Epiphany

Epiphany of the Month - Life and Weather.
How do you react when you experience bad weather? Do you take it personally? Do you ask why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve it? Why is the weather out to get me? Why do I always get this rain/storm/heat? Usually not, I would think.
What we usually do is adjust our plans and clothing accordingly and do our best to stay safe and allow the weather to pass. The weather changes almost daily, we know it will pass and not stay the same forever. This gives us the peace of mind to just do what we can to flow with it. We don't take it personally in most cases. We enjoy our time during the weather we like and lay low during the weather we don't feel great in.
Life, as far as I see it, brings us a variety of different weather conditions and seasons - experiences, emotions and moods. If we would just see it as weather, we would get less entrenched in taking it as a personal attack and indulge in self-pity and self-victimisation. We would see it as something that will pass and do our best to stay safe and grounded during challenging times. This can help us to navigate the majority of bad weather days with a lot more ease and awareness.
Of course there will be certain storms that wreak great devastation too, and they will need a different response, but those are usually and thankfully few and far between in most of our lives and that's when we can give ourselves permission to respond in whatever way that feels appropriate. However I believe that practicing this approach during the regular weather changes in our life will help to not only flow with more ease through the majority of our lives, but will build a better response to the bigger storms too.

Epiphany of the Month - Being Self-focused.

Being selfish is usually seen as a negative trait, and many people talk about being selfless as a trait to aspire to.

But perhaps the journey towards selflessness starts with being selfish, or more appropriately: self-focused. How can we expect to give something to others that we don't have ourselves? If we want to make someone happy, we need to be happy ourselves first. If we are not happy, and we try to make someone else happy, then we do it either out of obligation, or a need for reciprocation, for appreciation, for reward, which will ultimately make us happy. If we help someone with the intention of forgetting our own sorrow, that does not last very long either. So if we do certain 'selfless' acts out a feeling of lack or obligation, that just defeats the purpose, because if we don't get back what we think we deserve, then we are disappointed, frustrated, depleted and unhappier than we were to start with.

If however, we are happy within ourselves and then share that feeling with someone, we are not functioning out of lack or waiting for a reward or reciprocation. Just the act of seeing someone happy is rewarding enough. We are just sharing what we have enough of.

So perhaps we do need to be a little self-focused, by doing things that make us happy, fulfilled and complete, so that we can share ourselves with others more freely. Charity begins at home they say, so maybe we need to start with ourselves and then widen the circle to others? If we all would just take care of our own needs first, without feeling guilty or selfish, we would be much better equipped to help others, and the number of people needing help from others would decrease too.

If we are healthy, we can better help others who are not. If we are abundant, we can share more abundance with others. If we love ourselves more, we can love others better too.


-love