Live your life without reproach
I believe that we are always at a turning point in our lives, now more than ever, as we move forward into these crazy times we are living in. Maybe the only thing we do know is change and our resistance to it, both of which we are not generally fans of. Still, because we don’t know what is coming, we seek to dumb-down our lives, so that we can manage our states. Maybe, then, we won’t have to suffer the continued self-reproach of how we have chosen to live our lives.
If you think that you are the only one who as erred in your life, I encourage you to take a deep exhale and think again. But first, you can gift yourself with dropping the entire notion of fault and blame as the critical tool we have been programmed to use, generation to generation, to project our problems onto others. It has served us well to separate ourselves from the disliked and unwanted choices we have made. That projection ultimately keep ourselves small and captive to our own self-loathing. It polarizes my ‘right’ against your ‘right’, ultimately making us both feel that we have been ‘wronged’. And, thus, continued reproach of Self and other is sustained. It is demoralizing and depressing to say the least.
Yes, I have not liked a lot of my choices, after the fact, about actions I ‘should have taken’. For sure, many of these were choices I did not even like before choosing to take the actions I took; I just accepted the one I thought was the best in the moment. The paradox is that I did not think I could choose to not choose…. especially when there was the external pressure of time and dollar commitments to meet. It meant selling my Self (i.e. my deeply internal, intuitive self) out to keep the peace outside of me.
Doing that for a lifetime, rationalizing that it is all ok, will just serve to increase the self-loathing you carry - denied, defended, and avoided - buried deep inside where you live, so you don’t have to feel it. Still, in your dark moments alone with your own thoughts, you tell yourself that you are a fraud; it’s like you cannot avoid it, try as you will. You fall into the self-repeated mantra that you ‘do not deserve’ the goodness that finds its way to you; you only deserve the ‘crumbs’ left behind. And, so everything becomes the ‘crumb’ of not good enough. And, that is what we model to our children. Practice makes perfect; repeat it often enough, and our offspring learn, as if by osmosis, that they are not good enough. No wonder we hear the idiom, ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same’.
In the realm of fault and blame, people unwittingly close their hearts off to themselves, in order to keep peace with others, holding it as a kindness. I think that nothing could be further from the truth. When you think of about it, does it ever really make any sense? And still we carry on.
Yet, contrary to how I was raised up and, sadly, how I raised up my own children, I am now discovering - continuously - that to let go of the notion of fault and blame as an aspect of my state of being is to move the heavy stone of unkindness away from my heart. That stone, as a ‘safety door’ has allowed me to believe that I was being kind to myself; protect my heart at all costs, so as to not ever know the feeling of wounding again. Truth is there really was no ‘safety’ in that closed door. I am discovering that safety really lives in an open heart.
Well, a resurrection is in process, inside. The stone in front of my heart has never brought me the peace I was looking for. It just served to alienate me - even if it was just a bit - from myself and from others. So, I am done closing the door on myself. I am in the process of letting go of fault and blame. It does not mean, however, that I am forfeiting any inherent power I have of being at cause for the creation of my own unique universe. It’s far easier to notice when I am being victim to others or to circumstances with this choice to let go.
Even in these crazy and difficult times, I now own that I am the resource and the resilience I have been looking for. I feel a compassion and empathy for myself, now, that I have never known before… even though I have been around for a very long time.
As I embrace this new enriched way of being, I am feeling new awareness, hearing with new ears and seeing with new eyes. My compassion and my empathy for others are growing exponentially. I believe that we all deserve to live this way. First, we need to choose that we can.
For me, it has been a long and arduous journey to arrive at this place of joy. It is the place of living without reproach of myself for the life I have already lived and for the life I am choosing to create. It is the place of the authentic expression of all the things I hold as true for myself… for living in respect, integrity and generosity of spirit with myself and others.