Lessons Learned Bring Freedom

I realized something the other day. It took days of debilitating illness to get me to that point, but then the realization came.

I realized that I create everything that I experience. Everything. Everything. The good. The bad. The boring. The sense of delay. The sense of joy and accomplishment. I create it all. Not only that, but I create all of my experience for reasons having to do with my soul's growth and experience of itself in the world.

I realized that when there is a lesson to be learned, an experience to be lived that is less than I would have it be, or different than I would have it be, it is only when I come into complete acceptance of it, gratitude for it, appreciation for it, that it will be transformed by me. It is there as an annoyance, if it is annoying to me. It is there as a challenge, if it is challenging to me.

I realized, with a sort of sinking sigh running through my being, that every single obstacle and pitfall and trigger and trap is of my own making, of my own design and is for my benefit. And when I have done learning the lesson, experiencing the whole of it, making my way through it and gleaning all that is there for me to glean, then that experience will disappear from my life.

So, the toothache, the chronic back pain, the constant annoyance of some family member's personal habits... whatever it is that sticks, that pulls at you, that makes you want to leave it behind as quickly as possible... is there for a reason and was made by you, for you.

Lately, I have been restless with my work again, wanting to be free of it. This too is an experience that I created for myself, for reasons which are not yet clear to me.

I breathe slowly into the experience. I don't try to change it. I don't try to change my response to my work, my restlessness, my longing to be elsewhere. I don't try to change anything. I breathe the experience of what I am feeling into my being.

As with my recent illness, I lay there too ill to eat, or to stand, or to read.... and just took breath after breath of that reality into my being. Being ill brought me to the truth of this realization because being ill, I was too tired and weak to fight the inevitable need for acceptance.

When I have finished learning and experiencing everything that I have chosen, at a higher level, to learn and experience from this work situation and from my feelings about it, then the situation will change. Even my yearning to do something else is part of the experience, maybe it is the most important part. My practice these days is to breath in the experience and to accept it and my response to it, my feelings about it.

Freedom comes through this acceptance.