Have you ever been really busy and caught up with something that is all consuming and feels very important – to discover later that it was actually not that important at all? We can feel quite ‘taken over’ and energetically, it can feel like we are being driven by an energy and a force that is not us.
Can this be true?
I have been feeling recently how we can change this feeling of
the forceful energy which is not us by simply taking a breath, a pause from whatever frustrates us, annoys us or sees us getting caught up in someone else’s emotions. We can easily get very caught up and become so involved in something, where it seems imperative that we are fully understood. Emotions and great angst can be overwhelming if we are misinterpreted and we can be constantly trying to prove a point, so we are not misunderstood.
I used to feel a great injustice if the outcome had not been what I had intended, and I realised that I could only ever sort out my side of the story and not actually control what others thought. A friend once said to me that what oth
ers thought of me was none of my business.
It is often easier to see the failings of others rather than the failings we have (which are often one and the same). When others get indignant, we may observe that they:
· become quite imposing
· act in a forceful way
· blame others for what has occurred
· grumble and moan about it quite negatively
· swear or speak aggressively
· exaggerate their story to fit their version
· catastrophise the whole situation.
Could it be that I behave sometimes in the same
way? I really did not want to feel this – but it was true. I decided to try to change it in a few ways that didn’t work too well either. I tried to reason with myself that this behaviour was completely unreasonable, and I should let the issue go, but it would simply niggle inside me if I didn’t express what I was feeling.
Then it occurred to me that as I breathed in, in a quality of my choosing – gentleness – then I could actually surrender to myself and let things pass. By simply breathing in and taking a gentle breath, this pause allowed some magic to occur. There were true physical changes in the body to connect to:
· my clenched jaws released
· the tension in my shoulders disappeared
· my face relaxed
· my indignation dissolved
· the particles in my body wiggled and tingled
· my mind settled and the issue diminished.
I found that Love for myself and Love for others was more important than any issue I was hanging on to.
Taking a pause and re-connecting to our breath, that breaths us out of any situation, feels a life changing lesson. Could it be that every time we react to something, or hold onto the tension, we are notching up an illness in the body for our future ill health? When we know this truth, why would we continue the same behaviour?
We can choose to take a gentle in-breath, (as presented by the Gentle Breath Meditation™) and surrender, so no matter what situation we find ourselves in, in the world, the pause gives us a moment to either continue in the same way and reject the lesson on offer – or to stop and learn from this and with that, we stop repeating the pattern and evolve.