Thanks To My Teachers

Knowing that everything I experience is about me, from me, and controlled by me is the first step towards removing the power, anything in the outer has, to disrupt my peace.

Once again, this is why self honesty is so important. Unless I can be totally honest with myself, I want to blame the other person or the outer circumstance for my lack of peace.

Once I fully own that this is my experience and I get to choose how I live it, then I am free to choose peace. As long as I am a “victim” of my surroundings, the peace that is available to the empowered person, can not be mine.

So, what is it that my teachers can trigger in me to evoke a less than peaceful response from me?

It seems to come down to three possibilities:

1) There is an aspect of myself I am not comfortable with which needs healing. This other individual is bringing this part of me up into my awareness and it causes me distress.

For example: I have never done very well around people who are very precise, very exacting. You know who I mean; the person who has the ability to nitpick anything.

I am exactly the opposite of this person, but I am not comfortable with that side of myself. It causes me stress that I am so right brained that I can not remember to pay a bill on time and end up paying a $ 33.00 late fee because of my inattention.

I naturally clash with this fastidious individual because of my own pain. I long to have just a portion of her attention to detail, but it is an open wound that I prefer to keep out of mind.

Just by being herself, this individual, in interaction with me, re-opens this wound for me.

I, of course, have no interest in admitting that I have an open wound, stuffed away, so I want to blame her for being so anal; so annoying.

If I am invested enough in this "victim mentality", I seek out accomplices to confirm my impressions. I usually have no trouble finding those who will affirm how “impossible” the other person is.

2) The triggering individual is pointing out an unhealed hurt from an earlier event in this lifetime.

Perhaps a parent, a teacher, or a friend used to criticize me and it caused me considerable pain. Lacking the tools to deal with that pain, I found a place to park it, where it was not in my conscious awareness.

Of course, the swallowed pain will never go away, until I deal with it in an effective manner. It will lay there like a land mine, simply waiting for someone to step on it so it can explode.

3) I have also seen individuals who appear to have a connection to me from a previous life. This individual may not have to do or say anything and I experience some type of reaction to them.

Most generally, when this happens for me, it is just an awareness that I have a strong connection. Typically, this is an immediate loving attraction stronger than I feel for most new acquaintances.

Sometimes, however, this can also be the opposite. Without any reason I may just know that I do not want to spend time with a certain individual.

Being who I am, I will generally choose to seek that person out, anyway, just to explore the origin of these feelings, within me.

Regardless of "why" I respond in a less than peaceful manner, to my teacher, I suppose my work is the same.

It is mine, to look within; to examine my response, and heal that wound which is surfacing.

This is why I am so thankful for my teachers; even if my initial, gut reaction may not accurately reflect my thanksgiving.

Please pardon me if I have ever reacted that way to you! Know that when I come back to my senses I will give thanks for that which you have taught me about myself.

I appreciate your willingness to be my teacher.