Learning and growing all the time

Life is such a wonderful journey.  A roller coaster ride lasting a life time.

Sometimes things are on such a high that we can't contain all the happiness and fun that we have and I am sure that we all believe that the good times will never end.  I know from my own experience that when everything in life is going so well in life we tend not to think that bad things can happen or that life can change suddenly.



Then wham ! something happens that it's literally like hitting a brick wall at high speed.  And suddenly life just changes about turn.  It could be anything, losing a job, a loved one, relationship ending, any of the million things that tend to happen in life.  Or sometimes, things happen gradually that you don't realise that things have changed so much and you did not even realise what was happening to you (like being in a toxic relationship).

Our first thoughts are how could it happen to me, it only happens to others, or some such thought.  Then we go through a period of denial when we like to believe that everything is fine. We actually think that nothing is wrong or that the problem will go away.  All we do is worsen the situation by refusing to deal with it.

It took me a year to know that there big issues in my life, another year in denial, and then more time wallowing in self pity.  It took a total of 3 years living in the situation, allowing the situation to take a hold of me and take me deeper into it.  And all the time I kept thinking of how things were going to get better, went through great stress, had situations where I thought it was the end of my life.  Thinking about all this brings a lot of the pain back, but today I am stronger to deal with it all.

The good news is that everything starts to change the moment you decide enough is enough.  What I've learned is that we are in control of our situation and a change can happen only when we allow it.  Situations and circumstances are not going to change overnight, but it will certainly change, once we decide we want the change in our life.

A quote I came across "What you allow will continue".  How true that is !  What we allow will continue in our lives.  Till we decide to change and allow something new to come in.  Easier said than done, but it is possible.  I found out that when we decide to change, we experience a feeling of relief and happiness.  And then the next thing that happens is something negative from the old situation that we want to leave behind.  We then go back into the situation again believing that things are not changing and go through the same experience again.

This happens because it is our conditioning to the situation and our ego pulling us back into the situation because that has become our comfort zone.  How crazy does that sound, our pain being our comfort zone ! Yet that is exactly what it is and why we keep going back into a negative situation.  The only way to get out of the pattern is to consciously stay focused on the happiness we choose for our life.  And this takes every bit of our thought and energy - to stay focused on the happiness we choose to experience.  And eventually little by little our conditioning and ego changes to that make that our reality.

The other thing that I realised while going like a pendulum between feeling happy that I have decided to change my life and a negative situation happening again, and then back to feeling happy again, is that a pattern will keep repeating itself till we go through the process of learning what we have to from it and releasing the pattern. Doesn't make sense ? Well think of learning to ride a bicycle - we fall a few times till we learn how to cycle and once we have mastered it we won't fall off again.  It's the same thing, a negative pattern will keep repeating itself till we accept why it's happening, learn what we have to from it and let go of it.

Through all life's experiences, I have learnt that whatever we experience whether good or not, makes us the person we become, and that it is a never ending process.  We will keep learning and growing all our lives. So might as well cherish everything life brings to us !

In Love and Light