12-23-15 Post: Is It Right for Humans to Love Unconditionally?

Question/Comment: I hear a lot about unconditional love and I think I understand the idea but I’m not sure I want to apply it in my life. There are too many times when someone is acting in a way that is harmful to me or others. I can’t just exude love and let it be.

Response: Unconditional love is an ideal, an archetype perhaps. It can be something we aspire to and something we receive. We are told by many people of their experiences beyond the daily facade of life where they return saying that our Source is unconditional love. They talk of experiencing this unconditional love when on the other side of the vale. 

There are many different aspects to this question. A personal quest to be and exude unconditional love does not mean forgoing appropriate action in life. If we see harm being done, we do what we can to stop the harm from continuing. 

Love comes into play when we attempt to help both the victim and the victimizer to heal. The trick is to love and totally accept the victim and the victimizer exactly as they are while stopping the harm from happening. If we step back and take a clear look, don’t we see that both have lessons to learn about love and compassion? Would they be involved in the situation otherwise?

We have the right and the duty to protect and take the best possible care of ourselves. The better care we take of ourselves, the more we have to offer others and the better example we set for others. The question here is can we take our appropriate action without condemnation or hate or anger?

Can we step in and stop the harm from being done to ourselves or others without condemning the one doing the harm? Even if physical action is required to stop the harm or if incarceration is required to stop someone from harming others again, can we do it by discernment, by judging the harmful behavior, not the soul or the whole being? 

I think these questions are the top of the iceberg and each individual will have to answer many of these type of questions for themselves. We each have an inner guide that will let us know what is right action, right thought, right directions for us at any given time. We each have things we have come here to learn, to teach, to accomplish. We are each individual energy expressions of the Source.

12-9-15 Post: Roles we play in life

Question/Comment: I hear people talk about people in our lives being our teachers, especially the ones that we have the most conflict with. Can you address that issue?

Response: What you have written is true but not so simple and clear cut as it might seen. We each have multiple roles we play in our daily lives and over a lifetime. We also have roles within roles and meta roles. 

Our everyday lives entail roles such as mother, daughter and life mate. Within those roles we have sub roles such as cook, house cleaner, chauffeur, lover, dishwasher, teacher, guide, wage earner, business owner and so on. Over arching or under arching those roles we may have other roles such as victim, victimizer, way shower, teacher and student.

Our roles also change over a lifetime. The roles we play as a child are usually somewhat different from roles we play as teenagers, young adults, middle age adults, older adults and much older adults. Some roles stay with us for a life time such as victim, victimizer, over giver, or user (unless we make an effort to remove those roles from our drama). 

These are the roles that people say we can learn the most from. I suppose this might be true due to the intensity of pain we cause ourselves with these relationships. The pain draws our attention and with that attention we can see our patterns and learn from our experiences. We are then in position to make new decisions and change behavior.

Each of us lives our own drama. We attract others to play specific roles in our drama and if the person we attract does not exactly fit the role we have them assigned to play, we do our best to mold them into playing the role more perfectly. For example if someone has learned to play the victim and attracts a person who is not a victimizer, the victim will learn how to push and irritate the other person until s/he becomes so angry that s/he becomes a victimizer.

That is not to say the victimizer is excused from abusive behavior. We are each responsible for our behavior and choices. The one who is pushed into being abusive has “written” that role for themselves into the drama they are living. We each have our dramas we live that overlap the dramas the people in our lives are living. If a person’s drama does not include a personal role for being a victim or victimizer, they will not stay in a relationship with, a friendship or an acquaintanceship with a person who does include those roles in their personal drama.

We don’t have to have pain, conflict and uproar in our lives to learn and change. We can choose to look at our behavior, choices, relationships and note what is making us happy, what is advancing our goals and what is not helpful. We can make conscious, clear choices about what to keep the same and what to change. By the way, the changes are made to ourselves, our thinking, our beliefs, how we choose to feel and what we choose to do. When we change from within, our outer expression of our drama changes automatically.

12-2-15 Post: Respect and Appreciation

Question/Comment: I would like to begin treating everyone and everything with appreciation and  respect. Do you have any suggestions on how I can keep myself focused on this?

Response: Sacred Touch as taught by Dr. Ann Marie Chiasson is a very good vehicle for this practice. She teaches focusing on gratitude, reverence and compassion while touching someone or something. Contrast that to the usual types of thoughts we hold in our minds when we touch ourselves, someone else or something else. In answer to your question here, we can even extend this idea as far as interacting with someone or something even if there is no physical touch. 

For most people when touching or interacting with someone we would have thoughts of irritation, stress, needing to hurry, self-questioning, self-doubt, wondering what the person wants, thinking about what we want from them, what is going on in the world, what someone said to someone else, something we said, things we have to do and on and on. Even if we are thinking gratitude thoughts it is usually about a particular thing rather than a general focus on a thankful feeling. 

How often are we distracted or in a hurry when we touch or respond to a child or a pet or a loved one? How would life be different if we focused on compassion and understanding instead? What if every interaction happened while we were focusing on the object, being or task at hand while also mindful of the Divine Source taking form as this person, animal or thing?

As you begin this practice start with yourself. Focus on the you that you know yourself to be. If you usually criticize yourself, begin the appreciation and respect practice with you. Then move to what is nearest to you, a pet, a family member, the chair you are sitting in. The more quiet environment might be easier in the beginning and then you can take your practice outside for a walk and then to the grocery and then to work and so on.

Written reminders in strategic places might be helpful. Place notes for yourself on your mirror at home, on the dashboard in your car, on your desk at work, in your shoe, wherever you will see it. It may take a while to get the hang of this and it may seem strange at first. Keep on and if you forget, just go back to it. Let me know how your practice goes.