From the book “Bonds That Make Us Free”, C. Terry Warner taught:
We are seeking to understand the source of our troubled, afflicted emotions and attitudes and the way they foul our relationships with others. Here is the clue: those times when we feel most miserable, offended or angry are invariably the occasions when we are also most absorbed in ourselves and most anxious and suspicious and fearful, or in some other way concerned about ourselves. Why is this? Why do we get so caught up in ourselves and ready to take offence at what others do?
Going Against Our Sense of Right and Wrong
To answer these questions, we first need to learn about something we all experience but seldom notice. I call it self-betrayal.
Often we have a sense that something is right or wrong for us to do—a sense, for example, that we should or shouldn’t treat some other person or living thing in a certain way. We have only to pay attention in our everyday experiences to notice ourselves having such feelings about how we ought to act.
We might, for example, feel called upon to smile when someone smiles at us, choose words carefully so that person can better understand what we are trying to say, help a child who is having trouble, keep from cutting across someone’s new lawn, share what we are eating with someone else in the family, visit a person who’s had a recent set-back or who’s simply lonely, or let another driver move into the flow of traffic. Those of us who live in an urbanized or personal world may have gotten out of the habit of acknowledging the needs and feelings of others in public settings. But even in such settings, we can often catch ourselves having a sense of what we ought to do, if we just pay attention.
Self-betrayal occurs when we go against the feelings I have just described—when we do to another what we sense we should not do, or don’t do what we sense we should. Thus self-betrayal is a sort of moral self-compromise, a violation of our own personal sense of how we ought to be and what we ought to do. For example:
~Entering her workplace, a senior manager sees discouragement in the face of a groundskeeper and feels she ought to reach out briefly and express her appreciation and support. Instead she hurries on and to do her business.
~A busy man driving home late at night notices the gas gauge dropping near empty. Almost perceptively, but unmistakably he feels he ought to fill the tank for his wife so she won’t have to do it the next day. But he doesn’t.
~Despite repeated scoldings and many warnings from her mother, a teenage girl has left her room in an awful mess. The exasperated mother feels impressed that instead of berating her daughter again she should welcome her cheerfully and listen to her concerns. But when the girl enters the house, the mother finds herself using the same blistering words as always. . . .
Our Living Connection with Others
From where does our sense of right and wrong come? In general from other beings around us—-other people and even animals (and I believe God, through faith. . . .) For example , in the expressions on others’ faces, the tone of their voices, and their posture and gestures, we find indications of their emotional needs and feelings, and this gives us a sense of how we ought to treat them. To recognize another individual as a person, even if we don’t see a face or hear a voice, is to know that we should treat him or her differently from the way we would treat a mannequin or a statue. There’s nothing mysterious about any of this; perceiving the cues or signals from others that guide us in how to treat them is basic to just about all we do in life. It is as commonplace, almost, as breathing.
Often we call our sense of right and wrong conscience. . . .
C. Terry Warner, ‘Bonds That Make Us Free’ ~Arbinger Institute, Incorporated. p.19-21 – continued
