There is always more to learn on the path of spirituality and personal growth. I will never graduate. Nevertheless, I realized after the benefits of forgiving my ex-husband and acknowledging my part, as I shared in my last column, I wanted to move into this better place in all my affairs. For that reason, I discovered that forgiveness and making amends frees me to do this. Learning that inner peace is only by complete forgiveness, I have to forgive all those who have been harmful to me in some way. This is not an easy thought for me.
How could all those people be forgiven when I was harmed by their actions or comments? However, I read that it is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there something wrong with us. This means I have to look at myself and get honest about my motivations and actions.
It is necessary to look at my side of the street in all my dealings. I have to see where my own behavior has affected someone else. The picture is not pretty when I get honest. Realizing how selfish I was in trying to protect myself and survive was not easy to accept. I used people for my security, protection, to love me, and take care of me. As an adult, it is time to grow up.
I was dishonest with myself thinking other people were there to make me okay, provide my needs, and love me. I was so afraid in my victim place that all I could see was poor me, poor me. I recognized that I was keeping myself that victim by not acting in my own best interest.
Becoming assertive instead of passive was the key to changing my thinking from being the injured party. It was a huge step out of my playing the victim. Taking the steps to become courageous to speak up for my needs was never in the cards for me. When I was a child, I was to be seen and not heard. In fact, my stepfather told me, “We do not want to hear what you have to say”.
My trip sorting out the truth from the false is continuing. This is a long process with lots of challenges and lessons in its path for not to mentally and emotionally continue recreating my mindset. I vowed never to volunteer to be a victim again. In addition, I learned to forgive myself as I did survive the abuse and difficulties. Now it is time to move into maturity.
I was living in a fantasy that everyone and everything should go my way. I need to give up the past through leaving it emotionally behind as I move into “The New Me”. This is one of my early poems in my first book, Roses Have Thorns.” This clears the slate to live in the “Now”.
Today, I accept life on life’s terms, knowing that reality is now and everything is exactly as it needs to be. It is no longer necessary to defend myself. The change is how I will respond in the situation with a loving solution for you and me. Determining the loving response for others and me brings a great sense of ease because I align with the flow of the universe.
The biggest lesson and most difficult to accept is the truth about all my difficulties, toxic people, and harms. I came to realize that this is frequently called karma. I created my past and it came back for me to correct in loving and positive ways. Every negative energy has to be altered with a helpful solution. It is called balance.
I had to balance my not so wonderful past with improved actions, emotions, and thinking. Edgar Cayce, The Father of Holistic Health, said, “For without passing through each and every stage of development there is not the correct vibration to become one with the creator” . Another quote of his is, “Thus the individual does not go to heaven, or paradise, or the universal consciousness, but it GROWS to same”. This told me I was on a trip to grow into knowing that there is one spirit of love.
If I want to grow into the peace that is not of this world, I have to offer complete mercy to all the people, events, and things in my life that cause difficulties and challenges. Compassion and forgiveness allows love to return to my awareness, I will see a world of peace, safety, and joy.
Experiencing this loving energy of spirit that is in all of us and sustains us was an awakening. These people and circumstances were actually giving me the opportunity to change my fears, resentments, shame, and guilt into seeing the love below the appearance. They provided the opportunities for me to become so upset that I was willing to give up my selfish, self-centered ways to move into compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and unconditional love.
I can love the person and not the behavior. They were acting out what needed to be changed in me. They actually were giving me the chance to purify my own soul. My old projections from karma can transform into loving my neighbors as myself. We are all one in grace.
This week I had the occasion to turn karma into grace. Blind sighted by a person with very unkind judgments that gravely upset me seemed like the end of the world. Once again, it felt excruciating and unsettling. I felt attacked at the very core of my being through thoughtless condemnation. However, after the emotional fire died down, I knew enough to find the source of the difficulty and painful feelings.
As I sorted out where this pain originated, I realized this was a part of my hidden self that still needed to be resolved in love. The intellectual knowledge was ready to become an emotional shift to end the past feelings. It was time for this old energy to leave.
Discussing this with a trusted friend, I discovered the exact nature of my problem. Immediately, I felt the “bitterness” of my stepfather and his mother in which I was raised. Subconsciously, that energy was no longer needed with my better life emerging. I was not even aware that I still held bitterness.
What goes around does return. My new loving ways were pushing out the old for the new to replace it. It had to surface for my awareness and then leave. Finally, I was finally ready to handle the experience of the transformation. I could finally let it go and replace it with love and grace.
I can appreciate being in the “Now” and leave the baggage of the past that prevented the presence of love. Realizing he did me a favor with an emotional opportunity to feel and release the old harms brought relief. I am able now to be present in my life today. You might say it became a gift; one I did not expect but it was necessary. It feels like I have been born into a new energy, by letting my past leave without condemnation upon the present.
At this time of year, it feels like receiving the gift of a new life living in the grace of universal love that sustains us all. Leaving my past behind will be a new year. Happy New Year to you, too.
Check out my book, “Paradigm Busters, Reveal the Real You” at http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Redmond/e/B0069WIKDC for the details of how to release the past for your new life in love and to feel good.