Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

 

I will not be posting the conclusion to “From Resentment to Forgiveness” this week, but instead encourage you to please read and enjoy the May edition of Parvati Magazine that is now live. It is created and sustained with love by volunteers who care about you and our Earth.

 

Please take a moment on Monday, Earth Day 2013, to consider your relationship with the planet. Not only in terms of the little things you can do to support its health, such as recycling, buying local, organic produce, and reducing your carbon footprint.

 

Think too of your personal relationship with the planet. Go deeper into how you feel on this Earth, like how you would consider a friendship and your role in it. See if you can tap into the biological sense of interconnection with all that is. You literally are the very same stuff – the same carbon molecules – that makes up all of nature. There is not one thought, breath, action that you do that does not affect the whole, precisely because you are part of the whole and the whole is you.

 

So when you allow yourself to buy into negative voices in your head that say you are not good enough in some way or another, you also allow that vibration to grow on the planet. When you choose to love yourself, you come closer to finding the joy you have always wanted. And you are closer to serving all beings and feeling a vibrant part of life.

 

So today, Earth Day, consider what your relationship is with the Earth, how you can love it better, like a living organism, and in so doing, love yourself and all beings.

Let a healthy earth relationship become the foundation of a healthy, happy and prosperous tomorrow, since you are a vital member of this one earth family.

 

Jai Ma,

Parvati

From Resentment to Forgiveness - Part 3: Painful Experiences As An Opportunity

We have been exploring the topic of resentment and how we can begin to heal deeply held emotions. Last week we touched upon the idea that we tend to project onto others what we want to see in them, rather than see actually what is. When we feel hurt by another person’s actions, in some way we have not seen them clearly, and have lost sight of our connection to the divine.

 

The great news is, another person’s actions are their choice. Our response to their actions is our own choice. Through my meditation practice, I saw how I lost myself in taking another person’s choices personally and in wanting them to be other than they are. There is tremendous power in these realizations. In seeing them, we reclaim the energy we have lost in being attached to incorrect perceptions of reality.

 

Rather than seeing painful happenings as a punishment that could build resentment, what my quiet meditation sit showed me was that a hurtful experience was an opportunity to recalibrate around deeper truths, greater clarity and fuller wisdom. It was the universe’s love showing me to be bigger, to let go of wanting, to let go of hoping someone would be the way I wanted them to be and that they would be my source of unconditional love. The universe was giving me an opportunity to develop a deeper sense of self-love, self-respect and self-care. 

 

What I saw was that this experience was ultimately an opportunity for me to connect to a deeper source of love than one that comes through someone else’s flawed and temporal personality. Everyone is flawed. Relying on another human, rather than the divine, to be the source of love is like relying on a weathervane to guide me. It will constantly change direction. 

 

But if I rely on a deeper source of love and tap into the divine in every moment, then all that which changes over time, the temporal, becomes fuel for my personal growth. The temporal is the way the eternal is teaching me how to return to the One. Through daily experiences, I can move from the personal to the transpersonal, from the conditional to the unconditional. 

 

I look forward to sharing more here next week with the final entry on this topic, “Part 4: Awakening Unconditional Love and Forgiveness”.

 

Until then, keep having fun and seeing life as an opportunity, even the uncomfortable stuff. This life is a gift!

 

Parvati 

From Resentment to Forgiveness - Part 2: Unveiling Resentment

UNVEILING RESENTMENT: SEEING CLEARLY

Last week, I shared how I touched in my meditation practice a place of resentment I had not been aware was there. 

As I continued my meditation practice, what I saw, as I opened gently and lovingly to my uncomfortable feelings, was that I was ultimately hurt because the other person was not who I wanted them to be. I had projected my expectations onto another. What happened did not measure up to my idea of how they “should” behave.

We want others to be the way we want them to be, because in some way we are attached to the idea that they are the source of our love. But to do so, is to not see the other person clearly. It is an unfair expectation that we have created and imposed upon another. 

There is a story of a Buddhist master who receives a gift from his student of a glass vase. They admire the beauty and enjoy it. Until one day, the vase breaks and it is no longer. The student was distraught, whereas the master was undisturbed. The student thought perhaps that his teacher did not like the vase. He inquired, asking his teacher, “Master, did you not like the vase? Why were you not disappointed when it broke?” 

To which the teacher replied, “The broken vase always existed within the vase.” The master was not disappointed when the vase broke. He was present for the gift when it came to him. He was present for the gift when it broke and was no longer in that form. 

When people behave in ways we don’t like, they show us aspects of themselves we have not yet seen, or perhaps have seen but not yet accepted. We may see their bright, sunny parts. But we may not want to see their broken bits. When we allow their shadow to hurt us, it is because we have not yet accepted those aspects of that person. When someone acts hurtfully, and when we get hurt by them, both we and they have forgotten, in that moment, our connection to eternal love.

I will continue next week with: “Part 3: Painful Experiences as an Opportunity”. In the meantime, consider where you lose your power in resenting people and not accepting them the way they are. I look forward to sharing more here on this topic next Sunday.

Until then, be well!

Parvati