We are remodeling my bathroom to put in a tub (!)...but as we tore out the old nasty shower stall and uprooted the flooring we found the pipes had been leaking for years... the old wall wood was riddled with termites... and under the flooring lived a colony of cockroaches... It got me to thinking about shadow.
Reflecting on the great shame our culture asks us to feel about not being perfect...So many crimes against self, and others, start here. The crimes of self include not recognizing our own imperfections as our medicine. As Lao Tzu reminds us, true perfection seems imperfect, yet it is perfectly itself... but we are taught early that if we don't align with arbitrary standards we should be punished or feel shame.
The crimes against others shows up as seeing our own unowned "perfection" in others and resenting them for having it. When we stop seeing our imperfections as flaws and can instead see them more like the way the addition of lead to glass creates beautiful crystal, we can dance in the light our prisms shine instead of hide in its shadows.
The Creative Force creates always from a neutral place of Love... It is not punitive, it does not punish us for past deeds...
Instead it is we who punish ourselves... It is we who interpret things "going awry" as punishment... In fact, these are just moments for growth and evolution, no more, no less...
And it is we who perceive others' actions as punishment when we feel less than... because we have been taught to live in shame...The shame that comes from the sense of punishment has long been used to control people. Doesn't our cultural mythos say we were all born to "original sin"? This creates an uphill battle for salvation from the get go... It creates a person who is easily manipulated by shame... When we can accept circumstances without overlaying cultural morality onto them then the focus shifts to awareness and responsibility. Yes, karma exists... but WE create it, good and bad...Be responsible for your actions. Be aware of how your actions affect others. Forgive. Forgive others and forgive yourself. No one else is keeping score!
Reflecting on the concept of deserving... My question is this, Who is keeping score? Who decides if in fact we do deserve something or not?! The whole concept of deserving is based entirely on a tally our ego keeps. None of it is real. We all deserve the moon! It reminds me of the concept that if we are good we will go to heaven. The rewards for living a good life are a good life, not some external pat on the back. And if we do deserve something... that implies someone else may not... What is that about?!
"No, I am sorry, you cannot have that... you do not deserve it"??? WTH?! Are we in kindergarten here?
And what if we 'don't deserve' something... He 'didn't deserve to be treated that way'... Again, who is keeping score? Stuff happens... the concept of deserving it makes it personal when in fact the unfolding of the universe is... just that... There is nothing personal about it.
Thinking about ego this morning and how to embrace it. Some people misguidedly think if they suppress their ego, knock it down and sit on it, they are being more spiritually "advanced," which is really the ego's backhanded way of coming out on top again... The ego has an agenda, to succeed, to survive, to be number one. We all have one. It isn't going away... It is the one who gets us up in the morning and says "let's do this again!" Instead of squashing this voice and have it become some kind of demon lurking in the shadows we want to embrace it... listen to it like we listen to a two year old. Love it. Thank it... and not act on its voice until we know where our actions are truly coming from.
Meditations on Words...
Words are what set us apart from other living things, our ability to communicate verbally. Some words, like food, have the flavor and nutrients that make us thrive while others bite and burn and bring us down. People hear what we say and they hear what we don't say. In language the omissions and tone say at least as much as the words we have chosen. So often we use our words unconsciously without considering their effect. We withhold words of praise and dish out the jabs and jeers. Sometimes we justify this in the guise of humor. But if it stings, it is something else. Humor at the expense of someone, even ourselves, is a mild form of sorcery.
People judge. It is the intellect's way of protecting itself from threatening or uncomfortable situations. As we awaken we learn to step back from judgement and use discernment instead. Discernment is different from judgement in that there is not an emotionally based classification made, there is just a yes/no evaluation. Yes that feels like the right thing to do, no I don't resonate with that person. We cannot make others stop judging us but we can be comfortable enough with ourselves to not collude with other people's opinions of us. Judgements are not personal, they are made from within the mind of a person evaluating the safety of their environment based on their lifetime of experiences. They have everything to do with the perceiver and very little to do with the perceived. When we collude with their judgements we can lose sight of our uniqueness and strengths and feel the lessor. This often stops us from standing in our light and pushing through our fears. We cannot stop people from judging but we can choose to hold true to ourselves and maintain our course.
There is a difference between love and our attachments to what we love. Love is like the water in a clear spring fed pool, our attachments are us grasping at it and trying to put it in a jar. Within the jar it is safe and we know where it is; we can take it out and use it whenever we please. But when the jar breaks we believe we lost the love. We haven't. It is still all around us and we can always go back to that pool. It is only the jar that we have lost. It is our attachment to that jar that hurts. Attachment comes from the ego identifying with something and claiming ownership over it. The emotional investment of ownership is not love. The pain of losing is not love. The challenge is to love, truly love, without being attached, to swim in that pool but not need to contain it.
It doesn't matter if the person or situation in question is trustworthy. The true question is do you trust Spirit to provide for you with everything you need?
We can not control the world... only our reactions to it.
It is a prescription for victimhood to make the world responsible for our emotional well being... it very unlikely it can comply with our demands.
To remain in our power and grace we must learn to navigate our own discomfort and find ways of transmuting fear, pain and anger into understanding and compassion, creating as few ripples outward as possible.