Learning

Good Morning,

Despite how much we may try to train our minds and open up about our
perspectives in life, we all will still fall to musings of our
restless minds and the emotions of our impatient hearts. I myself
have been recently reminded of just how the mind can take
circumstances and blow them out into misguided thoughts, feelings and
suffering. More often than not our actions end up not only affecting
us, but those with love and care for the most.

In fact it is often those we love the most that can trigger these
delusions of our mind. My situation got the best of me because those
involved are very dear to me and thus the situation carried that much
more weight for me. Despite all my practice and all my training, my
mind mistakenly thought something had happened and ran with it.

One of the reasons I began my practice is that in my youth I was
notorious for simply reacting (often harshly) to any given situation.
I did not embrace my feelings or the cause that triggered them, I
simply acted upon them with reckless disregard to logic, process and
fact. In my recent situation (and they do seem far between and few
these days) I did process the information, I did realize that there
was no way that what I thought had transpired ever really happened
and yet my mind ran off, created it's own version of events and left
my heart in pain. The beauty of this entire event demonstrated that
despite my short comings, I have indeed made some progress. I no
longer simply react to situations. Yes my mind played some tricks on
me, but I also caught myself in the act.

Through the grace and beauty of wonderful friends, I was able to
approach, discuss and resolve a situation that quite frankly, never
really happened. The mind can be a powerful resource. It can liberate
us from the chains we shackle ourselves into or it can be a source of
great confusion and pain. The point is that we are all subject to
what the mind creates. . . this does not mean thats who we are
though, and this is important. The mind does what the mind does, that
is simply the nature of it. By understanding this we can end the
cycles of endless doubt, wanting, and confusion, we can begin to see
that we are victims of our own thoughts and imaginations and that we
should not condemn ourselves for these thoughts, but embrace them,
try to understand the reality of our situations and grow from them.

My life is filled with wonderful friends, open relationships and a
gratitude for the opportunities we are all presented. I may stumble
upon occasion and these are welcomed mistakes, because without them
we may never grow to understand how beautiful we all really are.
Thank you for the lessons.

To the grace and dignity of others, have a beautiful day and remember
this - Just because we make mistakes doesn't mean we are one.

Peace and Love, Jim