One of the guidelines I take being present on this plane is mindfulness: to recognize valuable lessons carried by some experiences. In this respect I consider this lifetime as “a book” which I’ve grabbed myself, from my own will, - recognizing something interesting, valuable perhaps. And today, while I don’t remember all of this, “I’m reading carefully”, at least not to miss anything.
Why am I doing that? Because I consider myself a sound minded person, i.e., since I do know that I’ve taken “the book” myself, alongside with some obvious intention - I want to act accordingly to this intention.: not viewing life as something which simply “happens”, but as content/plot stretching away ahead of me, carrying something within, which I am interested into. Therefore the mindfulness intention.
Besides, the valuable content I’ve recognized is the only thing which I’ll take with myself for further journey. I won’t take an iPhone, money, titles. I won’t even take “my own” physical body. Whereas there will be wisdom accompanying me.
Dolores Cannon has helped me to set store on all those “lessons” (which recently I like to call “a desired (i.e., which I am interested into) spiritual content of life”). So that today I’m perfecting more and more inspecting this.
I recognized a handful of various such spiritual lessons, which I consider valuable and worth of assimilation - “taking with Yourself”. One of these is a lesson regarding importance, i.e., what does really matter.
This question may seem to be enigmatic at first - let me, however, to quote a few anecdotes:
The first one originates from a movie The Secret Life of Bees. Long story short, among protagonists are a few sisters. One of them was supposed to paint the house they live in. It turned out, however, that she picked a fatal color. An outsider was surprised that it hadn’t made all the rest angry. Here is the transcription:
“– She still hasn’t forgiven me for paintin’ the house, and that was 10 years ago.
– Well, how come, if your favorite color is blue, you painted the house so pink?
– [Sighs] That was May’s doin’. She was with me the day I went to the paint store... and she latched onto this sample called Caribbean Pink. Said it made her wanna dance a Spanish flamenco. I thought it was the tackiest color I ever seen in my life. But if it could lift May’s heart, then I guess she ought to live in it.
– Well, that was sure nice of you.
– Well, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house and whatnot. But liftin’ someone’s heart... now that matters.”
The second anecdote is from Quest for Peace podcast. In one of episodes the host was talking with his friend. To be more precise, he mentioned the friend’s supposedly antique car - his proud and the apple of his eye, which he cared about with the deserved reverence. One time his sister asked him for borrowing the car, he agreed. Then, unfortunately, she has had an accident. Although she herself was fine, the car has been seriously damaged (if not devastated).
The host has brought in this memory because he was full of astonishment how come his friend has no emotional feedback to that (for example, why he had not become seriously angry - once “the apple of his eye” has been wrecked). If I remember correctly, his guest replied saying something like:
“You can replace a car - but not own sister.”
When I take a closer look on such anecdotes, I think about various people’s reaction on the same things. I realized that for some people any old thing is enough to get angry, get into an argument, emanate with reproaches and aggression. Such a reaction tells much about a person, or - to be more precise - about their intention. What intention has someone who, for example, lets Yourself to reproach, as soon as an opportunity arises? And this is just an extreme example, meaning small things (such as not putting something back on its place, or not to clean something up for time - there are plenty of such trivialities out there, which for some people are great excuses for psychical violence/aggression).
In reality this matter is much broader, due to that it refers to much more things (serving as a pretext), than only small stuff. The stories mentioned above incorporates extreme circumstances to stress something - to put emphasize on something. It resembles to me how people who experienced NDE/clinical death change once they return to life (once they experience death “in person” and the next chance given to them soon after). Usually such experiences completely change people, who literally turn into another person (e.g., putting much more value to life, pay much more attention to relationships with ones close to them, and so on). A similar phenomenon we see in case of people who just learned that they are seriously sick, with a short and/or unknown remaining lifespan to live. Such a perspective also can do miracles and change people who suddenly “get wise”, not making problems out of “thousand and one of things”, because they just feel that it isn’t worth it.
How much does unthrowed garbage matter, dishes unwashed for time or a thing which has not been put back on place - when You have to do with someone close to Your Heart? Indeed, daily stuff is important - but in my opinion they should never obscure the true priority which is Love, Closeness, respect, uniqueness of a person close to You or of the moment You’re just experiencing. In reality You don’t have any warranty that someone close to You will be available the next day. Only in our ignorance we allow habit to label presence of those close to us as “existing for ever”. Whereas the truth is that this is an illusion to better our mood. Our attention is woken up till by so-called chance accidents, serious illness, etc. Before that, however, we are capable to live as if there is no big deal in hurting the ones close to us - because You can always say “I’m sorry” tomorrow. After all, You don’t even have to hurt them - it will be enough to not pay enough of attention and comfortably wait for Holidays - Christmas or Easter - as convenient pretexts for “devoting” time for Close Ones, and spend the rest of the year being engaged with everyday, “very important” stuff again, which all made up the one rancid credo of “lack of time” / “perhaps tomorrow” / “maybe later”.
I wouldn’t want death or a perspective of dying to be the thing which finally has managed to open my eyes. I’d rather to be aware during the living and making the best out of it when there is (still) time. What Your carrier and neatly arranged thousand of things will give You - when You become alone, and most of the time which could be used really good way have past? The life is already passing, some of us labor under the illusion of preparing “the golden spring”, we obscure our eyes with a career curtain, somnambulistically looking at golden pot at the other end of the rainbow (in a some years time, some diplomas, some promotions). And the life goes by or, to be more precise, is passing by. We allow this so easily as hurting others whether by aggression or lack of attention.
Filed in: spiritual growth /26/
