In Kabbalah, Ancient Jewish Mysticism, I learned about something called the Ten Sefirot. I remember, up until that point, thinking that we, as humans, were supposed to have a single unified life force inside of us that was always in agreement. The Ten Sefirot tell me, that not only am I not “supposed to have” a single unified life force inside of me, that I perceive each life event from as many at TEN different points of view! The points of view do not always agree, they are not always in harmony and sometimes need careful balancing. This is why, sometimes, when we have conflicting emotions, the answer is wait. Wait until all of you are in agreement. This is why the most important conversation you will ever have is with your own self. Balancing the Ten Sefirot is a life-long pursuit!
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ten-sefirot-of-the-kabbalah
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If you didn’t learn the basic spiritual principles behind the Twelve Steps when you were a small child, then it can be like pulling an elephant through a pinhole as an adult! The elephant is our ego and the pinhole is the glimmer of hope and willingness that can come from a profound moment of clarity. That moment when you realize that you don’t know who you are or what you are doing here on Earth! (I have had that moment)
The principles behind the steps are: Honesty, Hope, Faith, Courage, Integrity, Willingness, Humility, Discipline and Action, Forgiveness, Acceptance, Knowledge and Awareness, and Service and Gratitude. These are the basic things we need to be good human’s, good citizens and to have good personal relationships, provided you want to be truly happy here on Earth. This is what happens when our minds get filled with information and we think that information is who we are, until we realize that what we do is not who we are, and who we are is a very unhappy person. The work is not easy but doable!! The four agreements are a good start. We are all always in such a hurry to do, do, do. To put our best foot forward, to suit up and show up, to deliver. We live in a fast-paced world with fast-paced brains! We sit in front of our computers and read the world news, see our Facebook “friends” posts and think we somehow must keep up with everyone, everywhere all at once. And when we can’t, because it is not possible, we become disappointed in ourselves and that is the ONLY thing that ends up being real. The long-lasting disappointment in ourselves because we cannot do that which is physically impossible to accomplish!
I am here to say, you absolutely do not have to keep up with everyone, everywhere, and certainly not all at once. It is physically and humanly impossible! We are each only one person, with one body and one mind. We can only be one place at a time, regardless of what our minds (and the internet) might like us to believe. What you see when you log onto the internet are not real people, they are digital images of people. Just images, not real. By the time you see a video of a person, unless it is live, they will have long since moved on to the next thing in their lives. Sharing video experience, sharing our stories is very important and good for us, but we have to receive those images with an understanding that they are just images. Those people are not actually in our lives and we can’t really know who they are and what their lives are really like based on images. We have to stay in our own lives, in our own bodies and do the next right thing that is in front of us. If you are not feeling ok with yourself, it is perfectly ok to admit that and take a minute to re-focus on your own life so that you can become ok with you! Being in long term recovery is like being on treadmill that is always on. We must keep up with the speed of the treadmill and accept the fact that we don’t get to set the speed at which we travel. The speed is set by our inner higher power and is usually set at a much slower pace than we “like” to go (boo hoo). Sometimes the speed changes and we need to adjust, but usually we have had some warning and are prepared to make these adjustments, provided we have stayed on said “treadmill” and been able to see the signs. Go too fast and you don’t get to see the signs, go too slow and the signs make no sense.
Sure, you can go faster than the belt, but I promise you, you will fall off in front of it and end up right back at square one. And sure, you can do nothing, but I promise you, you will fall off the back and find yourself scrambling to get back up on the treadmill. The secret to a long successful recovery is to simply keep pace with your own treadmill, so that you don’t run off the front or fall off the back! Life is meant to be lived from the inside out, not from the outside in. Slow and steady may not “win” the race, but it will keep you on your own treadmill of life and make you happy. Last I checked, life was NOT A RACE! In this fast-moving digital world, we all have a tendency to get caught up in the hoopla of it all. Digital media has brought the WORLD into the palms of our hands, which makes us THINK we have more power over that world than we really do. For one minute, look down at the palms of your hands, yes your hands, your empty hands. What do you see? Do you see “the world”? No, you see the palms of your hands. Now look around from the palms to the rest of your body, to your feet, the ground below your feet, and then to the room you are in. Wherever your body is, is where you are supposed to be, is where you need to be.
We do not live in the digital world. We do not live in the fantasy world of our minds. We live in our bodies. Where am I right now? I am sitting on my couch, at my laptop and I am writing this and that is where I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to be doing and chances are by the time you read this I will be off doing something else somewhere else. I suggest we all think big, but do small, do whatever is right in front of you now. Enjoy the moment for it is the only moment you can truly exist in. Here is why we can’t let “other” people rent space in our heads in a nut shell. They are not other people!
“Other people” don’t live in our heads, they live in their own heads! So, when we argue with “other people” in our heads, we are really arguing with our own selves! Take a minute to let that settle in. That argument you are having with your lover, boss, co-worker, or friend in your head, has nothing to do with them. Maybe they said something or did something that triggered this argument inside your head, but once they leave the room it's all you. Just like when we dream about other people, those dreams have nothing to do with the person we are dreaming about, those dreams are our psyches way of telling us a story. It just uses images of “those people” to help tell the story. If you have a conversation with someone, outside of yourself, and it triggers an ongoing conversation with “them” inside of yourself, I suggest you find the time to write it out and recognize that the person you need to have this conversation with is yourself and you may find it has nothing to do with the person who started the conversation at all! The most important person you can talk to on any given day is you, why argue with you! “If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” - Gandhi
I think this is true in everything we do. We don't know what we don't know until we know it and then once we know it we can't un-know. it. The more we do something the better we get at it. The reward of patience is patience, the reward of having done the work, is having done the work! The mind says', "what will tomorrow bring?" and the spirit says, "we cannot know what tomorrow will bring until we get there." The only way to know what tomorrow will bring is to walk into it one step at a time. One way or the other tomorrow will come with or without us! The ONLY way to unlock the mysteries of the Self is from within the self. As long as you believe that someone else is going to come to you and impart some strange knowledge from outside of you, you will never free yourself! You can pay a million dollars, or you can get this information for free, there is no price that can be put on Universal Knowledge that each individual must free themselves from their self-imposed prison! Individuals must take the time out of the “rat race” we are in and do the work needed to do to free themselves from the prison of their own mind! This doesn’t have to take forever, and you can go back into the “race” but when you do you will do it with joy in your heart, with a new and profound relationship with yourself and the world we live in. Start a new relationship, today, with the most important person in the world, you! Your true, inner self.
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AuthorDeana Grenier Archives
April 2020
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