Do You Believe in What You See?

For all my faithful followers out there (all two of you :-) I want to apologize for letting so much time go by in between posts.  This summer, I was completely consumed with learning the lessons I am going to discuss here.  For me, they are monumental, life changing lessons that have taken 33 years and a lot of suffering to eventually learn.

The first lesson is that things are not always what they seem.  EVER.  Our human minds have the tendency to  judge, label, confine, and organize ideas and concepts and grasp onto form as a way to feel secure.  Form exists as people, objects, situations, beliefs, thoughts and feelings.  Identifying with form is our way of feeling safe and in control.  It is our ego's way of saying "I've got this whole life thing figured out."  Unfortunately, form is also subject to the laws of nature, which means it is going to break down at some point and as humans we miss out on the true essence of life and cause ourselves suffering if we remain too rigidly attached to any kind of form.  Yoga practice teaches you not only to be flexible in the body but most importantly in the mind. Yoga essentially teaches you to "go with the flow."

So, my belief (or the particular form I was identified with) was something along the lines of "My marriage is rock solid, nothing will ever crack it, and I am such a moral and highly evolved person that I would never do anything to put my marriage and family at risk." (um...hello ego!)  Your mind might be running away with all sorts of guesses as to what happened here.  And I am not going to explain as the story is extremely long and complicated and the details are irrelevant to the points I want to make.  (Rest assured that there was no dishonesty or infidelity involved, but even if there was, it would still be OK as I am learning...just read on :-)  It did however include a series of choices I made that now in hindsight do appear to be extremely poor and incredibly painful.  And this perfect storm led us to a point where we were not sure our marriage was going to survive.  The word "divorce" was used.  Never, in a million years, would I have imagined to be having that conversation with my husband.  So there you go.  This belief I held about myself was dissolving right before my very eyes as a result of choices I made that seemed like the right ones at the time.  Proof that nothing is as it seems.  Life is energy in a constant state of flux and as humans we have the tendency to cling to form instead of staying open and flexible to the fact that things are constantly changing...in my case I was attached to the idea that I was pretty darn perfect and had an impenetrable marriage so I was shocked and humbled when life challenged this belief.

The second main lesson I learned and the one that is the most meaningful to me is what it means to truly love.  The Buddhists have a term called "bodhichitta" which is essentially translated into "completely open, awakened, and enlightened heart and mind."  It is equated with our ability to love.  I have been reading about this concept for quite some time but only is it now that I have shifted into a true understanding of it through direct experience.  According to Pema Chodron in her book "The Places that Scare You" it is only bodhichitta that heals and bodhichitta that is capable of transforming the hardest of hearts and the most prejudiced and fearful of minds.  For me, I have finally used the concept of bodhichitta to heal myself and learn to love myself unconditionally, and I believe this is exactly where it needs to start.

Throughout the events of the past couple of months there have been many stones thrown and some hurtful things said and believed about me.  The first step for me was finding it in my heart to forgive these people.  Everyone sees the world through completely different lenses, and these unique views are the truth for each individual.  I was making decisions based on my beliefs at the time, and people were judging those decisions based on their beliefs.  That is all fine and good and makes sense to me.  Intellectually, I do not fault anyone for having beliefs that do not line up with my own.  But emotionally it was a different story.  Words can be like poison if you allow them to be.  And I could slowly feel myself allowing the poison to seep into my soul.  Thoughts like "I am a selfish, bad and evil person, a terrible wife and mother" started swirling around my head.  Which led me to my moment where my soul screamed "Stop feeding me with this toxic energy!" I finally realized that I had been accepting these false beliefs about myself for 33 years and all of these past experiences had finally brought me to this place, and to this moment, where I chose to live my life from a place of love and freedom instead of fear and self deprecation. Yes, I made some mistakes.  But this is where it ends for me.  I view these mistakes as golden opportunities from which I will learn as much as I possibly can and increase my awareness about myself and awaken compassion for other people who also stumble along the way.  But I am not bad.  No one is.  We are all children of God...born as pure love, light and joy which is our natural state of being and wholeness.

Bodhichitta has the ability to transform and heal the world.  There is so much pain and suffering that we inflict by the ego's need to label, judge and persecute ourselves and others.  It is through self love and acceptance that we gain the ability to love others unconditionally and fully.  For example, in this Perfect Storm, my husband's pain caused him to say and do some very hurtful things to me as well.  I now believe I have a fuller understanding of what it means to love and forgive since I was able to do it for myself so it becomes natural to look at him, see the beauty in his soul and recognize that as his true essence.  Rather than retaliate and defend with more hurtful words and actions, which would clearly escalate the situation, I am able to more easily forgive him and open my heart in compassion.  And I know he is working on doing the same for me. We feel that these experiences are teaching and allowing us to love eachother in the truest sense of the word: unconditionally.

So in the end, I realize how from an outsider's perspective the choices I made were the "wrong" ones.  However, the only way I can explain what led me to do what I did, was that I knew, without a doubt that I was being guided by the deepest part of myself....my authentic self, my soul, or even by God, to make the decisions that I made.  This is what I know.  I followed my heart and my truth and it led us into this current situation that looks like a horrible accident scene from the outside, but what does it look like on the inside?  It ties back to my first lesson, which is "nothing is as it seems" because from our perspective it is a beautiful place.  We know in the depth of our souls that this was part of a larger plan to bring us to ground zero so that we can rebuild our life and our marriage into something even deeper, more joyous and grounded in truth than ever before and are so grateful for the opportunity.