RE: The Spiritual Laws of Engagement - Part 1
I'm happy to hear that Matt Kahn is your teacher. I love his videos and have gone to see him a couple times for evening teachings. The energy that comes out in me in his presence is so light-hearted and playful that I know something very true is having its flames fanned.
This is another great article from you. I will resteem it, and you know, while I'm quite new here on Steemit, I have a pretty large group of spiritually conscious folks on FB and I'm planning on getting as many of them into Steemit as I can convince to give it a try. As part of that I intend to give them a few great Steemers to follow to get their feed started, and you are definitely going at the top of the list, my friend.
This is already a long comment, but I simply must tell you one of the key things I got from reading your post....
I realized that as far as I seem to have come with my spiritual progress in so many ways, this blame thing still has a hold on me. I blame myself and I blame others.
That feeling that I haven't done enough, that I missed a step, that I'm not where I should be because, because, because... I can see it, but can't quite shake it. I constantly work on accepting the perfection of what is an abandoning the hope of things being different so that it can all be okay to me. I make progress, then I see the same old patterns again.
The same with blaming others. If you met me, you would think I was the most supportive person you've ever known. And I am really supportive of people. I take delight in the well-being of others. But I also suspect fault in others when things are not what I want them to be.
I see this even in a simple thing like playing an online card game against robot opponents. I get so mad at some of those robots! Every trick my team loses, I'm looking to see what my robot partner did wrong.
Now if you play with me in person, I keep that under wraps. I keep it so suppressed that I don't even know I'm doing it, let alone my partner (though there usually is a tension in my gut that probably traces to that suppression). But with the robots, I guess my identity as "good" doesn't feel it needs maintenance, so I unleash my blaming tendencies on those poor little robots, which means on myself, since I'm the one suffering from it. (Though to be fair, chicken and mouse are particularly horrid partners with a tendency to sometimes throw away an Ace of spades for no good reason.)
It is so important that we keep these insights about ourselves available to our conscious minds. That way when we are doing it we can catch ourselves doing it and make a different choice. Otherwise, there is the part of us that knows this does us no good. And there is the other part that keeps doing it anyway.
Thanks again for this article. I have to give it more thought, and see what progress I can make out of applying it.
Again your comment has opened my heart even more and I can't thank you enough! ❤️
I'm a little bit speechless to be honest... Your compassion even reaches the souls of these little robots and let me express my deepest gratitude for that, since they are not able to do so. 😀In what you are writing, even this blame, that is so natural and human, has a sweetness. Yes, I know this place you are talking about... especially as Empaths we have this feeling of having not done enough or we blame ourselves for thoughts of mischief and for looking for faults in others. The good thing though is, that these thoughts won't harm anyone. Chicken and Mouse will throw away this damn Ace of Spades even if you think that they are the worst bot players in the history of mankind... botkind... 😀
You know, freedom means to be free to even think, that they should burn in bot-hell!
I would recommend to allow yourself these thoughts and feelings and since they are already here anyway, they are next in line to be loved. ❤️
No need to blame yourself for blaming others or yourself - the invitation is to "love whatever arises" - and if it's blame, then this is perfectly ok.
So good, that you are also in resonance with Matt! It shouldn't come as a surprise, since we connected instantly here, to bring forth the Love Revolution on Steemit! 😀
I had many teachers over the years - many wise and enlightened beings, but Matt really changed everything for me. Not always in ways that I liked. My partner left me, because she couldn't stand the Love and wanted her old life back - now living with several partners in what she calls a "polyamorous relationship", which have nothing to do with "amour"/love at all... Long story... but so much pain involved...
And you know what? Even in the deepest despair and blaming life for what it has done to me in exchange for opening my heart, I still shout out to the world: I dare to Love!!
Yes... sometimes I feel like a lonesome warrior of Love, but then, there are these moments... moments like this... were I have the opportunity to meet fellow warriors like you, when everything suddenly makes sense....
Thank you! Thank you for wanting to recommend me to your friends and leading the Love Revolution on step further - one breath, one heartbeat and one I love you at a time....
Thank you! I deeply bow in front of you and your brave soul. Thank you, for speaking your truth and sharing it with us. Thank you, for making this stay here a piece of heaven. 🙏
If you need any help or have questions about the platform - and maybe having read some of the confusing stuff about how this all works - please feel free to ask anytime.
This is the Steemit Love Revolution and you have just joined this force, that can't be stopped! Thank you and I love you! ❤️
Okay, have to update you now that I'm back from a Buddhist New Year's celebration at which I was the sort of emcee (technically umzed).
I really had our above conversation on my mind, your original post and our dialog afterward. I was keenly aware of how judgmental I was being toward myself, because I was nervous being on the stage and all mic'd up and being recorded for worldwide broadcast for such an important event.
I meditated on these ideas over and over throughout any portion where I didn't have to speak, saying to myself: "You are doing it perfectly. Your natural state is perfect joy. Nothing has gone wrong. There is no reason to blame yourself. There is no reason to blame anyone out there. They are all participating perfectly. Everything is as it should be. Just allow who you are to naturally shine. You can't get it wrong. Even if you blame yourself, that is perfectly all right too." And so on.
There actually were a few snafus here and there. No one gave me the announcement about the celebratory meal afterwards, so I had to wing it. I lost count during the chanting so didn't know when to ring the bell, and was afraid someone else had kept proper count so knew I was wrong (as if they ever would). Then at the break I again forgot to keep track of time. I was so engrossed in chatting with friends, then mid-sentence yelled out, "Oh crap! I forgot to keep the time" which made the section of the room nearest me immediately go silent, while I scurried to go find the bell to ring and draw everyone back from the break.
Thankfully, all the repeating of the above reminders caused me to laugh at my missteps instead of feeling anger or shame. I really had to suppress my laughter while the chanting went on, then just rang the gong when it seemed about right. LOL
Even when the teacher appeared to go up from his private room to give the teaching after the break, and noting how late it was I rang the bell to reconvene everyone he whispered to me, "Isn't there supposed to be a teaching today?" Without missing a step or feeling any self-condemnation, I replied, "Yes, and YOU'RE the one giving it!" To which he replied with laughter himself.
Then, cherry on top, afterward a number of people came up to me to tell me how much they enjoyed watching me during the ceremony because I was such a clear embodiment of the joy the teacher was talking about. Little did they know it was because I was just reminding myself again and again that my nature was joy, and praying that nothing obscure that. Between that and trying to simply do all the steps for my role at the right time and in the right away, there just wasn't any room left for ego mind busyness.
Then even the teacher came up to me to thank me for leading the service and asking me to please do it more often. And then two of the people who had been expressing appreciation to me began telling the teacher the same things about me! I had to run away at that point. LOL
Anyway, thought you might enjoy hearing about the continuing evolution of our little convo here. Blessings.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful story! ❤️
Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese art of seeing the perfection in the imperfect. We all need more wabi-sabi. 😀...and everything works out in the end perfectly.
It seems as if you had to remember a lot of things there. I will post a video from Matt later together with some of my observations regarding that topic. Thank you!
You're amazing!
Hi! I don't have a lot of followers on facebook, but I post my articles in facebook groups, and I've started adding a little piece about Steemit at the end of them. It would be nice to get more of the spiritual community over here. Going to check out your profile now!
Yes, let's bring more spiritual community to Steemit! It has so much potential to be such a positive force in so many people's lives! But I'm still learning so much, so am waiting until I can be a bit better guide than I could now. In a couple weeks I think I'll be ready to start encouraging folks to join and helping to show them the ropes. It looks like you may be experienced enough now though.
Meh, well, Steemit is extremely complicated. I can show people the bare minimum, but when it comes to the bots and all the economics.....???
I've been thinking about putting together a spiritual team here on Steemit. Maybe we can combine forces since you have a large facebook following. I've been wanting to put together a discord group and writing contests, etc to get the spiritual community more united and stronger here.
Yeah, I'm definitely very much figuring out the finances aspect of this platform too. I do seem to learn more each day, so that's something LOL.
I'd love for us both to really bring in more spiritual folks, but I don't have bandwidth for creating groups or contests. It's all I can do to just talk about it to my existing groups, as I run 3. I'll be doing an intro FB Live on it to one of my groups a week from today, and definitely sharing with them a lot of links to resources instead of my trying to be the resource!
Well let's combine forces. What are your facebook groups? I wrote a post yesterday to brainstorm how to get this all together. https://steemit.com/steemit/@brightstar/attn-spiritual-people-of-steemit-this-is-a-community-brainstorm-to-grow-and-support-our-community-here-on-steemit
I replied further on your new post. Great idea and thanks for the initiative.