Painful Patterns
Question: It seems to take less and less to make me feel unhappy and dissatisfied with the things and people in my life. How can I rise above the increasing pull of negativity?
Answer: Breaking out of painful patterns must begin with bringing new knowledge into the way we've been thinking toward our old problems. Events - in themselves - do not have the power to make us suffer. It is our reaction that throws us, unaware, into the world of our unenlightened selves. Where these spirits rule, so does suffering. As difficult as it may be, we must begin to doubt our own suffering. This new action may seem impossible at first because our pain can feel so real. But, if we'll put ourselves on the side of wanting and working to see what is the actual truth of our situation, our gradually deepening perception will show us how to see through that suffering straight to the heart of its shadowy cause. For example, when we fight with the person we blame for our discomfort, all we do is increase our anguish which, in turn, strengthens our belief in that person as being our punisher. If instead we turn our attention back on ourselves, we can start to question this habitual view of our situation. We can ask ourselves what is it about us that is vulnerable to being hurt by anything someone else does? With just this one question in mind, that person's action is no longer the issue. The issue is what is happening within us. Staying anchored in awareness of yourself in this way is the beginning of the birth of True Self, and the way to begin hearing what Real Life has been trying to tell you all along. Whatever wants to pull you down, just let go of the belief that you must carry the weight of your own life. Let God handle it. Do what seems appropriate, take the best care you can, and let what happens naturally take care of itself.
Question: Every year at this time I get ill. I don't understand the lesson I need to learn. Try as I might, I can remember nothing from the past that would have set off such a pattern. Do I need to be psychoanalyzed in order to become conscious of what is really disturbing me, or do I just keep asking God to help show me what I need to see? I feel I have done so endlessly and no answers have been revealed.
Answer: Whether seen or not, to be a human being is to repeat patterns. Some are more trying, as with yours. Some seem better, as with those who seem to get rich in life repeatedly. The issue is not the pattern, but the interior pattern-maker within ourselves that loves to tell us what our pain means based on our past experience with it. This nature lives in the dark of us -- unaware of itself, let alone anything else connected to real life. All it wants is to keep spinning out reasons for why things are as they are, so that it can continue doing and being what it is: the undiscovered source of unwanted cycles. Working to be awake to yourself will bring the needed Light that can dismiss both this level of self, along with all of its dark patterns. This deliberate work to be aware holds all the possibility in the universe of a new healing.
