Dear Readers,
Bare with me as I go through this entry – it is a little all over the place, but living life is a process and blogging is no different.
So yesterday I found my faith. Faith is generally something I have struggled with and the issue at least for me was that my mind could rationalize things and my heart could feel things, but often my thoughts were not in sync with my feelings. I could understand faith as a concept, but in terms of how I felt – that was another subject. You have to remember my introduction to God as a child was fear based – do what God says or be damned to hell – so how can a person build faith in a being it has learned to fear?
One of the lessons in A Course in Miracles is “love holds no grievances.” I had to look up the definition of a grievance. By definition a grievance is a real or imagined wrong or circumstance regarded as a just cause for a complaint. The thing about an imagined wrong is one can un-imagine a wrong. Last week a female friend of “The Actor” reached out to me on Linked In of all places – a business platform. The message said quite simply “so and so says you are a friend and would like to invite you to her network” talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I thought firstly I have really not communicated with “The Actor” since August of last year, in October of last year I decided he and I did not need to be Facebook friends for a few reasons, if he wants me to know about his going ons, he knows how to contact me and share, what he was posting was falling in line with projects as they were being released, so for the most part what was on FB was old news and last my female intuition had already popped on this individual and I decided that my intuition was trustworthy so I ended FB our communication. Now almost six months later out of the blue I have this “friend” request on Linked In. Needless to say I deleted the woman’s request to be my friend.
Now there was a part of me that wanted to contact The Actor to tell him get your chick in check – but that action would indicate that I had a grievance with him as well as a grievance with this woman. In reality I do not have a grievance with either of them or anyone else for that matter. I had forgiven The Actor some time ago for the silencing of our relationship and I have also forgiven myself for being hurt by his actions – forgiveness means no grievance. Now I forgave this woman because the action of her reaching out to me really only served the purpose of her bringing whatever dramas and insecurities that she has created in her own life surrounding this man, our only common thread, into my reality and life, so I forgave her for what she thought and felt about me and asked the universe to bless her – forgiveness means no grievance.
Yesterday I actually thought about The Actor. I actually have faith that despite how things are he and I are not done. I remember how we first looked at each other and those exchanges are quite rare. It is those moments that make people buy posters that say things like “believe in love at first sight.” Love at first sight actually happens and I believe that. As I was thinking these things AND feeling filled with faith, it occurred to me that believing in the possibility of being reunited in a relationship with The Actor was no different than having faith, having faith in God – in that things will be okay, and having faith in myself. I had found a way to connect my heart feelings to my thoughts about faith and honestly what a peaceful state of being. I rested in my thoughts and my feelings and allowed them to flow through me quietly.
I had a long talk with one of my best friends from New York. She and her boyfriend of five years seem to be coming to an end. It is breaking her heart and she is having a hard time letting go and setting boundaries as the dynamic of the relationship changes. I told her the story of how my brother fell in “love” with his girlfriend. They were on again off again, fast and furious, seeing other people, the relationship was simply not committed, very passionate, and emotionally immature. Something actually very external to the relationship is what brought it together. There is nothing that my brother’s girlfriend could have said or done to improve the hot and cold of their relationship. One of his best friend’s grandmother’s died and at her funeral he was moved by her life, what she had done in life, how she had loved those that were important in her life and how wide her love spread through her family, her church community and her community at large. She was just one person that made a difference and her difference was love. That impacted my brother so much that he took an internal review of his life, and as his best friend he sent me a lengthy email about the people he loved and what message he wanted me to convey to them should something happen to him. He made a decision to commit to those people that were really important to him – including his on again off again girlfriend. Now at that time she was not particularly receptive and he had some work to do to show his commitment and he did what he needed for as long as he needed for her to come around. I explained to my friend that there was nothing she could do to change the heart of a man. Have no grievance with him or the situation, forgive him for not being able to commit right now and forgive yourself yourself for being hurt by his inability to commit and let it go – meaning do not be vested in a particular outcome. This is easier said than done, but it is true.
Life so often does not happen the way we want it, when we want it, how we want it, and we say it is unfair and our feelings are hurt, and if this thing could have just gone that way, I would be happy. At any moment in time if you are unhappy, you can forgive a person, a situation, and yourself, and instantly move from a state of being unhappy to a state of peace. We all have that ability – removing grievances. In my particular situation with The Actor I am unconcerned about the details, anything that happens or does not happen is for my greater good and his. I could have a lot of grievances just based on my life circumstances in general, I am moving beyond finding grief. I have wonderful friends and family that have been nothing short of blessings and I have to remember to count those blessings and find joy in the blessings rather than sorrow in what is not how I want a particular situation to be. This is a major break through! Imagine the power of Nelson Mandela’s mind while he was in prison, this is the mental metal that we all must exercise daily as Mandela did.
I had an interesting conversation yesterday with my mother on this subject of faith. She was struggling with an issue and what I told her was I have always felt some reverence for people that because of their religion allowed them to embrace faith. You talk to Christians and they say God will take care of whatever because of the Power of Jesus Christ, or you talk to a Muslim and in the name of Allah…Muhammad may peace be upon him said XYZ. And these conversations are the same if someone is Buddhist, Krishna, Jewish, Hindu – whatever the religious practice, they believe in a doctrine, a system and believe in it even if logic would disprove some portion of it, for them it is an absolute. I think that is an admirable trait. But for someone like me that was not “raised” in a single religion or was raised to be afraid of God within a doctrine or in my case two doctrines, it is not as easy to simply believe. It is only through my understanding that I could explain how I found my faith to another human being – not unlike those raised in a particular faith bases system. My faith lies in the agreement of my heart feeling and my mind thinking it is so and it is possible, and so it is as the two are in agreement. That is faith. For me it is a new found sense of peace.
Peace & Blessings,
Friday
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