Gratitude for lessons learned...

open heart

I learned a lot about friendship and myself this weekend. The lesson was painful and is forcing me to take a deeper, more thoughtful look at myself. What I have come to know so far is that my Feelings are teachers. They are not facts, nor will they ever be, unless I chose to make them so. I have come to understand that my job is to be able to acknowledge them, identify them and express them. It is a process that has taken me years.
I have also come to understand that after identifying and expressing them, it is my job to step back and take an objective look, sit them down at the round table and ask me what they are here for. If I can do that, step back from my feelings, they have an enormous amount of information to pass on. I am realizing that certain feelings are harder to step back from than others, that there are feelings that alert me to much deeper wounds; wounds that are sometimes harder to face. And that there are experiences and situations which will continuously call attention to them until I honor them and what they have to teach.
The learning usually comes through my interactions with others. This weekend I learned that there are still areas in which I take things deeply personal. I am better with some but there is work to be done. I learned a big lesson about my ego as well. I was reacting out of fear, fear of rejection. I also learned that when people I love establish their boundaries and follow their dreams despite how it may appear to others, there is growth, growth for them and the people with which the boundaries were established. I have learned to trust love and the process even if I am not sure why things are happening. Had my friend not followed her dreams and her calling, I would not have moved forward in mine. I would not have been made aware of the wounds that still need tender, loving care and the self-defeating thoughts that I thought I had conquered but continue to rear their ugly heads.I am grateful that I can be honest with myself and face the shadow parts that I do not like. I know that it is how I grow,Ariadne's thread to the Goddess within. Thank you Miss Paula for being you; for loving yourself enough to follow your dreams and for once again reminding me that love is not a feeling, but an act. An act that requires seeing myself and those around me in their own uniqueness rather than through my fear, attachment, entitlement and control. ~ Munay