https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsrUxhaaWks

I am a fan of Oprah’s show SuperSoulSunday.  She has had a lot of incredible teachers on this show, and I’ve learned so much from them.  This morning she had a re-run of the interview with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods.  At the end of the show she did “Soul to Soul” with him where she asked him a set of questions she asks all her guests.

One of the questions is “What is the lesson that has taken you the longest to learn?”  He said,and I am paraphrasing, “The lesson I continue to learn, over and over, is that we have a wake.  Our actions ripple out in ways that affect people and our world in ways we will never know, can never imagine.  So I keep learning that I have to be kind, that I have a responsibility to make sure that what ripples out from me helps people, is positive, and doesn’t hurt anyone.”

All I could think is, wow, so true.  Everything we do ripples out.  Sometimes we see the results, or some of the results.  Sometimes we have no idea.

I remember when I was introduced to “cord cutting”.  It’s a thing you can do, a kind of ceremony, calling in your guides, archangels etc., and cut the energetic cords which connect you to someone.  It is done with love, never hate. Never ill feeling.  I did it to help free myself from my ex.  I went to a group meditation, and imagined cutting the energetic cords which bound us and came from that long dysfunctional relationship.  I imagined the two of us flying around saying “Good bye, maybe I’ll see you, maybe I won’t.  Have a good life…” And I felt freer from that negativity than I ever had when the meditation was over.  Which I thought was the end result.

But a few days later, my ex showed up at the front door of the condo I was renting.  I wasn’t home but my son was.  He got out of his car, and his father said to him. “I apologize for everything I ever did to you…..”  For a few short months it lasted, they had a relationship, until his father slipped back into  his old ways, and began to play with his son’s life and emotions again.

I will always believe that it was a ripple out of the cord cutting I did with  him.  At the time I said to someone, telling the story…”You throw a stone in the water, you never know what will ripple up on the shore.”  I like the idea of us leaving a wake behind us…..same idea, but it seems a more powerful representation.

And I love the idea, the truth, that we have a responsibility to not hurt others, to make sure that what washes up on the shores of the rest of humanity lifts them and shines light on them.