My survival relied upon having my needs met by others.
I developed coping strategies to optimize the potential my needs would be met.
I had to believe I would survive. I was reliant on others.
As an adult, I can survive on my own.
I can need nothing.
My needs are now replaced with wants.
Wants are preferences that guide my choices and mold my experiences.
From the space of wants, I transition from believing I can survive to knowing I can thrive.
I move from engaging coping skills and relying on others to making choices in collaboration with those who authentically support my growth along with theirs.
There is power in wanting and knowing.
Wanting and knowing bring assuredness, clarity, and focus.
Expectations fall away, choices become simpler, and I begin to align more and more with my sense of fulfillment, harmony, and success.
Disappointment implies that joys and successes rely on others.
Anger signals the breaching of important boundaries.
Fear rises from insecurity and a false sense of incompleteness or inability.
These are not bad or broken parts surfacing to limit and constrict.
These are powerful markers built into me that arise over and over again not to point out my weakness, lack, or flaws but to strengthen my knowing and clarity.
My power lies in being not formed by them but informed by them.
“I am afraid…afraid of hurting others because I feel their hurt as if my own…hurting others jeopardizes my relationships and in that I run the risk of feeling their anger or worse, their scorn and disappointment. It is better to deny my joy than risk upsetting theirs.”
For a long, long time that belief walked confidently along its path unhindered. One day, it stumbled on that well worn path upon a rock of joy. It tripped over pebbles of power, and fell upon a bolder of truthfulness. As the belief lost its balance, it fell into a net of beautiful jewels all connected by a golden thread of love, of creativity, kindness, and great joy.
The belief grasped at the edges of the path, grappled with the sensation of free falling, longing for the predictable order of its existence. In the blinding beauty of the sparkling jewels, the belief had no choice but to release its fear, to drop into the wide and open net, to be held by a greater force in the space of free will and joy.
Gradually, the belief allowed itself to let go of the path and discovered its power to attract truthfulness and joy. It found that in that vibration there was no room for fear, hurt, or loneliness…only love.
So, I sit here day after day wallowing in my mistakes, misfortunes, pain, and suffering.
I hold onto them in my body like appendages…the tension in my muscles, the crookedness of my bones, the heaviness of my head…and heart.
I carry them as reminders of my faults and flaws.
And yet, when I sit in stillness, when I fill and empty with awareness on my breath, I find only peace…ease…joy.
Remembering…
…the gentle touch of others, through their hands, hearts, and smiles.
…the power of my cognition to work the puzzle pieces of every day life.
… the essence of my kindness and great capacity for love.
…the gifts of receivership and gratitude that present so abundantly and frequently.
I’ve been conditioned to hold onto and dwell on the lack and sorrows as if they belong permanently.
Love, joy, and freedom are somehow deemed as temporary.
Today I give myself permission to release it all – to breathe in and out with equanimity in every moment, to imbibe and cleanse, receive and release, storing none as defining me and simply allowing it all to live through me without reliving or retaining any of it as me.
Clearing the channels of experience so that all flows, informs, and re-minds me that I am everything and defined by nothing.
Why is it when I step out of my suffering, I am uncomfortable with the suffering of others?
Guilt arises at the feeling that I am free of pain somehow at their expense.
It is difficult to exercise compassion for the suffering of another when I hold no compassion for myself and the value of feeling pain free.
Compassion wrapped in guilt results in creating a false story in order to take on someone else’s.
True empathy is understanding suffering, holding a space of great strength and courage – enough for both of us – rising from my own pain and rising even higher from my own joy and knowing that by maintaining my balance, finesse, and freedom I offer more room for healing than by falsely taking on the suffering of others.
Compassion without guilt provides a clear path to alleviate suffering.
Compassion filled with joy brings independence, hope and healing.
Monday Mindfulness 