Grateful For Life

"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the 
charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
                                                                                         -Marcel Proust

Come November, we often think of Thanksgiving and what we are grateful for. It is alright not to be grateful for all the things we think we should be. It is even better to let us feel our gratefulness in all the places that it naturally rises. As I am going through my BodyPresencing hologram, November and December of this year focuses on being able to move gracefully into the future. Time is fluid and as we affect our past, we influence our present and our future. So, as we work to heal aspects of our past and our ancestors unresolved secrets, we also heal through time.

At this time, my older dog is asking for help to end her pain. This means putting her to sleep as gracefully as possible. We have a young dog who loves her deeply as well as two humans who live with her and whose lives have become entwined with hers. As the time is approaching I find I have a cold that won’t go away. I feel helpless to help her, and she has been in my life for 13 years with a ton of memories. Many of those memories overlap with memories with my son and full family….so as I am preparing to help her; many things are stirred up within me.

I woke up at 4:00 a.m. today wondering about the connection between my cold and my pain at not having her active in my life. Somehow, through different permutations, I came to the feeling of something I embraced in my life, which is not me. We can call this a family belief, which I had embraced and which doesn’t help me, my ancestors, or my son. This belief is that we need to take care of our family members. I had made a silent and secret pact with my father at a young age to take care of him and his feelings. Does this sound familiar? Many of us have made young, innocent unconscious pacts with a family member. The problem is that we each need to do our own work, no matter what. No one can do our work for us, and as we reap the rewards of how we have lived, we also learn from our own mistakes. If we take care of someone else in terms of their feelings, and over care for them by feeling responsible for them, we take away their own power as well as ours. I was raised to take care of family. It is one thing to drive them to the airport, to take them to doctors when they need help, or to help them recover from an accident. It is another thing to feel responsible for them and for their happiness and health and so to take care of them in that way. The truth is they are responsible for their own happiness and health. I am responsible for mine. How I live and how aware and conscious I am determines greatly the quality of my life….and the same for everyone. 

As I took on feeling responsible for my father when very young, it influenced me in many ways in my life.

So back to my dog. She is taking responsibility for her life and is asking for help to end her pain. I can do that. If I think of me and how much I will miss her and keep taking care of her, I rob her of something important and I rob myself by over caring. I am not a caretaker…that is not who I am. My essence is so much more than that. If I continue to think of myself as a caretaker I am not living my own life. So I feel my sadness, maybe even a little depression, and I move to this new perspective which helps me come to acceptance of my dog’s decision, and of letting her go. I am so grateful for her life, for her sharing her life with me, and for what I have learned through her and from her.

I am grateful for my life and I am grateful for my dog and her life, what we shared together, what I learned from her, and for her asking for my help in helping her to move on. As I let go of my old care taking role in life and see where that came from, I can listen to her and I can accept her path. As we all can make these conscious decisions for ourselves and separate ourselves from what is not really us, we can all walk the path towards having more whole, vital and healthy lives.


Recommended Resources:

Books are wonderful tools for learning about us. I just finished reading the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. I heartily recommend this trilogy. It is a wonderful story and also the author consciously or unconsciously leads us through the characters pain to their growth through awareness and acceptance.

In addition, if you haven’t seen it or taken yourself through the experience, I recommend going through the BodyPresencing experience by going to my website, www.bodypresencing.com. Click on Body Presencing and scroll down to Body Presencing Hologram. Click on the meditations and exercises which accompany the hologram. First, you might have an intention or an idea of what you would like some help with. Use that intention as you work through the hologram.



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