However, as a spiritual student, I must accept life is not about what we want but what life wants for us, and the signs read being led in a new direction.
Instead of first piddling around, followed by breakfast, bath, makeup, getting dressed for the day, I headed straight to bath, makeup, getting dressed so I could make it to the market and back before the termites began today’s attempt to swarm in.
Parked and getting out of the car in the market lot, I looked up at the surrounding mountains and was once again filled with nostalgia. Waxing philosophical, I began to think about all the residents who’ve indicated to me how unhappy they are living here, want desperately to move, but can’t afford it. Here I am fortunate enough to be able to afford it, not unhappy, not wanting to move, but being forced out by termites.
Speaking of being a spiritual student … signs … everything happens for a reason, it occurred to me yesterday that termites showing up when I was planning to be out-of-town on a three-day meditation retreat meant I was to cancel and stay put. So I did … cancel that is. I gauge when I've done the right thing/the wrong thing about how I feel after, and it felt like the right choice had been made.
Accepting that everything happens for a reason, we don’t always get to know the reason. We just do what we are given to do and walk by faith that there IS a reason … a plan.
Lo and behold, in the market this morning, I ran into the woman who’d stopped being my ten-year BFF about a year ago. Reason being I’d voiced how uncomfortable I’d been at witnessing her verbal abuse of another human being.
She disagreed with her actions being disturbing, saying to him something along the lines of his making/causing her to treat him thusly and, “I don’t like having to do this to you.”
To me, she tried to justify her mistreatment saying, “You don’t know what he’s put me through.”
Having been an abused spouse, I recognized both those statements to be 1) Standard excuses used by abusers and 2) Indicative of not accepting responsibility for one’s own actions.
My not validating her being justified marked the end of the friendship … she stopped speaking to me. Oddly enough, the end came as no surprise because, for two years previous, it had come to me in dreams and meditations that, though we both are spiritual students, she was going in a different direction. In fact, just before the friendship ended, I’d told her, “I feel you drifting away” – meaning drifting away from the spiritual path altogether.
At any rate, I wasn’t sad to see the friendship end, as she’d morphed into a bit of a drain spiritually speaking. While my focus is on listening, letting go, being led, her focus became about doing, controlling, achieving, acquiring.
There's nothing wrong with that path, it's just different from the path I walk, but hanging around a person on that road is like dragging a block of concrete.
So being cordial, greeting her in the market this morning, I learned she is still on a path to enlightenment, which I’m happy to know because one day she’ll wake up and realize verbal abuse and controlling behavior as not okay. What tells me of her continuing involvement in spiritual pursuits is she's registered for that same meditation retreat I just cancelled out of.
I felt like I’d dodged a bullet, because I get a lot more out of meditation sessions when surrounded by people walking at or near my same pace on the path -- those who are already awake, and high consciousness people who are ahead of us all and lift us further into enlightment, than I do when surrounded by people in the process of waking up.
So the fact the class was probably not going to go as high in consciousness as I need, this stage of life, is probably why cancellation came about, but I will order the session tapes.
Returning to the complex, I observed a line outside the dispensary across the street.
Residents have already investigated getting the place shut down, but were told by the police that it’s legal … it’s fenced … the business has met all the licensing requirements.
Everyone is lined up OUTSIDE the fence, but I don’t have a problem with the business. They’re not causing any more problems than we already have.
While I was snapping the above photo, the Seer walked up and we got into a conversation that ended with her repeating what another resident had said happened to them. That they’d tried to work with Nurse Ratched on a problem in their unit, had approached her respectfully, but the end result was the resident walking away declaring to others, “That woman lied. She’s a liar.”
ROFLMAO! That’s what I said in yesterday's post.
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