2007 was not a mellow year for me. I've often heard people refer to growth as painful. But I've begun to question how much of that is inherent or perceived pain. All the teachers I have learned from recently seem to believe that we cannot feel anything but ourselves pushing against outside forces. This can challenging to believe with all the conditioning that other's actions, words, feelings and behaviour "makes" us feel the way we do. Even when I think I have a good grip on this, something will happen that causes me to revert back to the blamer-I can't believe that guy ran the stop sign and then honked at me! How could I have possibly ruined her day? As much as I've learned, I've come to understand that the real victory comes with one release at a time of the negative to the positive and better feeling thought.
One of the most profound sayings I've heard in the last few weeks hit me hard. I'm a goal oriented person-constantly measuring my life, standing, and experience based on where I think I should be by now. A lot of the recent influx of material, teachings and practices have been based on not only my need and desire for my life to improve, but because of this measurement. I've heard this before from other teachers, but for what ever reason I was finally ready to listen. I was listening to a Bill Harris seminar while working on a rather monotonous project. He was talking about the needs of many to rush through personal growth to attain the trophy, and the accompanying disappointment of expectations. He said "measure from where you've come NOT from the ideal." When this finally sunk in, I felt so much better about where I'm standing right now-even if it's not where I imagined, or where I thought I'd be. My outstanding accomplishments of 2007 felt so much more energized than before. If this still doesn't feel good go back 10 years, if that doesn't work, go back farther. Do you remember when you couldn't read or how hard it felt to learn to tie your shoelaces?
My friend Steph said one of her New Year traditions was to write down what she learned in the last year. I can easiliy profess that I learned and appreciated the power of love this year. If you had asked me three months ago, I would've said love cannot conquer all. I used to think this phrase was only referring to the love others have for me-or a love outside of ourselves. While I still believe there are other contributing factors, I have had two significant relationships where the power of love intervened. Love for self filled the holes pain, unworthiness and ego bored into us, and allowed for an overflow of understanding and reconciliation, and two friends I dearly love reentered my life. Love had the strongest arms and tools, and we allowed the vulnerability of our weaknesses to be exposed and tenderly appreciated.
I am a different person than I was a year ago- and without looking forward-can say with gratitude that I am a better person.
