I am bringing my self to this world. And rather than letting the world imprint on me how I am acting and how I feel about myself: I am bringing my own special flavor to the world, today. The world is a soup that is not complete without my spice. If I hold back, there is something missing. Like a bland soup calling for that certain something... My contribution makes it yummy.
In the past I have confused the effects of the world for myself. I can bring something good. The bad things are not my fault, nor can I take full credit for the good things.
I became aware of enormous guilt I had been carrying--as if everything was my fault. The world was not my fault--just like the problems of my parents were not my fault when I was growing up. But I sure felt like it was. I thought that everything was my fault--I guess it's common that kids feel this way.
I can't seem to get anything done from that space of being faulted for everything. It's a heavy place. That's a huge burden!
At the same time I also feel a call to responsibility for doing what I can. I am here to make things better. I can bring something good to the world. It's not my fault. So I can offer my helping hands without having to carry all of that heavy baggage. This way, my hands are many times stronger.
3 comments:
Good on you Brooks! There should be no self-guilt or blame.
Swami Satyananda was once quoted as saying something like: "What have I done? I was just born, and so there is karma."
And as my own esteemed teacher once said: "Everyone is born when they're born. The result in time and space is what it is".
I just listened to an amazing interview with Bo Lozoff on iHanuman and he speaks to a lot of this -- you might want to check it out.
One thing that stuck out for me is his bit about how we are HERE to help others, and that in doing so, we naturally are balanced. That searching for balance and self-care and all of that is actually self-indulgence to the extreme that only the wealthy can know.
Good stuff.
And I add to Svasti: Gandalf's best line in the Lord of the Rings is when he tells Frodo that it is not ours to question the world into which we are born but to just do the absolute best with the time we are given. (Paraphrasing, of course.)
:)
my heart breaks for your suffering -- but I think your verbalizing the feelings help to break the cycle. For me, I had to make an intellectual decision that I would not indulge the guilt. It took time but I was able to recognize it when it crept in, stop the descent, and turn it around into something that I could rejoice in. Sounds simple now -- a lot of work.
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