What is so amazing about joy is that the more joy you feel, the more joy you feel! So without further adieu, I present to you Soul Pancakes’s Elevator Joy Bomb!:
One more for the fun of it. Shout out to my Mom! Give a shout out to someone who changed your life in the comments!
What is real love? This is one of my favorite stories by Swami Satchidananda.
When I visited an ashram for a short time at the age of 21 I was offered a different perspective about what it meant to forgive yourself. When staying at the ashram I had to do various jobs like housekeeping, landscaping, kitchen duty etc. My first day of housekeeping I was sent outside to bleach shower curtains. As I sprayed, the bleach splashed onto a pair of gray sweatpants hung on the line just in front of me. I rushed inside dousing the pants with water but sure enough, like mold on a strawberry, little white dots began to appear. When the guest came to retrieve his sweatpants he was extremely upset, they had been his favorite pair of pants. I felt terrible and cried to the head of housekeeping about it. There is no concealing your inner state, however you might try, and the other people in my program knew I was sad the rest of that day.
Across the hall from my dorm was a blonde boy, probably a couple years older than me, named Chandler. The most charming thing about him was that he actually said “golly” with all sincerity. When I told him what had happened his response was something I never expected. He said, “Katie, that man has given you the greatest gift! The chance to forgive yourself!” I had never looked at forgiving myself as a gift before. But forgiveness is a gift even when the person you happen to be forgiving is yourself. By forgiving you say, “While this or that has taken place, I see through that to your true self, the same self which is in all of us, holy and untouched by outer circumstance.” When you can say that to yourself, you are loving yourself. And while forgiving yourself at first may seem difficult, because of emotions like guilt and shame, you can practice by forgiving other people.
There are a million moments each day to forgive other people, to look past their outer form and see their truest inner being. When someone has an opinion you find offensive, you can look through that, you can forgive. When someone is unkind, unhelpful, or unforgiving to you, that is a moment to practice forgiveness. Even further, you can practice forgiveness by forgiving the present moment. Allow the now to be as it is by forgiving whatever it brings. When the present moment is undesirable, practice forgiving that moment by bringing inner acceptance to what is. When you accept and allow you open up space for change. Forgiveness does this for moments you experience, for people in your life, and for you. Forgiveness transforms the illusion of form into the reality of timeless being. Forgiveness makes all and everything holy and unified. No matter what you have done, that you now see in the light of awareness was not the right thing to do, practice forgiving yourself. Practice seeing past what you have done, to who you truly are. Looking past the outer circumstances of your life in turn allows you to do the same for all other beings. It connects us all, and gives us all the chance to live our destiny as fully conscious beings, unshaken by the illusion of outer circumstance.
I hope you enjoy this video in which Marianne Williamson talks about how to forgive and living your destiny. One of the lessons that really changed me was the idea of “divine compensation.” Marianne gives a great description of it but here was the insight I gained from it:
One way of looking at a miracle is when the highest potential of a moment is manifested. When you block a miracle, perhaps by choices you’ve made, that miracle still exists. It will merely manifest itself in a different form. So if it happens that you do something and a miracle doesn’t occur, and you don’t experience the highest potential of that moment, that miracle will appear in your life in a new form when your heart and mind are open. Which is to say, the highest potential for any moment is becoming realized when you accept life as it is, and allow life to live you. When you are open to life in all of its possibilities, you give the highest potential the opportunity to manifest in your life.
When I first wrote this post I was about to publish it, but through some technical difficulties found it was lost and unrecoverable. I was frustrated at first. I felt a lot of negative energy taking over me. My boyfriend suggested we go on a walk, and although I was frustrated I knew that the universe was giving me an opportunity to trust that the potential for the words I had written would be restored to me in a different form. I always find life gives me the chance to practice any lesson that I feel I understand. I was definitely frustrated earlier. Eventually I chose to receive the blessing with gratitude. Though I lost something, that potential still exsisted for me and was able to manifest differently with these new words.
When a moment doesn’t go “well” or as planned, instead of suffering, it would be much more enjoyable to be excited about what the new manifestation for its highest potential will look like! Another way of putting it, you’re always on the right path, your highest potential is always in the midst of you ready to be realized.
Marianne Williamson is a brilliant author and spiritual teacher, and is one of the contributors to A Course In Miracles, another life changing book that I absolutely love. May this video open your heart and give you a greater experience of love and joy today! Thanks to Oprah for who you are, and for Super Soul Sunday! Stay tuned for a lesson I was given in self-forgiveness.
“Author Marianne Williamson has been a spiritual friend and counselor to Oprah for many years, and her advice has sometimes taken Oprah by surprise. Watch as Oprah remembers a time where Marianne counseled her to pray for someone who harmed her—and experiences an emotional aha! moment onstage. Then, watch as Marianne explains the principle of divine compensation and how the universe will always return what someone wrongfully took from you.”
As the days passed before the extermination I experienced great fluctuations in my state of consciousness. There would be brief moments of clarity where I felt fine, peaceful, above my circumstance. Then I would soon despair again. I had to pack up my apartment as if I was moving, treat all my clothes. I had to live apart from my boyfriend who graciously stayed at the apartment, per instructions from the exterminator, while I fled to my parents’ house in the suburbs. We’ve lived together for years and now we were in separate places, both without any of our “stuff.”
My mind constantly tormented me with the fear that I was going to bring the bugs to my parents’ house. But as the days went by, my moments of clarity were able to shine through more and more. I was learning to bring acceptance to my outer circumstance. The negative thoughts were so obviously unwanted and unhelpful at this point that I made the choice to start letting them go, one by one, as they came up in my mind. And they came up all the time. So this was a lot of great practice at letting go of negative thoughts.
I then had to go back to the apartment to “test” the results of the extermination. Everything was fine. On my fifth day back I woke up and went to work. As I was typing on my computer I noticed one of my fingers was swollen. Then I felt something on my thigh, went to the bathroom, and saw it had swollen up the size of a large tomato. I had been bitten. I left that morning assuming I would see my boyfriend after work. But now I’d be driving back to the suburbs, living apart for another two weeks while the second round of treatment took effect. I emailed the exterminator. I called my boyfriend to tell him what had happened. I called my mom to tell her I was coming home. And I was okay. I had been through this once before, I was learning how to let go of the circumstance. I was learning to be okay with uncertainty. I was learning how to accept what happens, because to not accept what happens is to cause yourself unnecessary suffering.
The universe gave me a round two, another opportunity to try again. And this time it was easier not to freak out. It didn’t feel like a horrible struggle prepping my apartment for extermination, or commuting to work from the suburbs, or not knowing when I would live at my apartment again. I’m still learning to accept that bugs exist. But now, in comparison, the other ones don’t seem so bad. I’m now back at my apartment and haven’t had any bites again. Although that doesn’t mean they won’t come back. And I am okay with that now, I have learned to be comfortable with the not knowing. I really don’t know what is going to happen, where I’ll be living day to day, if the next apartment I get will be bed bug free. From experiencing the suffering I caused after having bed-bugs I have learned that it is much more helpful, peaceful, and joyful to let go of those fears and be in the moment I am in. After all, it is the only moment I will ever be in. So if I’m afraid and worried now, it is likely I’ll continue to be afraid and worried. But if I’m peaceful and accepting now, it is quite likely that my future moments will also be peaceful. After all, the future never happens, when it does it is called the “now.”
So what can you let go of now? What uncontrollable circumstances in your life can you bring acceptance to? What negative thoughts repeat in your head that you are ready to let go of? The bed bugs taught me many things; the universe always gives you the lesson that is most helpful for your state of consciousness at that moment (as Tolle puts it). And while I perceived the situation as suffering while in the midst of it, it was for my learning, for fostering greater peace, joy, love, and awareness in my life. What a gift.
PS- I also have a different relationship with things now. Although I don’t perceive “stuff” as a burden as I did after getting bed bugs, I am not as interested in having more “stuff.” I would rather have just a few things to tend to. It has actually stopped me from wanting to buy clothes and other things. All I wanted after having bed bugs was to be just me, to feel clean and untainted. While that is an extreme that would be detrimental to stay at, it pushed me more to the middle in terms of my desire for objects, another blessing in disguise!
Life is much more enjoyable the moment you realize that it is not about you. We are all the “main characters” in our own stories, so when someone is mean or unhelpful to you, that is all a part of their story, not yours. As a very sensitive child I longed to know how to not be so hurt by a world that can sometimes be inconsiderate and unforgiving. That sensitivity has given me many lessons in how to let go, and allow other people to live their own lives. Here Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, helps explain how to not take things personally.
“The second of don Miguel Ruiz’s four agreements is about not taking everything personally. Watch as Oprah says she thinks it’s one of the hardest to follow, and get the advice don Miguel gives a customer service representative about dealing with challenging customers.”
PS- Stay tuned for the conclusion of “The Bed Bug Incident” tomorrow!
I never found out what had been causing those bites for so many months. But the situation developed when I learned a couple apartments in my building had bed bugs and were having exterminations. I freaked out. Freaking out is a good sign that you are totally taken in by a circumstance and cannot view it at the higher vantage point of the true self, the watcher which is unaffected by what “happens” and is always whole. I wasn’t being the watcher, I was being a body threatened by outside forces. I took many precautions after learning my neighbors had bed bugs, putting things in trash bags, keeping the lights on at night, spraying poison around my door. But to the universe all of those precautions were really just me saying, “I’m afraid of something, this bothers me, I’m totally attached and identified with this situation.” That was the truth of the matter. I hadn’t let go. I was clinging to circumstance.
I was living in fear of bugs. For you this experience might have manifested in another form in your own life. About a month after the bed bug incident I thought I was in the clear. Everything was going to be fine. And when the thought that everything will be fine occupies your mind, that can be saying that you don’t feel fine in this moment, the only moment you will ever actually be experiencing. That very week I woke up with bug bites. These were very different from the ones I had been having all year. There were multiple bites and they were on my upper body not my legs. I even had bites on my fingers. The only thing familiar about them was the terrible allergic reaction. But the itching was even worse. I called the exterminator to inspect, and sure enough I had bed bugs.
The morning I found out I fell to pieces. You would have thought a real tragedy had struck. I was distraught, beside myself. I felt completely contaminated, as if everywhere I went would become infected by bed bugs. I didn’t want to tell anyone, I didn’t want to hang out at other apartments. Mostly, I never wanted to return to my apartment ever again. I no longer cared about my stuff, I did not want any of it anymore. In my eyes, the place would be forever contaminated.
This is a great example of a strong reaction. My reaction was a clear message of the feelings, fears, and beliefs I had been holding onto ever since my first bad bite from October. It was now May, and there was no more fooling myself. I was completely attached to my outer circumstance, and when my outer circumstance did not fit with the picture I had in my head of what I needed to feel safe, comfortable, and at ease, I caused immense suffering for myself. Suffering is often created by the outer circumstance not matching up with your thought’s picture of how things “should” be. This cannot be reconciled by more thoughts. The only way to stop the self created suffering is to recognize the thoughts and how they operate. The thougths don’t really want problems to be solved, even though that is what they claim. They want to keep thinking, that is their whole life up there in your head. They just want to stay alive. So when the outer circumstance doesn’t match with the thoughts’ visions, your mind will take that opportunity and run with it. Literally run, you know how thoughts run on and on in your mind. It loves doing that. But you are the observer of your thoughts, you have the ultimate control once you recognize that they are not helpful and in no way actually improve the uncontrollable circumstance.
When you have thoughts like this that keep running and cause you great emotional suffering, become very alert. Say to yourself, “what is my next thought going to be?” and then watch your mind until one comes in (a great tool from Tolle’s The Power of Now). Don’t judge the thoughts, allow them, give them your fullest attention. In this way the light of your presence will shine through the illusion that your thoughts can help you with their insane ramblings. Another way to quiet down an insane thought pattern is to bring complete inner acceptance to your outer circumstance even though your thoughts don’t want you to. Allow a situation to be. It will be the end of the mind using you, and the beginning of you using the mind.
Let Yourself Learn 