How we get so off-track What is the underlying assumption you decided in your childhood? Mine was “Nothing ever works out for me.” When I finally understood this to be the bottom line of all decision-making for me, I had to laugh. While my life has been full of challenges and pain, it has been good. And much of my suffering has come from this basic assumption of mine, the fear and anxiety that accompanied this assumption that life would not work out for me. The emotional decision I made at a young age just wasn’t based in reality, only in how I processed what had happened to me in those early years. These decisions about our self concept are the stuff of our small selves, our egos, and this thinking reinforces our neediness and ego drives. Once we have the chance to see them in the context of our lives, they soon become something that ruled us in the past, but are not relevant to today. We are more able to live in the truth of what is, rather than continue to see with the fogged up lenses of our childhood. It is around mid-life that the potential arises in us to examine our lives from a different broader, more integral perspective. If we’re fortunate, by mid-life all that we’ve been taught begins to break down, it hasn’t offered the satisfaction that was promised. And we begin to look at life in a new way. We might even pay some attention to the voice of our soul and to the Spirit. “What do I really want?” or “What do I long for?” can become a driving force. Or we listen to the shy soul’s agenda for us. Or we identify the “still, small voice” within. Or some catastrophe happens in our lives that we’re unprepared for. And so we have to find a new way to live. And so we try to form a life with integrity and connectedness. We, even if we’re already Christians, begin to form our own beliefs about God based on our experiences with the Lord rather than what we’ve been taught. I was listening to a psychologist on the radio last night as I headed home. He was reporting research on satisfaction levels which drop through the 20’s and 30’s and 40’s, but really begin to raise again through the 50’s to the end of life which form a U-shaped curve. As we follow the culture’s dictates, as we have been trained, our satisfaction decreases; when we begin to follow our own created selves, it increases. Isn’t that interesting? ______ May all the beauty and wonder, the joy and peace brought by the Christ Child’s birth be yours this Christmas. May you cling to the real meaning of Christmas in the midst of a very worldly celebration. In faith and love, Pat
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 09:00:00 +0000