Learning to take responsibility for myself and my own choices and actions in life is another very important step I took in my journey towards healing. It was as if in learning to do this I was able to step away from my pain and suffering and step more fully into being myself.
Letting go of focusing on the pain and suffering that my body felt was very, very important. But I figured out in a hurry that what I focus on is what I experience, so being overly focused on the pain was not a good thing. I needed to learn to focus on other things, mainly what I could do to help myself. I also had to learn to stop being mad that I was in pain. In a sense I had to stop choosing to suffer. I had to learn to let go of my ideas about who and what was to blame for how I felt and where I was in life, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It was not easy.
We waste so much of our time and energy looking at everyone around us blaming them for how we feel, who we are and what we do. We are stuck in thoughts like, "If they wouldn't do this then I wouldn't have to do that or if they wouldn't act in this way or say these thing then I wouldn't have to feel so bad." It can take us a long time to realize that we are wasting our time and energy feeling sorry for ourselves and blaming others. We aren't going to get very far focusing on others and working to change them when what we need to do is look at ourselves and work on ourselves.
Deciding to stop blaming others is not an easy step, but it is crucial because it's the only way we can begin to take responsibility for ourselves. Really looking at ourselves and how we have acted and reacted and chosen to take no actions in our life can be extremely painful. We might not like what we see and we might start to feel badly about ourselves or judge ourselves. Beating ourselves up defeats the whole purpose of looking at ourselves, we are looking only to learn, not to judge and condemn.
We've all been trained to believe that someone or something HAS to be to blame for everything, but if we are focusing on casting blame it is difficult to move forward. Instead of focusing on blame we want to focus on simply seeing what is making our life so difficult and determining if there is any thing we ourselves can do to change the situation. Is there anything at all that WE can do differently that would help to bring about a different outcome in the situation? What sense does it make to focus on anything other than what WE can do or change within ourselves.
If we can let go of casting blame and can look at ourselves and take responsibility for our own actions and how we are in the world, then we may gradually begin to see changes occurring around us. Even if things outside of us do not seem to change right away, we may begin to feel changes within us. We may feel less angry and judgmental, we may relax and stop focusing so much on the things that others do that seem to drive us nuts, which may lead to us being able to be more relaxed and compassionate with others, which may in turn lead to those around us being able to relax more and be more caring and considerate.
There is no guarantee this will happen, but if we are focusing on ourselves, then it should be easier to interact with others, which will make our lives much less difficult and stressful. When we feel less judgmental and angry and aren't focusing on changing others, our whole system can relax and we become less tense and our bodies are more able to be opened for healing. We become less likely to get distracted by the behavior and actions of others and less likely to allow ourselves to get sucked into how they are behaving.
Taking responsibility, letting go of judgment and not blaming others may not be easy, but if we are patient with ourselves and persistent we can learn to do this and this will help us to begin to heal from within. It doesn't happen over night, it's a process like everything and we may take a few steps forward and a few steps back, but the benefits are well worth it, the "healing" that we may see in ourselves and in our lives can be amazing! The new "us" that emerges may be even brighter than we imagined. At least that has been my experience. By looking within myself and making changes and learning to listen carefully to what my body needs, I've gone from being nearly bedridden to being able to travel occasionally and take care of myself and family with much less pain and exhaustion. I've still got some healing to do, but I've come a long way!
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