January 22, 2022, visionsofheaven.com
https://tinyurl.com/2s3bk6um
My dear friends, we love you so very much,
When you walk past a rose bush, do you admire the rose or complain about the thorns? Typically you’d only notice the thorns if you ran right into them. Most of you would simply be drawn to the beauty of the rose.
If you were a gardener pruning the branches, you’d be aware of the thorns, but you wouldn’t curse them for being there. You would instead, cut away the dead wood, trim off the expired flowers, and simply be careful not to catch yourself on a thorn. The beauty of the blossoms would make this extra effort worth your time and energy.
So too, people are going to offer you behaviors that – filtered through your conditioning and perspectives – feel like thorns, branches, blossoms, or weeds.
- Some words and behaviors feel prickly and hurt when you find them jabbing at you because there is something needing attention in you.
- Some words and behaviors feel supportive, like sturdy branches, because they validate or encourage you.
- Some words and behaviors are like the dead wood that has no more usefulness in your life and some are like the blossoms that inspire and uplift you.
- Still others, like the weeds that have their place in the world, may have no place in the garden of your life except to catalyze your growth.
When someone offers you thorns, you have many choices that can help you feel better than the choice to obsess over the experience of being “pricked by the thorn.”
Many of you are in challenging relationships with people you dearly love and would never want to leave, because you chose to learn the power of focusing on the beauty in them and in you, rather than being tugged into focusing on their thorns.
Others have so many thorns and so little bloom that you don’t feel inclined to wait around for the blossom. You can decide simply to leave them to their own growth. Some souls, like the weeds in your garden, don’t have a place in your life at all except to feed the fuel of your future growth. In any case, all have value to you because they are helping you learn more about who you are and what you want in your life.
You already know that it isn’t your job to make anyone else change so you can feel more comfortable. It is only your task, like the rose, to grow your own blossoms, and like the gardener to decide what belongs in your life.
Would you criticize any part of a rose bush? If not, why criticize another human being, or yourself for that matter? If you were pricked by a rose you wouldn’t go around campaigning and complaining ~
“Can you imagine that bush! It pricked me! How dare it! It has no right! What a $#!$. I’m going to tell it just how I feel!” You wouldn’t cry and say to yourself, “What did I do to deserve that?” You wouldn’t waste more than a few seconds reacting. You’d more likely say, “Oooh, Ow,” and pull your finger away. You’d focus on the rose, trim the thorns, or walk away.
Next time someone offers you a thorn – a criticism, judgment, unkindness, etc – say to yourself, “Ooh! Ow!” and pull your focus away. Try instead to put your focus on all the beauty that blossoms inside of them, or shift your focus on something else entirely more pleasing. Don’t waste your time in the analysis of why they acted the way they did. As Jesus said, “Turn the other cheek.”
Turn your focus away from thorny behaviors and towards the good in them or in some other aspect of your life. You are in charge of what you tune into, no matter what life offers. And, as we’ve said many times, you will always get more of what you tune into, so choose your tuning wisely.
Perhaps they’re afraid. Perhaps they’re upset and feel like nobody listens. Perhaps they feel abandoned and don’t realize they’re abandoning their own loving nature by offering their thorns to you and to the life around them. Perhaps these are just boundaries that don’t yet feel comfortable to them. Perhaps you’re the thorny one?
Everyone on your earth is growing ~ hopefully past the thorns, towards the light, and into the blossom. Everyone is growing into the fullest, most beautiful expression of themselves, whether fast or slow, and whether you can see that blossom yet or you can’t.
So…like the gardener who navigates the thorns, trims away the dead wood, composts the weeds, and nurtures the blossoming of his or plants, realize that you get to decide what grows in the garden of your life. You get to decide if you’re willing to focus more upon the roses or on the thorns that life offers. Your freedom and your happiness reside in knowing that you alone have this choice.
~ The Angels
