2015 is already shaping up to be a wonderful year for me, not so much because of anything that has happened or anything I’ve done, but I seem to have been realising the effects of a New Year’s resolution, without ever having consciously made one. If I had made one, the resolution would have been “Lighten up on yourself!”
I had heard the words for years from my angels and guides: “Lighten up”. I knew that their usage of the term had a dual meaning. They meant, not only to not be so hard on myself and others and not be so serious about everything, but they also meant to allow more loving light into my heart and into my life.
Recent discussions in our New Spirituality Study Group led to one of our members offering the suggestion that we need to embrace all of our humanness, including the emotions which we have been taught are bad, such as anger. Whilst I thought I had already done this when I did Debbie Ford’s Shadow Effect Online Course, I realised that I had further to go in this regard. (http://www.theshadoweffect.com/)
I had a further reminder yesterday when I saw an interview with Sonia Choquette about her book, Walking Home – A Pilgrimage from Humbled to Healed. I had read this book late last year, and I had felt, as I read it, that, as Sonia shed her burdens on the Camino, I was shedding some of mine along with her. Yet, when I saw the interview yesterday, I knew I had some more lightening up to do. I realised that this was another meaning of my angels and guides messages: to let go of some burdens that are weighing you down. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svnucsVYYu0&feature=youtu.be)
I realised that the burden I was still carrying was my need to be perfect. Born a Virgo, I had always been told that I was a perfectionist, and I have always aimed to live up to that label.
As the daughter of a Congregational minister, I knew my perfection as a child. As a teenager, I had rebelled against that perfection and against the society, family, father, and God, who I felt had imposed that perfection on me. But my rebellion was short-lived. Soon I was fitting into society along with everybody else. I again embraced my perfectionism, and denied the rebel in me, particularly when I had become a spiritual teacher.
Although I had accepted many of my shadows during the Shadow Effect course, perhaps there were more which had gone unacknowledged. Regardless, as Sonia spoke of embracing her humanness yesterday, I knew I was still judging myself and finding myself unworthy.
It was only when I reread part of A Course in Miracles that I began to apply one of the lessons I had learned from it towards myself. Previously, I may have applied it to others, but as for me, I needed to be perfect. I realised, as Sonia had done, that unless I could embrace all of my own humanness, I could never really embrace every facet of other humans.
If you read my previous blogs about A Course in Miracles, you will remember that it advises that we have two ways of interpreting the world: one is with our ego, the other is with our Christ-mind or Holy Spirit, which connects us with God and the rest of his creation. If we allow the Holy Spirit to interpret the world for us, we see things totally differently than we do if we allow our ego to interpret the world.
The Holy Spirit’s interpretation is simple (T-12.I.3):
Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.
Whilst previously I had been prepared to make allowances for others who made an appeal for healing and help with their anger, or uncaring attitudes, I had forgotten to include myself in this interpretation. I am now prepared to cut myself the same amount of slack which I allow for others. If I get angry, or am less than truly loving, I know that, regardless of the form it takes, it is an appeal for healing and help, which really means it is an appeal for love.
The only way to truly heal or help another (or oneself, as I am now including) is to extend God’s love, for every call for help is caused by a perceived lack of love. I realised that I now need to extend that love to myself as much as to other people. As Doreen Virtue reminded me, this is something that we Earth Angels sometimes forget to do. We are so used to helping others, and when we aren’t helping others, feeling guilty for what we think we should have been doing, we forget to consider ourselves with the same compassion with which we consider others.
So this is my New Year’s resolution, without ever really making a New Year’s resolution. I intend to allow myself to be human, to be less than perfect, and to know that that’s ok. But if I want to be perfect, that’s ok, too.
In previous years, I had already been going with the flow. Having decided, many years ago, that my long term goal in life is world peace, and as I ask every day for God’s will to be done, I know that everything is happening in divine order to bring that about. I know that I need to take action to achieve that and all my goals, but I intend to trust my internal guidance, my Christ mind, to lead me to those action steps at the best possible time.
Instead of feeling guilty when I feel like I may have missed the mark, or made a mistake, I intend to treat myself with the same compassion as I would others, and allow myself to be human. I know that those are the times when I am in need of healing and help, and those are the times that I can extend God’s love to myself, as I would to others in that same situation.
I know that opening my heart to love myself in these situations will allow me to open my heart more to love others as well.
If you notice that I am less than perfect by projecting thoughts that are less than loving, please acknowledge them as a call for help and healing, and send me love, and I will endeavour to do the same for you.
I hope you have a loving 2015, just as I intend to do.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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