101 Mindfulness

I was at a family celebration with an intimate group of near and dear. An evening full of warmth and love. Surrounded by people who’ve always been uplifting. All except one who is a thorn in my side and has been for decades. Due to circumstances I can’t cut them out of my life. Don’t we all have one or more of these.

So as I sat over my morning chai the next day all dreamy eyed, cocooned in the love from the previous evening, one negative incident that had occurred crept into my mind. And as I thought about it, talked about it, dwelled on it, it got bigger. And slowly the cocoon of love had shrunk and the ugly garbage bag of negativity was taking over.

I was getting into a bad mood . All the positives of the previous evening were being overshadowed by this one negative. I realized the negative story was growing with a life of its own and was sucking me into that huge garbage bag. The false self / ego feeds off of this drama and fuels it. The negativity grows more toxic and poisonous. I realized what was happening, consciously refused to be drawn into it and went through the following steps :

1. I replayed the bad incident. Instead of pushing it away and sweeping it under the rug, telling myself to be positive, I processed it. I called it out and labeled it. I recently read somewhere that “Time does not heal, it allows space for unprocessed emotions to slip to the subconscious where they color your every interaction going forward.” So it’s healthy to not quash them but to feel and process them in a healthy way and let them go.

2. I realized next that I was hurt less by the person but more by the fact that I let it happen to me. I let someone walk all over me. So I forgave myself saying I didn’t realize it at the time, I was taken by surprise so I did the best I could in that moment. Instead of continuing to berate myself and feel guilty.

3. Things happen FOR a reason so I pondered what lesson for myself I could glean from the incident.

I saw that having been brought up to always do the right thing, the socially acceptable thing, I had forgotten what felt right to me. I did and hence my daughter did what was expected of us, what was seen to be right by the external world. Along the way forgetting to voice at least to myself how I actually felt about the situation. Even if I couldn’t do anything about it. The least I could do was to be authentic about how I felt to myself. There are often several acceptable responses to a situation so it’s important to feel what is authentic to us, not the world and go with the most suitable.

The other person who I felt had wronged me knew what they wanted, voiced it and got their way. Something that I didn’t know to do. Something I needed to learn and practice going forward.

(This was my lesson but its different each time for each person)

5. I then visualized a trampoline like ceiling over my head with a tear in it, pulled myself up through this opening leaving behind the incident in the darkness below to dissipate. I took only the lesson with me and decided to shine the light of this revelation to other aspects of my life.

6. I felt empowered I had learnt something about myself that I could work on.

7. I have the luxury of being surrounded 99% of the time by people who are way more considerate of me, so this person had been put in my path to jolt me out of my complacency. I could now drop back into my cocoon of supportive loving people as I worked on what I had learnt.

The universe / higher self is marvelous. Supporting our growth every step of the wa