Resentment: how to overcome yourself and rise above it

Resentment is your inner psychological state — one you created for yourself.

If resentment lies on your heart like a stone, open your heart and throw your stone away!

You were sent to settle a matter, yet instead of a solution you brought back resentment — go again, and I hope you will have the sense to bring back a solution.

A man once came to see me about his business, which somehow never gets off the ground.

"I want to bring goods into Ukraine from another country; there are sponsors ready to invest money in it. And I had practically settled everything. But driving with one sponsor from one town to another, we drank rather a lot on the way while talking things over, and quarrelled. So badly that the sponsor simply threw me out of the car halfway home. I had to hitchhike 400 kilometres home alone, drunk, with practically no money — through mud and cold. I cannot forgive him that dreadful way he treated me. How could he do that to me? Since then he has rung me five times a day for over a month, and I never picked up the phone. Now he no longer calls, and the other sponsors seem to have melted away, vanished. My question to you: how and where can I find a proper sponsor for my business?"

"Tell me, has your resentment passed — toward your would-be sponsor for treating you that way?"

"No! I wanted to punish him somehow, to make him reflect that he treated me wrongly, unfairly."

"Do you know that the offended party always loses! In the old days, of course, women could manipulate men with resentment and coax a thousand apologies and costly gifts from a suitor. She had only to pout her lips at him and lower her eyes, and off he would run for the casket of emeralds. Today's men will hardly fall for such a game. He will see through it by the second attempt at the latest. And it is no manipulation to try on a sponsor in your case. You only lose by it. Do you not understand that you need first of all to build your business, not sulk at him! Your sponsor is doing splendidly without you as it is. Yet you switched on your resentment instead of getting down to business and negotiating with him. It would all have worked out long ago — but no, resentment lies on your heart like a stone. Perhaps you do not need this business at all; go and work for a living — on a building site, sweeping streets, scrubbing toilets. Small wonder they say: resentful people are made to carry water."

"In prison, for instance, there is a whole caste of the "offended" among the inmates. Washing toilets, sweeping floors, sleeping by the latrines — that is just what they do. Some land in that caste at once, by the nature of their charge; others drag themselves down to that level through resentment and through empty words they could not answer for before real men."

Either way, they are utterly degraded people. You are not in prison, of course, but on the whole the rules of life are the same everywhere.

And you, not picking up the phone to your sponsor for a month — how are you any different from them? What have you been doing all this time? And where is your road leading?

"Well, I never knew that the offended party always loses. I never thought that my resentment was holding my business back; it all happened in the heat of the moment. But how am I to resolve this resentment — I cannot just close my eyes to such treatment and behave as if he were right. Or forget it — it lives in my memory all the same. And I cannot forgive it."

"In your situation, you must choose what matters more to you now: proving you are right to this man — demanding that his conscience and pity for you show themselves, so that he pats you on the head, wipes your snivels, and funds your business. Depending, of course, on his inclinations, that might even work — you know what I mean. Or, come what may, remaining a real man and building your business! Building it come what may, I repeat! Talking to him, by all means, pointing out that he is wrong — but without the snivels — and rising above your resentment, for you have a goal: the business."

And what can you prove to him when you are on different levels now? He has money — he can invest it anywhere, with or without you; you have none, you are merely the bearer of an idea. When you have built your business and earned your way to his level, then you may prove things to him. Right now you are simply letting your chance slip.

A 36-year-old woman named Irina came to me, unable to start a family of her own. The Tarot spread showed the problem reaching back to childhood, bound up with her stepfather. When Irina was 5, her mother divorced her father and married another man. That is how Irina acquired a stepfather.

"How did you live, I ask, for your stepfather comes up in the cards as a good man — nothing suggests he ever wronged you in any way."

"Oh, he never wronged me. On the contrary, he did everything for me. He loved me as his own child and tried to be a good father. He bought me all sorts of toys and took me to all kinds of entertainments. Yet for some reason I was capricious about everything. Whatever he did, it was all wrong! Everything seemed bad to me — not mine, not right. I have carried this feeling of resentment since childhood: that he was not mine, not my own kin, so whatever he did was wrong for me."

"Do you understand, Irina, that you still apply this resentment toward what is not yours, this capriciousness, to the men around you? It is your pride since childhood, your selfishness toward other people — and your payment for that sin is loneliness. Until you change, you will stay alone. Perhaps you should start treating people differently."

A woman named Svetlana came about discord with her husband. I lay the Tarot and see her husband working long and hard, coming home late, exhausted. The wife misses his attention, switches on her jealousy, and aims reproaches at him; I ask why she does it — when there is no infidelity in reality?

"It hurts me that he gives me no attention at all — only work, food, and whatever he needs. While I am here alone with the child, worn out by all of it."

"Wait, I say — the Tarot cards show that it is you, Irina, who switches on this cold and frost in the relationship toward your husband, while he still does not understand what you are punishing him for. For now."

"Yes, you are right — he vanishes into work for days, and coming home weary, he barely speaks to me. I serve dinner and leave, because of the tension, to sleep in another room. I consider it a way of punishing him. Let him sleep there alone, since he came home so sullen and pays me no attention. So I sleep by myself and turn away from him. And he does nothing to change things. I don't know what to expect from him next — it has been four months like this."

"Imagine: you are young, 34 to 36, yet you already sleep apart in separate rooms, and for such a long time. And who arranged it first, who set it up this way? Was it not you, Irina? This is exactly the case when your attempt to manipulate through resentment leads nowhere. Four months have passed, yet still you cannot get from your husband either an apology or a casket of emeralds; like you, he has retreated into himself and waits to see what you will do next. He does not understand what you are trying to achieve. He does not understand what he should apologise to you for, or why he should beg forgiveness of you, who sit at home amusing the children and cooking, for whatever it is. What should he be giving you, when he hands over his whole pay to you as it is? Perhaps you do not love him and want to break with him? Then all his efforts to support the family go to waste, for that income is desperately small."

Resentment is your inner psychological state — one you created for yourself. In this state there can be no talk of business; you can only dream of it! Through resentment, love turns into a poison that poisons the whole family. Resentment causes many illnesses, both in the one who took offence and in those against whom it is held.

What is to be done? How to master yourself and rise above resentment.

Resentment can be so grave that it drives a person to revenge. And the person lives for it — every thought, every hour given over to revenge through resentment. "I'll pay the villain back, and only then rest." The resentment gnaws at his brain, and even when revenge is achieved, another resentment appears — on and on without end. He has no life of his own, no happiness, no love; he has forgotten when he last rejoiced at anything. Only resentment and revenge move him, and there is nothing else in the world for him. In such cases it helps to physically batter something belonging to the one who wronged you, to cut up his belongings, to burn his photograph.

If you have nothing of his, hang up a punching bag, write your offender's name on it, and beat him.

Countless curses are, of course, cast out of resentment. Both the dark and the light forces that may be enlisted for it assume the person will take revenge and then return to ordinary life, never recalling the offence again.

Resentment, you must understand, is your life lesson; nothing happens for nothing, as they say, and bricks do not fall on heads for nothing. The answers of your karma — all of it, all the pain you suffer through resentment.

To those who cannot calm down, I say this! If you cannot release your resentment, forget it, work it through calmly in your thoughts and let it go — or vent your anger by beating your pillow or a punching bag.

Then punishment from Above will come to you too — for your pride, for your selfishness, for your spite in resentment, for nursing it so long, for doing nothing but that, for trying every curse and spending your whole life on it alone, doing nothing else.

What did you expect! Nothing happens for nothing. And this punishment comes to a person when all his chances — when he might have forgiven or forgotten and let go — have been exhausted by time.

First comes forgetfulness and distraction, then feeble-mindedness and sclerosis. Such is the Almighty's help to you: if you cannot master yourself and release the pain of resentment, help will come. And your memory will be wiped, so that you remember nothing at all.

That is why resentment must be released from your soul. So either forgive and forget, or punish the offence done to you — and forget it. Free your mind and your emotions, and direct your energy toward improving your life, toward reaching your goals. And that means leaving the black energy — resentment — freeing your soul of it, and tuning yourself to bright, positive energy. Enjoying life instead of being burdened by it.

Perform on the 18th lunar day, on the waning moon, in the evening, an hour before sunset:

Set up and light a candle, and place a bowl of water to its right. Dip your fingertips in the water, then hold them wet above the candle and say 3 times:

"It is not water evaporating, but my tears drying; they carry away pain, longing, and sorrow. I do not forgive you (name of the offender) — I only forget you, releasing you to the four winds, to God's judgement."

Then draw your still-damp fingertips down your face, from hair to chin, saying 3 times:

Repeat all the actions three times. Then snuff out the candle by blowing on it. Use the candle again in this rite. Splash the water out onto the road, with movements away from yourself.

Repeat the rite for 3 or 9 days — you will breathe more easily, and you will forget your resentment.