This is today's quote from Abraham, who I have mentioned here before:
"Physical man gets into an uncomfortable place when he concludes, "I and those like me have come to the right decisions, and everybody that's living outside of these right decisions is wrong." And then he spends his life pushing against all those "wrong" decisions and cutting himself off from the Life Force that would help him have joy in his, what he concludes to be, right decisions. There is no one right path. There are endless paths, and the differences in the paths are what make them more and more, and more, perfect. The same old path no longer serves."
--- Abraham
Excerpted from the workshop in Orlando, FL on Saturday, February 3rd, 2001 # 731
(These daily quotes also appear each day in my top left sidebar of this blog.)
It is a second look, this morning, at some of my own worst behavior; the first recent look being Saturday night when I went to a small restaurant to listen to Karaoke. It involves my observation of others who carried take-out food into the restaurant and proceeded to eat it, and put all the trash in the restaurant bins.
No one else seemed to have a problem with this - certainly not the restaurant - because I learned that this is common for these particular individuals.
But it flashed all over me like a heat wave. I could feel myelf getting literally & physically hotter; labels leaped to my mind: disgusting, cheap, low class (there's a telling one), thoughtless, lousy upbringing, selfish...
And, as you might imagine, I have a love/hate relationship with these sorts of insights!
Even in the moment, I knew the thoughts and the emotion were all mine. I was actually angry about it. And I could feel all this effect the way I listened to a few more singers. Frankly, I could hardly get out of there fast enough.
I've know for a long long time that my rearing was a tad on the fundamental/judgmental/black & white side. But I am now seeing that the results of those attitudes are entirely mine; they effect no one but me...unless I inflict my (narrow) opinions on my tablemates. And I must also confess that I did a little of that, too. GROAN ....or as Laura would type: Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhh!
Certain judgments are appropriate, of course. I usually make a distinction by calling those decisions 'discernment'. Things like where I donate my time or money; people I choose to become close to; books; philosophies.. and simple things such as whether to cook a nice meal or head out for pizza and beer.
I spent way too much of last Saturday, though, engaged in a behavior that cut me off from Source and stole all the joy from my evening. I did it. I'm STILL holding on to too much old stuff.
"Uncomfortable"; you bet! "Pushing against", ditto. ...lord, have mercy!
Will I do it again? ...probably.
But, almost certainly, I'll do it a little less often with less strong implications for my immediate happiness, and with a much quicker return to my center - my connection to Source. And that's because I really am connected a lot of the time. It's why I'm here afterall: to explore the potential of this relationship between myself and Source, and to bring my heart & my behavior into closer and closer virbrtional alignment until there is no space between us anymore.
