When I share from my personal experiences in my writing, it is less about telling you the details of my personal happenings and more about offering something we can all relate to.
And it is especially NOT a commentary about anyone else other than myself.
I'm far from perfect, have had plenty of horrible behavior in my life and feel like it's helpful to share my own experience of it along with my own mistakes and shortcomings because it's relatable. And we all have them.
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This is what I believe:
EVERYTHING outside of us is some kind of trigger, impression, activator.
It's why we have chosen human experience- because to be human is to be an emotional being and there are things to learn from how we RESPOND.
Of course there are entire practices designed to take you out of reaction and response.
But even after practicing those, I still believe we come here to be human so that we can learn from our specific responses.
I believe that human incarnation is an exercise. One with meaning but an exercise none the less.
Everything outside of us affects us.
(We even respond to our own inner personal human aspects but that's a different subject)
Environment, people, parents, siblings, family. Friends, lovers, jobs, climate, weather, nature, every situation you've ever been through etc.
We all have them.
Every person has their own story- their own movie I like to remind people especially when it's really tough.
And every person has their own perspective.
2 people can grow up in the same family and have completely different experiences of that family.
Different parents almost, different perspectives and different memories-
BECAUSE
We are all different. And we have different things to learn, and different things to experience for ourselves and the collective.
And we each have different things to teach because of all of this.
We forget this.
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I think there are 2 helpful ways to practice perspective.
1- Allow yourself to look at your life in the way that everything is happening FOR you.
To show you, to teach you. for You to experience and learn from, respond to and grow from.
2- Remember that EVERYONE ELSE is also in their own experience and that part is not all about you. Hardly in fact.
Someone else's experience, reaction, perspective, is about them and how they are being affected. you may be an object, trigger, activator, in their story- but that doesn't mean it's about you.
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People are struggling right now, in general.
Financially, emotionally...
people are inflamed, overly sensitive,
we just had a gnarly retrograde, and now we are in the fire of Sagittarius and the holiday season.
Others are going to react to you, and you to them.
Reaction is so much more about one's own personal experience and feelings that include everything else in their day and in their life, then it really is about you.
React or respond?
yeah.... I know about that discussion too.
But we all react first, and then respond.
Can we make more space between the two?
How can we honor the self, and simultaneously be sensitive to others?
It's hard work .
and I'm right here with you.
🙏
((Photographer: Taken by Adam Petrishin at my Full Moon Sound Bath and Ritual at 22 Teachings, in Downtown LA))
