IN IT TOGETHER
AUGUST 2014

Hello Everyone...

Another month has gone by and in some respects, it has flown and in other respects, it seems to have crawled…..for there being “no such thing as Time”, it sure has been remarkably fast AND slow, all at the same “time”! But whether it was speeding by or moving at a snail’s pace, I had more of a sense of balance than I had in June, no doubt because I continued to rest and say yes to things I wanted to do and no to things I knew I would be better off NOT doing. I took care of ME – hope you took care of YOU as well.

Once again, as the end of the month came to a close, I wasn’t knowing what I was going to write about until this morning (July 30), when I awoke with a definite idea in my head. I hope I can do it justice – it always seems to “pour through perfectly” when there’s no computer available in those early morning hours – LOL – let’s see if any of those words are still lurking five hours later!

I think it’s fairly obvious, in the intensity of these times, that over-reactive energy is moving through a lot of people right now. Our relationships are being greatly challenged. Of course that’s all by design – we’re reacting to things in us that are hurts or lies we’ve bought into so that we can be aware of our buttons and hopefully acknowledge/heal them. Before we can heal them, though, we have to get to the place where we can accept responsibility for their existence in us in the first place.

I think human nature, for most people, is to first blame someone/something outside of us for whatever pain we have (“Look what she did to me – look how he hurt me”) because it seems easier in some bizarre way to believe someone HAS the power to hurt us……it can’t be US who allowed it – it was THEM who caused us pain and THEIR fault that our situation is happening, that we’re hurt and unhappy. So we run to our family and friends and cry, “Look how he/she has been mean to me……how could they DO that to me?” And of course, as a “caring” friend/family member, human nature also means most of us immediately say, “OH, wow - how COULD she do that to you! You’re RIGHT…..she was being horrible to you,” and we add to the belief that the person in pain absolutely has been abused by someone else, that they have NO responsibility in themselves for that pain, etc. (And of course, not EVERYONE does that – I’m speaking in general….some of us are blessed to have friends/family members who can keep their “observer” self present and offer true insights into a situation and not immediately jump on the bandwagon and play the blame game, too.)

So we walk around in our hurt and our resentment and our blame and we stay miserable…. EVENTUALLY, though……if we have a true desire to heal a painful situation……we get to the point where we know WE have to assess our own part for the hurt in us, and we have to then assume some of the blame. Until we can do that, we will NEVER heal a situation. It’s like the alcoholic who has to first admit they have a problem before they can heal it. WE have to first admit our own responsibility for whatever hurt is in us before we can heal it. We have to ask ourselves, “OK…..did I interpret their words/actions correctly, or did I just assume my interpretation was THE truth, the only truth? Did MY past actions with THEM perhaps trigger their response to ME? Did I speak of MY pain immediately so WE could clear it, or did I stuff it and let my resentment and hurt continue to simmer in me? Did I believe something about them that wasn’t at all true? Did I care enough when they were going through hell TO let them know that I cared, or did I simply disappear and assumed they knew that? Have I treated them with the same respect, caring, and courtesy that I now seek from them?” The questions we could ask ourselves are endless…..the point is, we need to start asking questions of ourselves.

We ask those questions until we can honestly see what part of the situation we absolutely MUST own. We have to be completely (and sometimes brutally) honest with ourselves. We keep processing ourselves until we can get to the bottom-line of our own responsibility for allowing a hurt to live in us…..because if we’ve got a hurt of any kind in us, we ARE responsible for that hurt, even if our responsibility is simply ignoring that we WERE hurt and were surprised when we lashed out at another because WE were unknowingly hurting.

Processing ourselves, especially when we’re first beginning to do it, isn’t something that we can do in a few minutes and bingo, we’re “done”. It requires a true commitment to knowing and understanding what’s in us and how it got in there in the first place. Have you ever looked down at your leg and seen a bruise that you had NO idea was there because you couldn’t remember injuring yourself? That’s the same with hurts. We have hurts in us that sometimes we don’t even know exist, so patience and perseverance are both necessary when we go about examining ourselves, as it can take some time to peel back layer after layer after layer of that bottom-line hurt.

AND…..when we finally get to the point of understanding what made our button go off, what our underlying hurt is…..poof – we can release it and it’s gone, because we can SEE it in the Light of Understanding and it’s no longer hidden away and festering in us, causing us to operate from a place of automatic reaction as we strive to protect ourselves from further hurt. THEN we can go on and find the Gift in the situation. The Gift may simply be finally understanding the “why” of our responses so that we can have better communications/relationships in the future….or it could be something else entirely, but a Gift WILL be waiting. It’s like the gold star we received when we did well on a task in school. Spirit wouldn’t ask us to go through that kind of pain resolution unless they didn’t have some kind of Gift, some kind of “Gold Star” waiting for us when we learned our lesson!!

Processing ourselves all the way down to the nitty gritty and taking responsibility for ourselves is NOT about beating ourselves up while we own our part of the blame, by the way. It’s about providing ourselves with the opportunity for growth and understanding and releasing and healing. It can be frightening as all get out, incredibly painful…..AND it can be absolutely exciting if we can keep in mind that we ARE growing and we ARE learning and we WILL benefit when we get to the other side of the processing. (I have to insert here that yesterday, when I admitted to our wonderful webmistress, Susan, that I didn’t yet know what I was going to write about, she suggested I write about our current wildfire situation and how scared everyone feels when a forest fire is going on near them, even though fires are necessary for trees to germinate so that our forests can continue to exist. In light of the fact that fire can represent strong emotion, and strong emotions frighten a lot of people and are invariably present when we process SO that we can release the emotion to allow for healthy relationships…..well……I guess I ended up taking her up on her suggestion!!!)

We’re in a time when we are FORCED to honestly assess ourselves. We are in a time when we are FORCED to accept responsibility for our own emotional health. As long as we continue to make it be something or someone outside of us who is responsible for our unhappiness, our pain, our whatever, we will continue to BE unhappy, in pain, whatever. Because the truth is, NO one has the power to hurt us unless we GIVE them that power to do so by believing THEY are the ones who hurt us. (I’m not speaking of physical pain – I’m speaking of emotional pain.)

Sometimes, when we’re in the middle of it, it’s hard to see the broader scope of the dynamics that go on in our relationships. It’s hard not to hold another responsible for our experience. Again, it’s human nature to first blame someone else for our unhappy situation, then we blame ourselves, and then we see the Gift in it and Ta-Da - we’ve grown a little more…..we’ve come to a better understanding of ourselves. We’ve cleansed unhealthy thoughts and shed them so that a little more Light can shine forth from our Beings….and that’s ALWAYS a good thing!

I’m mentioning all this because one of the things I recall Dixie saying about these summer months in particular is that many relationships will be challenged to the max. A lot of people will decide to end their relationships. Sometimes the decision TO end a relationship is absolutely in alignment with our Soul’s intention – our lessons with each other are finished and the timing for our relationship has completed itself and we therefore need to END it. But other times, because of the discord we have going on in a relationship and our own unwillingness to work to heal that discord, we make decisions that we later regret terribly because we ended a relationship that wasn’t yet complete (and we then experience a longing for that person which remains in our hearts for the rest of our lives at some level of our Being).

In light of that, it’s extremely important to make sure in these times that if we decide to end a relationship, it is because it HAS completed and remaining in it would cause a measure of harm to our Soul. But to know that, we HAVE to be willing to examine our own actions/words and take responsibility for our part in any discord that is present. This is true of all relationships – for certain our love relationships, but also our relationships with family members, with friends, with anyone who is important to us. And again, I’m not speaking of relationships that are based on abusive behaviors. That’s another matter entirely. I’m speaking of the relationships that are truly important to be in for the Love that is inherent within it……for the deep and ongoing Love that one Soul bears for another, but that stubborn pride or misunderstandings or misplaced blame is now affecting to the point where the relationship is threatened.

Alright – enough already! Hope your August brings much Good your way……!!!!

Hold on to your Spirit...        
Marty