This is an update on my divorce, although I know you didn’t ask for it.  It just happens that I’ve gained so many valuable lessons through the process and recently, perhaps the most profound. So, I want to share it with you. After all, that’s why we’re all here together. To share the wisdom.

Last Friday I was in Court on what’s called an Enforcement Motion. What that means is that there was a prior Court Order that my husband was not abiding by. No matter how many attempts my lawyer or I made to try and avoid it, the filing of the Motion was ultimately necessary as my husband simply would not begin to see it our way.

As a former practicing divorce lawyer, I have no illusions about what can happen once you’re in a courtroom. It’s all subject to the particular judge who’s hearing the case and what his or her intelligence level is as well as their particular personality quirks. Justice is often a futile quest. And, we had been in Court once before on an Enforcement Motion and the white male judge had sort or “played fast and loose” with the facts. This time we were in front of a relatively new, female African-American judge and she was good. She “got it” and understood right from the beginning that my husband simply thinks he can ignore Court Orders.

The Judge allowed him to speak and to ask or state whatever he wanted in his defense, but when all was said and done she was unimpressed with his delivery and obviously disgusted with his disrespect for the legal system. She told him, in so many words, what he was going to do from that moment on and, more than once, “cut him down to size” for lack of a more sophisticated description.

But here’s the thing.

I don’t think of myself as a human being but rather as a spiritual being having a human experience. I struggle always to see the highest good in myself and others and to challenge myself to be better than I was yesterday. So what happened to me in that courtroom was not so much a surprise as deep gratitude for the grace to be able to experience victory and compassion simultaneously.

While I was experiencing the satisfaction of knowing that the “system” was finally doing the job it was intended to do by granting my Motion (while he was also assessed my legal fees for having to bring it) I was also pained that the man I love, but with whom I cannot seem to live, was being publicly shamed in this way. I actually hurt for him. I was the victor yet I was more taken with his suffering than my victory.  As we left the Courtroom, I left the Courthouse immediately, directing my lawyer to tidy-up the loose ends with my husband.  When I got into my car I sat there wondering why I had walked out so quickly instead of savoring the moment. The answer was that didn’t want to subject him to having to look into my eyes after what he had just been through. It was compassion that caused me to leave.

I learned two important lessons this past Friday.

The first is how Tibetans, imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese, can actually pray for their captors enlightenment while they are being beaten by those captors.

The second is that, as I have often heard stated in Buddhism, Compassion is the highest form of Love.

I wrote a short note to my husband since the hearing on Friday to share this with him but he has been  non-responsive. I understand. He too, is a spiritual being having a human experience…doing the best he can with what he’s learned thus far.

Friday proves that every day is a new opportunity for enlightenment.

REMEMBER to click here to download a FREE copy my e-book, “Too Many Secrets”

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