It’s foggy and cool out this morning. I’m sipping coffee enjoying the diffused light through the mist. It’s the second day of 2012 and I think I’m very much over all of the reflection…well, except for the good stuff. Do you want to know why? Well, I’ve encountered many challenges this past year. As I recall them, I get the lessons – oh yeah, but when I recall and reflect on challenges of the past, I put my body through the emotional aspect of reliving those moments. What I notice in my body is heart palpitations, quickening heart rate, along with anxiety and discomfort. So, I stop reflecting at the level the challenges came to me and raise up quite a bit to the themes of what occurred. It is not matter of denial, it is acceptance for what was and refusal to relive the events at the level the challenges were created. There is no point in reliving any of your challenges at the level they were created. In order to push past the pain, the fear and discomfort, one must absolutely rise above it to the level of the lesson in the higher realms of thought as well as the real feelings and understanding in the soul. When you rise up into the position of the observer (as Tolle so aptly put it) you step up and away from the level at which a lesson or challenge occurred and you then create a safe vantage point from which you can view the themes without reliving the pain. Feelings are felt and so to us, they are real. But pain seems to hurt the most only when we stand to defend and resist whatever happened at the level of the pain.
Rising above the situation is no easy thing so let me see if I can explain how to rise above it. When people hurt us and we think thoughts of, “Why would they hurt me?” or “How dare they do this or that and I’m going to get them back for it,” you are reliving the pain at the level it was created and also trying to solve it from a painful place which will never result in true and lasting satisfaction. When you flip things around to the first step of higher level thinking, such as, “Why might I have chosen this particular experience to learn from?” or “What can I do to understand the truth of this situation?” or even “How can I open myself to the state of grace necessary to receive the true meaning of this, glean the lesson and move on from it?” you start to rise above it. Now, you can move even higher from ground zero if you just sit with your emotion without any judgment for yourself or any others involved and identify where in your body it hurts or feels heavy, what emotions you seem to be feeling and what untruths your mind now tells you about you concerning this situation. If you can strive to sort out this bundle of effects from a lesson, you can take accountability, you can begin to think clearly and experience the situation differently.
From there, with some effort and time spent just feeling your way through without adding any additional labels or negative thought, you can begin to free yourself to a state of acceptance for what occurred as a necessary part of your growth. I’m not saying this is something one can do over night but it is something we can do to help ensure our growth and healing from a painful or challenging situation. Its work! Hard work! But hey, you’re worth it right? So, why not seek to understand the higher meaning of the situations, even painful ones, that you have faced. I think back to one example in my life…If I had not experienced something really painful, hurtful and humiliating, I would not have known that there are people in your life that will love you for you no matter what. If I had not experienced something incredibly ugly, I might have missed the days and weeks and months that followed where a beautiful group of souls willingly helped me out of pure love…they showed me what real love was and that despite my normal negative patterns of thought when dealing with such situations, the bulk of the pain was of my own designs due to untruths I told myself…one’s I learned from, well, that doesn’t even matter. What matters is, I found loyalty, love, beauty, friendship and so much more from a very challenging situation. I no longer see it as the threat and devastating event I once saw it as. The interesting thing is that the more I embrace understanding the lesson, the farther I get from the pain of the event…I begin to see the light, the love, the purpose and the learning…very important learning I gleaned from a lesson. Life lessons – whoa can they be fun sometimes! And I use the word “fun” very sarcastically! But, we came here to learn and learn we will and hopefully we will come to the other side of our lessons, stronger, wiser and much more loving of not only others but with ourselves.
Sometimes I think we must travel through doorways of incredible pain in order to get us to look at ourselves differently. Sometimes the view we think we have of us is not very pretty until we understand how we came to hold such opinions, judgments and perspectives and then we learn how absolutely perfect we truly are and then, so, must every event we encounter be! Life can seem so imperfect and so often, so can we and others. But if we always hold the intent or willingness to see things differently, to embrace our own higher learning and know definitively that the mistakes we judge ourselves so harshly for are really designed to show us the core of our own beautiful souls, we can get through anything. We can…not without effort but we can do it. The really beautiful part, I think, is when we’re done processing these challenging situations. We can then bring ourselves closer to the truth about our lives and our purpose in it. None of us walks alone in this world. It is only our perspectives that tell us the things we perceive are real. Only when another shows up on our path bending light in another direction and we become willing to see where the light is reflecting the truth, can we truly free ourselves from difficulty we encounter due to our life lessons.
I understand the meaning of “rise above it” now. It is not dismissing or burying the pain of a situation. It’s merely letting go of the gravity that created the challenges and seeking to understand and free ourselves from the pain. In so doing, we learn more and more about ourselves and begin to understand the true beauty that lies within us. We are so powerful that we don’t even fully comprehend it. Our thoughts weigh us down like lead shoes or raise us up to imaginable heights of true understanding. I think that the pendulum of emotion swings wide sometimes but know that although your feelings may feel very real and very much like facts, they may not represent the whole truth of a situation. Seeking the truth of the situation helps bring you closer to the light. Everything has purpose and everything matters. Consider the choices you make and where you continually find yourself. If you don’t like where you are, your own thoughts have the power to raise you up or keep you grounded. Rather than remaining mired in pain and rebelling against it or plotting revenge against whoever it is you think put you there, stop for a moment and observe your feelings…then, look for the untruths you tell yourself, right your thinking in a loving and non-judgmental way and step up and out of the pain. Like I said, its work but you, well, you ARE worth it. Give it a try and if you struggle, ask for help…pray, talk to friends, reach out for counseling or read books that might help you understand. Just don’t stay at ground zero. Don’t chose that for yourself. Choose to be free by understanding and then taking the steps to rise above it. Blessings of love, peace, healing and light!
(c) 2012 (photo, copyright unknown)
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