Credit: Pixgood.com
This was written for the 175th issue of The Culture of Awareness Weekly Newsletter, which I offer for $11.11 a month.
To begin for this week – It’s easy for even the most ‘enlightened’ individual to stray from the path, and the moment we realize we’ve strayed is the moment we should get back on track and try to make sure we don’t do it again.
Mistakes are inevitable on this path, and sometimes, the best thing we can do is realize when we’re in the wrong. As easy as it is to blame society or other people for our behavior, we’re responsible for it whether or not we feel it’s justified.
We have to keep our emotions in check if we want to stay on the path, and remembering how powerful they are can keep us from being consumed by them in the long run.
They can either enhance life or make it a lot worse, and it depends on how we choose to use them (or whether we let them use us). If we use them to empower ourselves and others, life will be filled with joy and we’ll seldom have trouble finding happiness.
If we constantly give in to our negative emotions, however, we’ll make life worse for ourselves, those around us and ultimately, the world.
Continuously giving in to negativity dims our spiritual work’s impact (whether it’s inner or outer work), and the best way to make sure our work shines is to live from the heart in every moment; not just when we work.
I struggle with this as much as anyone else, and I’m realizing how much I struggle with negativity and how it can make life harder.
We can’t help but experience harsh circumstances and live a hard life if our thoughts, feelings and actions are always negative, and becoming conscious of our emotions and actions helps us see when we’re acting out or causing strife.
We hold the key to the world’s evolution, but we have to deal with our own emotional issues first so we can properly contribute.
Finding and pursuing our passion isn’t enough (even though it is important), and we have to be at least somewhat willing to pour our love into every situation and circumstance, however unfavorable.
Sometimes, the situation doesn’t even require an impressive amount of love.
Sometimes, we just have to show some patience or get out of our own mind before we do something we regret, and a little meditation could go a long way for most of us, including me.
I can only write the things I do because of my experiences, and I wouldn’t have any lessons to share if I didn’t mess up daily.
Making mistakes is how we learn, and fortunately, I can share what I learn with all of you who are also evolving through a series of often difficult and challenging lessons; some of which we bring on ourselves with our behavior.
We’ve all done at least one thing we regret, which is okay. The key is to learn something so we don’t make the same mistakes over and over, and sometimes, we think we’ve resolved an issue only to confront it again.
This happens so we can learn something we missed the first time around, and while it can be disheartening to say the least, we have to push through and willingly embrace the most difficult parts of it.
I have a feeling that we’ll all learn a lot about ourselves and how our emotions relate to our evolution in the months ahead, and we’ll learn it all through a series of seemingly unrelated yet precisely planned and interlinked personal lessons.
We might have some things to teach each other by the end of it, so if you think you can, prepare to share some of your most difficult life lessons with those who might need them in the future.
We’re here to learn and teach each other so we can all grow, so maybe we should pay attention and learn everything we can from the challenging life lessons that force us to evolve.
We can share what we know with the world when more people are willing to open up to it, but for now, we have a lot to learn and our teachers will be the challenges we prefer not to face.
By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness, December 4, 2015 – https://tinyurl.com/zgxj7er