Showing posts with label self-change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-change. Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2017

The Nail that Sticks Out

cultural-intelligence-17-638.jpg
I have often used the statement, “the nail that stands up gets hammered down” in an effort to justify never  backing down unless it was a strategic stand down. My rationale stems from my fear of being hammered down, again and again. Who would I be if I bowed down and obeyed the rules of the few that I consider to be abusive? Who would I be if I ignored that which I consider to be abusive? What if I turned around, picked up my belongings and walked away, would that solve the problem that I experience within and as myself? Nooooo...

I have often felt as though my only opportunity to live is right now and if I let someone take even the least of my rights away, I would be responsible for denying myself such rights. From there, I thought it would just be a matter of before I joined the crowd of hammered down nails ignoring their own rights and the rights of others. Sooner or later I would find myself jealous and angry towards those who weren't willing to accept and the rule of the few as the status quo. Would I then join the mobs for the burnings and the lynchings?

Or maybe I’ve got it all wrong; maybe the so-called rights that I’m holding onto are in reality just worthless baggage. My rights, his rights, her rights, what does it all amount to if I never get to live the life that I’m fighting for. Or is it that, for me the fight is how I’ve chosen to be because it’s what I prefer to do rather than  face myself  as the cause and the consequence?

I’ve learned some things along the way. The first and most important one is that I have to change myself in order to change how I view my reality. I’ve been doing this and now I’m beginning to realize seriously that that the reality as I thought I knew is will disappear. Perhaps that’s how it must be in order to create something new - out with the old, in with the new…

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

From Spite to Recognition of Perspectives

An uncomfortable point of anger and spite that came up within me this weekend has to do with the ongoing saga, Horrible Neighbours or Horrible Me that my partner and I have been walking as part of our personal processes and investigation/participation in the local legal system. The point of spite that came up within me has to do specifically with the placing/movement of orange cones in front of our house. Actually, it’s not so much these cones being in front of our home that I’ve been reacting to, but them being in the forefront of my view whenever I looked out of the front windows of our home. Thus, what I’ve been doing whenever I return home for the weekends or holidays, has been simply to move the cones out of my view. The problem or or energetic reaction that I’m dealing with here has to do with somebody else moving them back into my view. The energy that been coming up for several years now (even though I’ve done self-forgiveness on this point) each time somebody moves these cones back into “my view” is or was one of anger and spite as though somebody was physically attacking me, in-spite of myself seeing/realizing that I was and am the only one in and of my physical body creating, accepting and allowing the consequences of my thoughts in relation to this point.

This time, after I had already moved the cones back “out of my view", as seen from the inside of my house, yet still slightly in front of my house, but not in front of my windows, I noticed one of the characters in this saga walking outside as though he were assessing or inspecting a move that the opposing side had just made. In looking at him as a reflection or question of myself, it occurred to me that I’m  not harboring spiteful thoughts towards him or any of the others involved in our dispute. Thus, I asked myself, then, what is it that I keep on reacting to as though I’m being personally attacked. The answer I realized was in the question itself, “as though I’m being personally attacked.” I had been defining myself as being attacked like someone putting his hand infront of my face and refusing to move it, instead of realizing that, just as I had my perspective or assumption of where things should and shouldn’t be in relation to the front of my house, so too, do others, but that doesn’t make it an attack of a magical hand that somehow can go into my stomach and churn me up into anger, aggravation and spite.


Therefore, after sounding self forgiveness in that moment to remove the energy that I had associated with that point, I also redefined the point of the cones being moved - from that of someone attacking me to that of someone acting from his or her personal perspective, just as I do when I move the cones out of my view.

In this redefinition of who I am in relation to this point, I realize that (in the physical reality), although each one of us moves from his or her perspective, no one is physically attacking anyone. Hence, when and as I find myself at a point of reacting in anger or spite in relation to someone having placed something in front of my house, I commit to breathe, stop the energy before it has time to expand, and remind myself that just as I feel that I have the right not to have those things in front of my house, so too perhaps do others feel that they have the right to place them there. Herein, I see that this is not a matter of being right, wrong or attack, but one of personal perspectives which are being addressed by my partner and I through the local legal system. Herein, I also commit to live the word, patience in consideration of different perspectives, while walking through the legal system, while also walking my personal process of self change. Furthermore, the next time I see that the cones have been moved in front of my house, I’m going follow up on this point by cross referencing my physical body to see for sure that I have (or have not) satisfactorily addressed and corrected this point within and as myself.