Tag Archives: evolving

Trying to Just Keep Rising

Posted on by learning to live like water

keep rising

I just came home from the gong bath.  Gong meditation.  I took a friend tonight, someone not into much alternative stuff.  She asked, “There’s not water involved?”  LOL.  No…..Better to call it a meditation, that is, really what it is.  But deep, very deep if you want it to be.

When I am there, bathed in the vibration of the gongs, and crystal bowls and the drums, I seem to be able to look at the issues in my life non-judgmentally.  I seem to get a clearer picture of what has happened, is happening.  From a different level.  It has happened so many times.  S once told me I should go every night, because I work so much stuff out when I’m there.   I’m a much nicer person, apparently.  Or at least, so he thought. I suppose it’s true, because who isn’t nicer when they aren’t stressed.  Although he was usually the one stressing me, lol. But I digress.

Tonight was no different. What I think I needed to do tonight was get back to the present moment. To stop fretting over things about which I have no control. There is so much going on in my life right now with retirement, buying a house, selling a house. Leaving here, relocating where I know three people well. Letting go of old attachments to people, places and things.

I reminded myself tonight, that my obligation to myself is to keep rising. There are those who will rise with me. There are those who won’t rise at all. There are those who will rise, catch up to me, and rise past me. We all may bump into each other in this life. But each of us has to keep rising, in our own way, on our own path. I believe that we are here, in this lifetime, to learn lessons, and to evolve our souls. So, the only thing I have to do, is try to keep doing that.

Back when my friend who is a medium suggested that S was my twin flame, she explained about that kind of relationship, how it is push pull, how one is running and is chasing.  How you are usually not in the same place based on the many life experiences.  The important thing she said to me though, was, “and you have just just keep rising.” The rest will never be known to me, if he is or is not my twin.That there is some kind of soul connection is undeniable.  I know when I’m going to hear from him, I still feel him.  I basically ignore it, but the fact is, it doesn’t matter now.  All that matters is I keep rising.

It does not involve hate and anger, blame, guilt, shame. It does not involve jealousy or selfishness. It does not involve any of the negative emotions we as humans find so easy in our interactions with others. We all have to keep rising. We can’t hold the hands of others and pull them with us, everyone has to raise themselves. If we meet somewhere, at some point, then it’s just a blessing.

When the meditation tonight was over, I was thinking about what a loving and supportive environment it is there. Everyone is there for healing. Everyone is there to lovingly support each other. I have friends who I see only at the gongs, who I have seen once or twice a month for years now. And I feel so close to them, as if we know each others souls.

It’s all about love, everything, every emotion that I have there reduces to love. It’s like numerology, reduce to a single digit. It’s like the Rumi saying I put up this morning, we are left with two desires at the end of the day: to love, and to be happy. Evolving our souls, to me, is finding a way to love more, and be happier for it.

So I go to the gongs, twice a month, to seek out unconditional love, and to find a way to be happy. For the most part, it works. I am always always, better for having gone.

Sending love and light to all tonight.

 

Guilt vs. Shame

Posted on by learning to live like water

Guilt-vs-shame-1024x744.jpg

I’m unsettled this morning, though I don’t know why.  I’m irritated I broke my tail light lense on something I couldn’t even see in an unlit parking lot.  Backing up and turning.  This morning it’s raining so I’ll have to tape it up with plastic to keep the rain out ofit.  Grr.

I haven’t talked to my bff about her plan to put together some program that will benefit seniors, so I need to do that today.  I know that will help me move forward more than anything.

Last night the book club talked about why people who lie, and take, and deceive do it.  We all had someone in our lives that have done that. Was it for the thrill, for getting away with it?  Was it for the power, to feel “in control” of things?  I said, I really believe in Marianne Williamson’s and A Course in Miracles stand, that what is not love is fear.  And fear gives the ego rise.  The ego will convince someone who has doubt, that they are not worthy.  That the only way they can have people in their life is to manipulate them in, to lie to them.  The belief that you are not worthy of love and belonging, causes shame, it causes the belief that you are not worthy.

And shame…. is the most destructive of all human emotions.  Guilt can be productive, guilt says, “What I did was bad.”  Shame says, “I am bad.”

Those that purport to wish to be alone, like my ex-husband, really only believe they are not worthy of love, and are alone to hide their shame.  Better he should be alone, I guess, than trying to do to someone else what he did to me.  But the best outcome, would be if he could recognize his own worth, the beauty of his own soul, and let it shine.

S said to me, when he was trying to get me to help him with Betty, “I know I will pay 5 lifetimes for what I did to you.”  He doesn’t understand that at any point, even now, he can choose to change, he can own, and apologize and try to make right, and thus learn the lesson that he obviously missed.  Karma isn’t about paying.  It’s about learning the lesson, and if you don’t, you will repeat it, until you do.  The same situations will appear and reappear until you learn the lesson.

S was so similar to my ex, I believe that he showed up in my life to finish teaching the lesson that my ex started.  I hope I’ve learned the whole lesson now.

I think the first part, with my ex, was the power of unconditional love manifested in setting my son free.  The second part was to love yourself with that love, enough to learn not to give yourself away, to make a person earn the trust.  To honor yourself, first, always.

I hope I’m done with this lesson, and with men who can’t love.

The lesson, whatever it may be…..while hard to learn, is such a beautiful thing, and life can change so dramatically when you learn to honor and love yourself, and let that spread to others.

Shame is not necessary.  We all do better when we know better, that’s called evolving.  Guilt, for something you have done wrong, is a message from your soul, telling you to change.

One day at work, someone asked me a to do something that clearly was their job, and clearly not mine, and I was already overwhelmed with the work I had to do.  I very unkindly told this person that it was their job to do, and not to get me involved, etc. etc.  Making them feel stupid, I’m sure.  Even though I was right, I was cruel.  I hung up the phone, (I was in a different part of the building) and within less than a minute realized what I’d done.

I called this person back, and said, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be such a bitch.

Guilt….made me see what I did to her.  Not shame, I didn’t feel shame that I did it, I felt guilt.  And the guilt drove me to fix it.  My co-worker and I laughed about it later.

I believe the only way to get rid of shame, is to stop listening to the ego tell you you are not worthy, and begin to reconnect with your soul, your true spirit, which in all of us, is connected to the one great thing.  Love. Begin that journey, and watch your life change.

Guess I’m feeling philosophical this morning, lol.  Book club is good for me.

Learning the Lessons

Posted on by learning to live like water

I was walking with my cousin yesterday.  We take these long 5 mile walks and talk incessantly.  We both have our issues, and we talk and listen without judgement.  She’s actually my ex’s cousin, lol, and the only member of that family with whom I am still close.

We were talking, finally, yesterday about the lessons we have learned or are learning from our current situations.  She and her family have some serious issues they are dealing with.  I suggested what I thought my lesson was this time, but she has not been able to see a bigger picture with hers.  Though, hers is fresh, and the wounds are still bleeding, she is still reeling from it’s presence in her life.  She was blindsided by it, as was I by mine.  We both believe there is always a lesson we are supposed to learn from every difficult situation.

She expressed a wish that she could just stop for awhile, learning lessons.  And me too.  We both could take a stretch of easy, instead of so difficult.

I said though, “You know there is no growth without pain.  Perhaps as our soul evolves spiritually, the lessons become harder to learn because they are more important.”

I first learned the power of unconditional love when my son lived with my ex, about which I have written a blog, and won’t go into the specifics again.  Let me say though, that that lesson came easily, even though the situation was harder and scarier than anything I’ve ever lived through.  The lesson, to just unconditionally love him, came naturally. I can’t take credit for even thinking of it consciously.  It was just a natural reaction, of a mother for her child, and only after all was resolved did I realize that it was the power of that unconditional love that brought about positive change.

Now, the lesson seems to be a deepening of that lesson, for me.  But I’ve had to acknowledge in the last month that there are people who will reject that kind of love.  People who absolutely don’t trust it, or believe in it.  I am committed to it, regardless.  But I think there will be no reward in the end as there was with my son. So…while this lesson has been devastating to me, in my personal life, it was not as hard as knowing my son was in danger every minute.  But the lesson is harder to stay with.

One might ask, why would I continue to love someone unconditionally who absolutely will hurt me without cause, will betray and disrespect me?  Why would I unconditionally love someone who is incapable of that same emotion?

I suppose that is the lesson for me, to answer those questions.  My only reasoning now is, unconditional doesn’t allow us to pick or choose who we love.  It has to be, unconditional – without limit, without reason, beyond thought or judgement.  As so often has been said, the people who seem least deserving are the ones who need it the most.

So….I will continue to love this way.  My door will be open, not to the hurt, but to extending the love.  If I am true to myself, and what I absolutely believe to be true, in fact, KNOW to be true, that love is the most powerful energy in the universe, then I have no choice.  It doesn’t mean I will expose myself to danger or hurt.  It means I will love.  Always love.

If I ask the person I’m directing it to at the moment, hard questions…it is because I want them to see that there is another way to think, to live, that being fearful of love, and alone doesn’t have to be the way it is.  Wanting connection, love and belonging is the natural human condition. To pretend it is not, is just pretending.

There are other ramifications, if this is the path I choose….because as it trickles down into the cracks and crevices of my life, I have to change myself to fully be that person.  My anger, which can be self-righteous and flare on a short term basis, has to be tempered with the knowledge that what was done to me by anyone was done by someone doing the best they could with the tools they have been given, with their level of consciousness at the time.  And that perhaps over time, someone loving them regardless of their actions, might help them to evolve too.

There are those more highly evolved than me, who say we contract before we are born to learn the lessons that face us here.  We even contract with other souls to join us in the journey.  And if we take this life time and don’t learn them, then we will come back again to learn the same lesson.  That’s karma. It’s not what goes around comes around.  It’s whether or not we open our hearts to learn the hard lessons that allow us to evolve.

Who knows?  The world is a mystical, incredible place, and our journeys are also.  I will go with what has been put in front of me, and find a way.  Live like water…..