A GIFT IN EVERYTHING
Rhonda Byrne, creator of “The Secret” writes: "Look for the gifts in everything, especially when you are facing what appears to be a negative situation. Everything that we attract causes us to grow, which means that ultimately everything is for our own good.... Adjusting to a new path and a new direction will require new qualities and strengths, and these qualities are always exactly what we need to acquire in order to accomplish the great things ahead in our life.”
Do you find yourself shouting at the moon: “Why me?!?” Or...even shouting at God: “How could you do this to us?!?!” If we live from the perspective that we live in a universe in which the so-called “good” people (you and me) are rewarded and the so-called “bad” people (them) are punished by a force or a God that doles out the rewards and punishments, then it is understandable that we are often found shouting at the moon or shouting at God when we are faced with difficult and painful circumstances.
“Why would God let this horrible thing happen to me?” is the kind of question many of us may ask, when we are in abject pain and needing to blame something, someone, as we grapple with the frustration and confusion of feeling that life's challenges and pains are “unfair” and “cruel”.
When our relationship with God is on the basis of a business deal, in which we have promised to be good, in return for which we believe that God will take care of us by sparing us the pain and suffering of life, then we can feel let down – even betrayed – by God or the Universe.
However, if we can expand our relationship with God or the Universe to include the notion that everything that happens in our life is some form of blessing, and that God or the Universe wants only the best of what life has to offer, then even the toughest of trials and difficulties takes on another dimension.
Byron Katie, in her book Loving What Is, muses that every time we spend any time or attention on wishing that something be something else, we lose. It is important to be willing to face what is right in front of us, and to ask the question: How can I make this a blessing and not a curse?
I maintain that Life is not unfair. Life just is. The way we each handle life is what makes the difference. It might appear that some people are holding a shitty deck of cards, while others are holding all the good ones. But whatever that hand is, we have learned that the game isn't necessarily won by the person who holds the best cards...right? It's all in how the cards are played.
I've often heard the story of Hershel, a man who had survived the Holocaust during World War II, endured the horrors of the death camps, watched his entire family be taken away and slaughtered, but he survived it all. Hershel scraped and clawed his way to freedom, barely alive in Auchwitz when the American troups liberated the camps in 1945. He struggled to survive, to live and to thrive. He found his way to America. Shortly after arriving in New York in 1947, after the war and after his liberation, Hershel was walking across Third Avenue and was hit by a bus and killed immediately. “Why would God let this happen to this poor man, who struggled so mightily to survive, only to be killed by a bus in NYC!?!?”
God wasn't driving the bus. Sam was driving the bus. Sam didn't see Hershel crossing the street...
Was all of Hershel's struggle to live in vain? I don't think so. His struggle and his persistence was part of his journey, and Hershel had also become a source of inspiration to hundreds of others around Hershel who were witness to his grit and persistence.
Everything is energy. We are all connected. We are each a part of one another, in more ways than we can every know.
Life is not about the destination, nor is it about how many years we live. It is always about the journey. It is about the little details of the steps we take along the path. It is about the choices we make inside each and every moment of our daily path called life. It is about how we define ourselves in our loving relationships with others, and with ourselves.
When we love someone, we want to have that person in our life always, don't we? But what is “always”... Take the word apart: “ALL...WAYS”... And how many ways can we love?
We love most fully when we simply love what is.
Blessings
Sheila
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I often tell people, it's not about the person who died. It's about comforting the living. When someone we love dies, they're no longer in suffering. They're turned over either to the places people go when they die, or to the choice to incarnate again and experience yet another lifetime.
ReplyDeleteIt's like thinking of a lifetime as a long string of lessons. Those who have passed are graduated, exams are over. They get to throw the cap into the air and wave their diploma -- or decide whether to go on and find another set of courses that suits their fancy.
Those who die are done: they do not suffer, they perhaps look upon those of us who are living and those of us thinking about them, bless us, try to tell us to let go, lend a hand or wisdom in those far reaches of the soul that we call intuition, feed our dreams, and guide our lives.
How I think of it is that when I think of a person who has passed from life, they get a chance to look down upon Earth and "check in" on what's going on. It's like we divert their attention from whatever happenings are going on in the Beyond, and our thoughts bring their minds back to Earth for a moment. Then they get to witness whether we've allowed their passing to become a great weight keeping us from our own destiny, or we've taken our lessons and marched onwards towards our future with our fond memories of friends and family now gone onwards. When I think of them, I feel the connection, and I send them love and well wishes and get on with things. I feel their blessings, and their love.
Mourning is a little vision quest of moving from one role in life to another. You mourn not only the life and companionship of the lost one, but the transition that you must make in their absence. I fully admit that I don't feel sorry for the loved one who is gone -- not now that they're gone into what I expect to be a total re-immersion with their Higher Self. I certainly feel sorrow that they may have suffered in passing, but that is done now. I definitely feel sorrow for those they've left alive: their children, spouse, parents, friends, siblings. And I feel the emptiness in my spirit where the person once had a place in my waking life, and a fullness in my spirit where their spirit connects with my dream self. The roles have changed, and that is worth all the anger, sorrow, sadness, disbelief that surround the process of mourning.
Perhaps Hershel had to live the life he lived, and die the paradoxical death he died. He touched many lives with the struggles he survived, and he touched many lives with the death he died. How enormous is that? It caused many to ask questions -- even if they were questions about fairness, and about God. Those with absolute faith would accept it, those who do not will question it. On the level of spirit, his soul had lessons to take from the journey, both through unbelievable adversity that caused him to assert himself to live, and through the uncertainty of life afterwards that caused him to die. Had he simply died quietly, then the world would be different than it is right now. Perhaps not very different to our eyes, but it would be different. Perhaps that difference was very very important.
In my humble opinion, it is not our place to pass judgement at all, much less to pass judgement on God. I [try to] leave these things to the Mystery.