Painful events always happen for a reason…um accept when they happen to me

Often in my readings I share with people the value of seeing the meaning and purpose in all of how life unfolds. I tell them when there in a painful scenario, that everything happens for a reason and nothing is by chance and nothing is inherently negative, challenging yes but negative no. This perspective is nothing new and has been repeated and phrased differently by many people, over many centuries. For me it’s a view that makes sense and can really help people gain perspective when we come up against difficult times.

Though I truly believe in the meaning of all things, it is something that is certainly easier said than done. The challenge of truly integrating this outlook I have lately felt in my own life. Recently I have ended up entangled in situation that has been very stressful, disconcerting and difficult to get my head around and make peace with. It has involved  the buying of property and the work involved taking from a empty plot of land into a liveable house. It’s a horrible feeling to know you have shafted while at the same time you know there is nothing on practical level you can do about it. What can then make it even worse is looking back and being honest about that fact that I put myself exactly where I am, maybe through unfounded trust, gullibility and lack of thoroughness in investigating what I was getting into but none the less it arose from choices I made. Then on top of all that I am aware that it hasn’t been the first time I have ended up on the raw end of a deal. As I you thought I had  learnt my lesson only that I obviously haven’t

The bottom line is according to my own perspective that  I espouse to my clients ,my own tough situation has happened for a reason, something good will come of it and the best thing I can do is accept it with a loving detachment. Umm I think…do I really say that to people? Umm this is not easy ,feeling so wronged and then asking of myself to see it as so right. As I can’t get it out of my head how this has set me back,I can’t seem to let go of the anger of feel toward myself , the supposed victim and them the supposed  villains .I have imaginary conversation and confrontations putting  it all right and getting justice, even though I know this will never happen. Up to now the only measurable outcome of what I have been going through is stress and struggle.

How Easter can help us let go of relationship pain and start anew.

Easter is here again .I have the important duty of working out where to hide my children’s Easter eggs .Being three and four years  old girls, they have to be hidden well enough for them to have fun but not too hard that they end up crying because they can’t find any(I have to make sure I remember to ,so one melted egg does show up three months from now) .As I walked through the  supermarket  looking for my essential  chocolate  mini-eggs I was surrounded by rows and rows of chocolate themed eggs . Easter is here and there no getting away from it, literally!  Malta ,the island I live in strange mix of overt  and celebrated Catholicism and stock standard  chocolate coated consumerism of modern Easter. Although I am no longer a practicing Christian, for myself there is powerful symbolism  surrounding Easter and central religious focus of the death of Jesus Christ  ,his pain, his betrayal, his death and the his eventual  resurrection. To me the ritual of Easter  possibly has more relevance and bearing to our own lives than we may think.

The story of Christ’s death and resurrection  tells us that even in the darkest and most difficult times, when we feel the most forsaken and alone , out of this pain there is the hope of renewal, re-birth and new beginnings. When we are in the midst of this hurting it can  be easy to forget this fact. There comes a point where we just don’t see the light, we  are  enmeshed with   our troubles  that is hard to see or understand the wider more meaningful narrative that we are part of. Yet in the same way our happy moments pass, so do our bad ones. The pain can often be prolonged not by the problem or event that started it, but rather through our unwillingness to truly let go and surrender our want for things to be different to what they where or are.

The difficult part is some feelings we can’t “partially”  let go of. Christ didn’t just partially suffer , he died on the cross .His rebirth  and accent into heaven could only occur once that death had taken place. Often in life we are faced with these realities, where the only way to truly have fresh start is to sincerely let go and die to what we are holding on to. Do this we must be willing to surrender our wilfulness, our need for an expected outcome and start trusting in the unseen forces that take hold once we hand over our pain over.

No will power required- Finding a new way to achieve this new year’s goals and resolutions

The New Year is a traditional time of making resolutions and commitments to things we would like to achieve. Most of us in the past have made lists of resolutions, be it to give up smoking, lose weight or find new love. Of course we start off with some initial surge of enthusiasm and determination, then the days and weeks pass the commitment wears thin and often the underlying issues that created the initial obstacles reveal themselves and draw us back into our old habits. Of course, there are some people who succeed. These lucky few posses an iron will, who when needed, can commit to whatever they want and get the job done.

Given the amount of people in the Western world who are trapped in one form of addiction or another, from alcohol, illegal and legal drugs, coffee, sugar, sex, TV, video games, fitness, work or any other of the numerous things that we can be addicted to. This of course isn’t even talking about the less obvious or less measurable addictions, such as thoughts and feelings that many people could be deemed addicted to. All this it would seem to indicate that the “iron will” it not something the vast majority of us possess.  We have a picture of a society made of individuals who struggle to change and transform into who they want to be.

If each person in the UK had to make a list of things they wanted to change about themselves, I would guess it would be largely made of things they would like to “stop doing”, habits to kick, and patterns to dissolve. We now have thousands of industries, products and services all assuring and promising the fulfilment of these wishes. The most obvious example is the weight loss industry; figures show in the USA alone in 2006 55 billon dollars was spent on weight loss. With this huge investment people are making the results are astounding, surprise surprise, obesity in the USA is on the rise and predicted to be the main cause of death in the next fifty years. Each person of course wants to be believe, and is told to believe that even though diets do not work for most (95% the figures show long term) they will be different, their pride and fear drives them to invest in a system that has a history of failure. If it was a medicine that you were told would cost you $100 but only ever worked on 5% of the people would you buy it? The clincher and the hook the weight loss industry has is the success of the program, diet or whatever is being sold depends on the will power of the person. If you are strong enough, disciplined enough then it can work. What people fail to see metaphorically speaking, the company who owns the diet shop also owns the sweet shop across the street. Each desire is being played off each other.

Using our Divine Compass- Shortcuts to Clarity