracts like and with a kind word we can transform our lives and of those in need. Kind words have a creative force,

“A power that concurs in the building up of all that is good and energy that showers blessings upon the world”. Lawrence G. Lovasik.

~love, Luminita💫

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