Thinking and Sense

I find myself thinking today, maybe a little too much. I've seen so much in the last year and it's been very painful to witness. I guess I'm trying to understand it all from a broader perspective, not up close where it's raw and painful. Just a bit further back so I can put some space around it, space to breathe and slow down the emotions about it coming at me.

At first I felt very victimized by a couple of individuals very close to me. I was angry, incredulous, anxious and depressed but that was only at first. Later, I started to see things differently. Seeing things differently was a choice I didn't know I had. I knew that I wanted to choose to see the wisdom in the lessons instead of holding on to the pain of what happened, of what hurt. I wanted to come to a place where I didn't feel this dark nebulous unfulfilled yearning for the pain to stop. The perpetrators of this pain were all too willing to continue the relentless barrage of insanity and it would have been even more insane for me not to strive to rise above it, say to maybe 50,000 feet. So I did it. I pulled myself up as high as I possibly could and when I saw things from a higher perspective, my jaw dropped nearly to the floor. The main thing that hit me was, not only am I not a victim here but I'm at the heart and soul of this...my decisions contributed to the level of pain I found myself in ...my actions caused so much of my own anger.

I turned that frustration and anger inward for a while and beat myself up with nightmares, anxiety and even depression and discovered that wasn't really working either. I had to get some relief or I feared I would crumble into the dust forever lost. So, I literally stopped beating myself up, stopped entertaining negative thoughts and judgment of myself and tried again to see things differently. Again, I started to see something else and it was rather unexpected. So, between me and my reactions, a couple of folks and their actions, we each did the only things we knew how to do at the time. Hmmm, how can you get mad at a dog who cannot spell "Happy?" How could you get mad at a two year old child who cannot read a simple sentence? You would forgive the dog and you'd forgive the child because they could only do what they knew how to do. So a phrase hit me, "all you know is all you know." Is it fair to be judged or have seething anger directed at you for that...or worse yet, directed at yourself by yourself? For a second I wanted to hold on to the anger and the emotion but I knew that would mean living with the other feelings I did not really want to hold on to. So, I did what I had just learned how to do, let go. I let it go. I let it all go. I let go of what I thought I lost. I let go of my ego's desire to be right. I let go of my ego's desire to defend. I let go of my ego's desire to make it right.

So, now, here I sit in peace contemplating the whole scene of months of agony, anger, nightmares, incredulous feelings, betrayal and core level seeming emotional destruction. Was it worth it? Did I finally learn something? Yes, to both questions. I have learned a lot about human nature, the ego and a lot about what was wounded inside of me before the events of the last year unfolded. Rather than pour more energy into the individuals who would willingly have me bent to their will and painfully so, I stepped out of the fight, I stepped out of the game and decided I would no longer play. I no longer care about who was right and who was wrong, who betrayed who and who lied to who. I don't care. All I want is peace, love and understanding and the only way I could get that under my domain of control was to forgive the perpetrators and forgive myself. I will not add pain to pain and that's where their actions came from. Their actions that upset me most had nothing at all to do with me and so then, I can let go, I can forgive them and I can choose to leave their game deciding forever more to forgo that game or dance. I'd rather dance alone for a while moving to the beat of my own heart, hearing the words that finally seem like logic inside my head and feel, probably for the first time ever, the love being generated from within my own heart.