Cleaning Up The Mess February 24, 2009
Posted by Geoffrey Wilson in : Meditations, Personal Freedom , trackbackFrom a spiritual perspective, when the interval between cause and effect narrows, things are generally easier to manage right across the board. When it widens, trouble is immanent. The interval between cause and effect can be measured by the amount of mess left behind. In other words, when you make a decision about anything in life, you will experience certain consequences as a result of making that decision.
It could have something to do with your next career move, or the step you make towards consolidating your relationship. It might be the decision you make to leave town in search of a new challenging life experience! Regardless, some of the consequences of making decisions are perhaps not always what you may have expected. And indeed, here and there, you are inevitably left with nothing but a huge mess to clean up.
If for whatever reason your decisions are based on emotion, there will be a mess to clean up! Nothing could be more certain. When angry, your Liver energy will be uprooted and in a volatile state, you will make decisions that are unstable. When sentimental, your Heart energy will become scattered and in a frenzy, you will make decisions that are chaotic. When worried, your Spleen energy will become decimated and in depletion, you will make decisions that reflect your neediness. When sad, your Lung energy will become stale and you will make decisions based on what it feels like to drown in an ocean of despair. When fearful, your Kidney energy will be exhausted and you will make decisions based on desperation.
None of these responses is appropriate. They will all lead to the disintegration of your personal energy fields and disempowerment.
If you signed up for the job because it would pay you better than the gig you really had a passion for, you will not be able escape the gnawing feeling that you sold your soul. This feeling will eat away at you until you lose your marbles or you dump your dissatisfaction on the wrong person at the wrong time and wind up paying a high price for your frustration. At the end of the day, the infamous Doctor Faustus thought he could make a deal with Lucifer and paid the ultimate price. You don’t want to end up like him. The moral of the story at any rate is that when you do something without love it will always backfire and you will have to pay the price for it.
Similarly, if you constantly pick up the broken pieces of your daughter’s life and try to fix things for her, she will be the one to miss out in the long run and her growing ineptitude will be the mess you have to clean up. Why? Because you taught her to be like that. If you want to help a youngster you have no choice but to show them what it means to stand on their own two feet, to be loving and compassionate, and to be confident in finding solutions for their own problems – with support and guidance when necessary. A failure to do this will reflect poorly on you. So, do you intend to bring up a child for life? Or did you intend to raise a real human being? If you were brought up to be needy, it is likely you will project this onto your own kids. If you were raised to develop independence, compassion and initiative, you will probably enjoy watching the same qualities flourish in those that follow after you.
We all have our messes. It helps if you know what they are specifically. Be honest and impartial when investigating them. Start with finding out where you stand in relation to your career. What about your personal relationship? Then move onto your family. Are your financial affairs in order? If not why not? It doesn’t mean that you have to be held to a budget’s ransom but you do need to know what comes in and what goes out and if you are serving your purpose. If you’re not healthy, when will you get your act together? Are your friends the kind of people that are suitable associates for your ongoing development? Do you make time for stillness? If not, how are you going to slow down long enough to assess what your requirements are?
As you can see, cleaning up messes is a process. It is a working, moving meditation. It never ends. But it does need to begin sometime. If you are serious about reducing the interval between cause and effect, the time has come for you to answer the big questions. They are not difficult to answer but they do need to be approached. Otherwise, you will get stuck and never seem to get off the roundabout!
Comments»
It is hardly surprising that most of the time our lives are spent in Canberra (lots of round abouts there!). Status quo is good, denial and lying to ourselves so much easier. When one thinks of cause and effect, the implication is that it is immediate (primary school science classes come to mind). Hence it is possible to see a direct correlation immediately between something I have done and the effect. I have only just realised that some of my cause and effects have taken the time frame of years. Oops! Guess some things had to make sense eventually, but it takes a prepared mind to see it.