Unnecessary Burdens

I received another gem of wisdom from my friend Ina Hutse a couple of days ago and she has given me permission to share it with you here.

Before I do, I want to preface her insight by saying that almost everyone with whom I speak tells me about a person or persons in their life who are negative, depressed, self-sabotaging or unhealthy in habits and ways of seeing the world. I can relate to this because I have someone in my life of whom I would say the same. Last night, sharing a meal with a friend and talking about this, I realized that I was actually feeling guilty because I am not unhappy. I was feeling guilty because I am happy and at peace in myself. How messed up is that?

I have written here about knowing what is our own and what is really other people's to experience, but I was referring to emotion states like fear or anxiety, sadness or joy, not to ways of being day after day after day, not to guilt about being free of fear instead of being worn down by it. Phew!

Ina had, like so many of us, experienced something similar in her life and was feeling somewhat guilty about NOT bearing the burdens that this person in her life was shouldering. And that is the primary image of this insight; we literally bear the burdens that are not our own, allowing a weight to press down upon our shoulders because otherwise we feel too free, too light in our being.

This is what Ina's inner guide had to say to her, paraphrased by me because Ina translated it from the Dutch language through which it came to her.

"Dear one, don't be so hard on yourself, don't be so intransigent. Allow the love, life and energy, the I AM presence of the divine consciousness that you feel in your heart. Allow it to flow, to evolve, to develop. Let it come out. Don't hold back because you are afraid. Believe in yourself and have the will to give to yourself. Allow 'it' to come to you, whatever wonderful thing 'it' might be.
There's no need for guilt or shame. You are not responsible for what others take upon their shoulders. They choose this for themselves and it certainly is not your responsibility to carry it for them. You take very little weight upon your shoulders and this makes you feel guilty; how can you walk so lightly loaded beside one who carries so much? Yet that is not your responsibility! You don't have to take it from them and make your experience more difficult for yourself! You can choose to go forward shaking off everything that is not yours, and carrying only what is your own. 
You take responsibility for yourself and let others take responsibility for themselves. Allow this - this road, this potential - for it is not your responsibility."

When Ina spoke to me of this, it really rang my bells of resonance. Oh! I could feel the weight that I have been carrying of someone else's burden. Yet, when we love someone, shouldn't we help them to bear the load?

Ina offers more on this. She writes: "I had to do my time, go through this learning process to get here and that's how it is for everybody else too. I don't have to go and take their load off because that's no use, because they will choose something else to carry instead, because that's where they are."

And that has been my experience with the people around me who seem to be grinding their gears on a steep and rocky road, carrying burdens as well, and generally making their own lives incredibly difficult for themselves. No matter how many 'outs' seem obvious to me, how many alternatives, potential solutions, ways forward that are not grim and horrible, the grinding gears continue to strive on the steep and rocky road. It's not at all easy to witness this seemingly unnecessary struggle. Yet I can understand that part of honouring the path and choices of another is honouring the choices that they make that seem self-sabotaging and counter-productive. So, acceptance of the suffering of another is a big step forward, although it sounds horrible to say it, or even to think it.

I have been practicing not minding what others are thinking, feeling, experiencing. It feels incredibly selfish, yet I am practicing this because the alternative is to mire myself right there along with them. Ina wrote: "I have to realise that I don't have to struggle because others do, or feel guilty that I am not struggling!" And that sums it all up beautifully for me, although I'm still breathing deeply and intentionally to release the feelings of guilt. That's how deep they go. Deep.

It has been spoken of in the past decade or so, that there will be two worlds. Not in the sense of a physical separation, but in the sense that one person's experience of the world will be so vastly different than another person's experience that it will be as if they life in two different worlds even if they are standing right beside one another. And that is how this feels to me. I am living in heaven on Earth most of the time and I know people who are experiencing a sort of misery of hell on Earth. And the difficult part is that I can't get them out. Only they can get themselves out. If I feel guilty enough, I'll join them there. I'll leave my heaven on Earth experience and join them in their hell on Earth.

Lovely.

I really don't choose to go there. I've never been fond of the concept of martyrdom. So, I tell myself to release the guilt and shed the burden. I love Ina's image of the unburdened shoulders because it is so tangible; I can feel it and move myself into that lightness.

If you are experiencing something similar to this, I hope that Ina's words enlighten you as they have enlightened me.

Blessings!