Resentments

**Dear God, I have a resentment towards a person that I want to be free of. So, I am asking you to give this person everything I want for myself. Help me to feel compassionate understanding and love for this person. I pray that they will receive everything they need. Thank you God for your help and strength with this resentment. (BB, Freedom from Bondage: 552)
These instructions are for the above prayer (Big Book, Freedom from Bondage, p. 552): 'If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free...Even when you don't really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.'

Resentment is the number one offender. Harboring a resentment is like drinking poison & expecting the other person to die from it. Not gonna happen. One of my hot button character defects is having expectations. Geez, I am working on that one but still fall into the old way of thinking & expectations tend to be my thing. Expectations lead to resentments.

Resentments stem from anywhere. For instance, the one that still crops up from childhood when I was 5-6 & that mean, spiteful brat (evil little bitch) broke into our apartment in the Bronx to steal some of my dolls & their clothing; than had the nerve to lean out the window a few floors above(no, I didn't want her to tumble out as a child... or even now) to shout,”Look, Look, I have your clues” (*eye roll* brat attended Catholic school & didn't know they were clothes not clues... *tisk tisk* hello, fool, clues are what can be found on Scooby Doo or in a Nancy Drew novel. Geez.

*Sigh* Yes, resentments are a way of life but it is not fundamentally the preeminent way for me to live my life.

Holding resentments gnaws away @ my insides – infecting my spirit, undermining my thoughts, corrupting my feelings, infiltrating my very soul as it floods every fiber of my essence with carcinogens.

Fostering resentments also affects my social life making it arduous to construct healthy relationships. My emotions were stunted from the atrocities of my childhood & my execrable adolescence.

Focusing on my spiritual existence allows me to scrutinize myself & gives me the opportunity of getting to know myself better. Concentrating on my spiritual presence does not mean, I am genuflecting @ church, it means I am embracing a mystical, ambrosial, transcendental, omniscient essence.
I may engage in meditation, listen to soothing music, do some yoga to reach within to ponder on those debilitating resentments that strangle the heck out of me.

I have to catch my resentments & let them go w/o lashing out @ others. I have to learn to forgive not so much to give individuals who may have hurt me – real or imagined – “a free pass” but for me to grow & allow the sunlight of the spirit to nourish me!

I discovered this amazing piece on resentments & absolutely love it:

“The moment you start to resent a person, you become his slave. He controls your dreams, absorbs your digestion, robs you of your peace of mind and goodwill, and takes away the pleasure of your work. He ruins your religion and nullifies your prayers. You cannot take a vacation without his going along. He destroys your freedom of mind and hounds you wherever you go. There is no way to escape the person you resent. He is with you when you are awake. He invades your privacy when you sleep. He is close beside you when you drive your car and when you are on the job. You can never have efficiency or happiness. He influences even the tone of your voice. He requires you to take medicine for indigestion, headaches, and loss of energy. He even steals you last moment of consciousness before you go to sleep. So—if you want to be a slave—harbor your resentments!”