Opportunity in Self-honestly Facing Criticism

Some time ago, I received communication in relation to a project that I had worked on. I felt that the communication was somewhat critical. and in looking at the words themselves, I immediately traced them back to their origin and I could even see or feel the anger and frustration as they moved through different levels to finally arrive at me. Yea I know: any of the readers having had some training into the workings of the human mind might be saying, be careful about reacting to the things that you  perceive and then projecting your own experience onto someone or something as you’re imagining it to be. Yep, that was the first thing I did - react to what I was experiencing and then project it onto to a source. Hence instead of stepping back and looking for opportunities in all of this, I immediately began began preparing to defend myself. However, just before I put a defensive strategy into action, I decided to stop for a moment and look into myself.

What I saw was me almost completely immersed and engulfed by a ball of energy/emotion. Immediately, I said to myself, I’ve been here before, this happened to me before and I ended up spending almost a week in misery, imagining worst case scenarios as though they were real because they seemed so real. During that last episode, which was almost exactly two years ago, I went out of my way to make things right, but in the end it was only through writing everything out, applying self forgiveness and self corrective action, that I finally pushed through the energy to see, realize and understand that I had created the entire episode in my mind, meaning that it just wasn’t based on the physical reality of my environment at the time. Unfortunately, by the time I realized this (at that time), it was already too late. For my mind or at least some aspects of it had rebooted (I guess you could say), leaving me once again fully charged emotionally.

Returning to the present: having recognized that I had walked through a similar event in the past, I decided to hold off on taking any action and instead I chose just to go to bed. I didn’t sleep, for there is no sleep when one is so immersed in energy. Thus I considered, if I wasn’t in such an emotional state, if I were standing stable preparing to do what was best for all, what would I actually do? Simple, I would have a look at the criticism and  self-honestly address it. So, that’s what I did.

In looking at the criticism self-honestly, it occurred to me that much of it was very accurate. In other words, there was a lot that I personally could have done better. Of course I had my reasons for not doing so at the time, but that was then and this is now. Hence, I committed  (by physically taking the first step) to a course of action which included addressing the criticism and applying corrective measures. As soon as I had completed that first little step, the energy that had enveloped me dissipated by about 75-80%. From this point, I was able to go back to bed and get a couple hours of sleep. In the morning, when looking at my situation again, I realized that, although I was still kind of in the hot seat, it also wasn’t the end of the world for me. Furthermore, this point actually represented an opportunity for me. Specifically, in walking through a highly energetic experience in hours instead of weeks, I proved to myself that I am still changing for the better. That being said, I also realize that, as I still got caught up in the emotion for a time, I’m still not directing myself as much as I care to be. Thus, it is for me to always view such episodes as opportunities to change myself and test my directive principle, rather than allow myself to get caught up in the whirlwind of energetic based charges. The other opportunity that I also now see is to continue working on and improving upon that project of mine. It’s strange because, even though such points are so not fun, each one does indeed offer an opportunity.