A FRANK AND HONEST ACCOUNT OF MY OWN EMOTIONAL STRUGGLE

Hello Everyone

I am choosing to open up to you today with a truth which many of you may resonate with. Being on this wonderful spiritual journey has certainly been an interesting and eclectic mix of ups and downs, travelling along mountains and valleys, but these challenges have honed me into who I am now and also for the work ahead of me which I have to do.

Over the past month or so, I have been struggling with feelings regarding a relative of mine. I found this person to be selfish and wrapped up in their own world of “self”. There was an incident in November, where I allowed my “ego” to take over. I allowed myself to become consumed with anger and needless to say, I had to get down on my knees and humbly ask God to forgive a few words that proceeded out of my mouth as I verbally battled with this person.

For a long time after that I refused to have anything much to do with her, yet my spirit was not settled. Time after time my spirit questioned me about looking at this situation from the spiritual side, looking at myself and asking me to be careful because I was standing on the platform advocating love, peace etc and inspiring others,. Obviously, I did not want to recognise this as I wanted to hold onto what this person was doing as my own personal crutch to gossip and own bad thoughts. Yet, because my spirit guides me often and also acts as my Jiminy cricket (my conscious), I had to relent, looking inside of me to reflect on what I was doing. I also remember around that time, I was reading “The Essence of Buddha, The Path to Enlightenment by Ryuho Okawa a wonderful book which talks much about the state of being, the purity of being and walking on the path of enlightenment. I felt a bit of a hypocrite, I can tell you because at that moment in time, I knew I was not practising what I was preaching.

Yet I struggled to deal with letting go of the resentment and anger that had built up in me. I meditated more, I prayed more and I literally had to go deep within myself in order to let go of these feelings, which were not serving me at all. The more I complained about this individual, the more uncomfortable I felt in my own spirit, and the more I held onto how I was feeling was the more I complained. Therefore because I was not walking in my own truth which was to address ME and how I needed to nurture myself with unconditional love and forgiveness how could I ever learn to forgive and accept this person for who they were at that moment in time?

There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear and I had to learn that whatever this person had to learn, she would do so when the time was right and myself included. It was certainly not up to me to be making judgements. So in the process of learning to deal with, to heal and to be mature about the situation, I contacted this individual and calmly and respectfully spoke to her about anything and nothing in general. I did this on several occasions and now we laugh and speak quite well again and I no longer feel the animosity I initially did towards her. Yet it took time for me to learn to let go. I had to work through my own take and perception of the situation and realise that I had to let go of any expectations I had of her.
Yet, I feel I have still missed the true essence of being authentic in that, in order to fully restore what must be, it is for me to tell this person that “I love you.” It is not about whether this person would receive this act or not, but it is because I needed to do it.

Life is a funny thing, is it not? We all struggle from time to time with many things that we allow to burden us and yet the most simple thing it seems, and in reality it is not as simple as it could be, is that often times it is to deal with the self first and then others around you will shift in accordance.

I feel so much better now. The more I grow along this spiritual pathway is the more I am less tolerant of myself not walking in my truth and in fact, my spirit does not do very well if I slide off the pathway, even for one minute. It becomes restless and when I start to complain, moan and criticise then I know it is time for me to shut myself away and re-align who I am through solitude, prayer and meditation.

Yet I realise life is an ever evolving door of challenges, and as we grow into who we are, we are able to deal with life in a more comfortable way, hopefully and the learning is certainly worth the pain because it then enables us to move forward in a different direction if necessary.