What if today was the day that you stopped seeing yourself as the source of all your trouble or anyone else’s, for that fact?

What if instead you saw yourself as the source of all your solutions to come?  Maybe even solutions that are already present just waiting to be noticed?

What might shift inside you?

Seriously?

I’ve said it before (and I’ll say it again I’m sure), you’ve already given the blaming yourself for absolutely everything in the history of everything a solid-go for a good many years. Maybe that approach doesn’t work? Maybe?

You know it doesn’t.

Here’s the thing, we reinforce this sort of thinking for ourselves and others when we believe that life is meant to be lived in a perfectly straight line. Oh sure, we allow children to make mistakes but we pretty much expect everyone else to have all of that worked out of their system by the age of 20. And that’s us being gracious!  😉

There is no expiration date on making mistakes. The privilege of living is another day to mess it all up.  And another day to put it to rights.

Okay, okay. I know. That’s not comforting to everyone. I get it. Nonetheless, I submit for your consideration the following: comforting or not, does it accurately describe reality? Is it a true statement that has the audacity not to conform to our opinion of it? (gasp!)

Anytime we fight truth, we’re swimming upstream. Unless you’re a salmon (doubtful), I’m guessing you’re not that good at swimming upstream. Heck, even a salmon won’t be coming back this way after all that upstreaming.  So, why do it? Why not find a way to turn downstream and flow?

At any given moment we contain the potential to choose swimming in either direction. It’s not actually a requirement that we choose the difficult path. It’s not. (no, I’m sticking with that.  it’s not.)  We get a lot of talk in this American society in particular that everything must be hard. Must it? I know we make everything hard, but does it really have to be hard? Says who? Who said it first?  And why?  Always look at the why, friends. Always look at the why.

Let’s think about all of that for a minute. Who do you personally have to thank for this idea that you must struggle? Likely it is more than one person or institution, but see if you can come up with at least one source. Take a minute to consider where they might have learned it. Who told them?  How far back can you go? Where were these people from? What year was it? What was life like at that time? How was the “economy” doing? Were these people in power or the outsiders? I almost guarantee there are some answers for us there, if we’re brave enough to look.

There are those even that believe that we carry all of these stories in our DNA. I’m not sure where I fall on that just yet, but I am open to the idea. We certainly carry a lot in our DNA that we know exists yet we do not fully understand. Even if it’s not in our double-helix, these stories have become part of our identity. How long are we going to capitulate to our shadow voices, our own and that of others? We’ve learned to see ourselves as the trouble, the unrelenting fountainhead of all of our suffering.

Well, the truth is we are. However, we’re also the cure. Which one do we wrap ourselves in and run up the flagpole? Mostly the negative aspects, the pain, the shadow.  We begin to believe that is who we are.  That only keeps us locked there. We end up in this dance of seeing ourselves as the problem reaching for the solution.  What if we are the solution, experiencing the problem so that we can become fully manifest as that solution? Eventually we may serve as guides to others in similar predicaments, becoming not only our own solution but helping others to become theirs.

Admit it, someone who has never struggled with a particular situation you are facing is not usually an inspiration so much as a yardstick against which you judge yourself.  Then you meet someone who says, “Oh, you too?!” It almost always plays-out that way when we get around to being honest about our challenges.  The earth shifts beneath your feet, the air hangs still for just a moment, and the light dawns…

Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic (or sometimes it is), but you get the idea.

We experience trouble. We are the cure.

You’ll figure it all out. You will. Relax into it.

“You suppose you are the trouble,
But you are the cure
You suppose that you are the lock on the door,
But you are the key that opens it.
It’s too bad that you want to be someone else
You don’t see your own face, your own beauty
Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.”

Rumi knows.  And he knew that you would know.  When will you know that you know?

Be the cure.

Namaste.

Love and light,
Holly

Photo Credit:  Jean-michel Feinen/Dreamstime