Stay Mindful

With the new BA. 5 variant on the rise in the United States, I am regularly reminded that our time as a global community with COVID-19 is far from over. With each passing day and the happenings in our world surrounding the Pandemic and beyond; I remain present to the fact of my need to stay mindful.

Mindfulness is a practice I have discussed on many occasions and occupies a number of the pages of my book, The Invitation to Love – but the art of it cannot be stressed enough. With the proliferation of vaccines and therapeutics, many of us (myself included) have looked at the Pandemic as something in the rearview mirror, behind us, rather than with us currently. With COVID-19, there are risk in not being mindful to what is happening: rise in cases and rise in hospitalizations.

I see the Pandemic as a teacher of sorts and can serve as a metaphor for so many aspects of life. I think about (and ask myself the question) how I am mindful (or absent minded) in my relationships, how am I mindful of finances, how am I mindful of my health. Like COVID-19, I may not feel it, may not presently experience it, and I certainly don’t see it – nonetheless it is there.

The vaccine may not be an antidote to my finances, health and relationships, but mindfulness is….I am taking the time to reflect on my health –how I honor my body and what I put in it. I think about my finances as a relationship to foster and offer attention to; and finally, in my relationships, I stay mindful of a fact I first learned in the book, A Course in Miracles, that communication is one of our greatest acts of love. How am I communicating my needs, my hurts, my truths to the ones I love? – For me, these are vital questions.

We are in a season of new variants – variants in relationships, finances, health, an on-going list of considerations; and yes, COVID-19. With each new variant, may we be mindful of how we offer attention, respond, and prepare ourselves for the moment when this season (like the ones that came before it) changes.

Nothing to Lose.

We are living in some of the most dynamic times I have ever seen in my life. During this season, joy, awareness, and truth are all being birthed. At the same time, pain is rising, relationships are finding themselves strained, and long-seen challenges are rising to the surface. 

In recent days much consideration has been given to mental health: offering grace to those in need of it, offering compassion. – While those gifts are deserving to be bestowed on others, we must first bestow those on ourselves.

I have witnessed first-hand the verbal and physical abuse that can be activated by others plagued by depression, wrecked by the disease known as being bi-polar, and resistant to acknowledging the blind spots that derive from low self-worth. As a child, I had no mechanism to protect my own spiritual, emotional, and physical health; but as a an adult, I must take full responsibility for the space I allow others to take up, for the ways in which I allow myself to be treated, and the ways I allow others to let words slip from their tongue toward me that are emotionally violent.

No sickness: alcoholism, depression, low self-worth, or emotional instability gives anyone permission to show up in ways that make vulnerable our spirit, that put our emotional energy in peril, that further activate pain, and don’t call to our greatness, our beauty, and our inherit worth that was granted not by a human, but the Divine.

Boundaries are not harsh, boundaries are not mean, boundaries are not selfish, boundaries are love. You and I are great, powerful, gifted, and created to spread light on this earth. However,  to protect those truths, the environment we create for ourselves in our friends, in family (by birth and chosen) must speak to the things in which we are. When others are unable, unwilling, or not in agreement of the truths I named (for myself)– I must let them go.

I can only allow someone to speak  to me in a way that is less than loving once – that first time was their burden to carry – the second time though, that is where I must own my responsibility for awareness in already knowing what people can offer and what they cannot. 

I now lovingly decline apologies. I decline apologies offered by others who have not first offered an apology to themselves. An apology to oneself looks like therapy, it looks like a mental health evaluation by a clinically trained psychiatrist, it looks like rehab for addiction, it looks like group therapy for anger, it looks like making active change in one's life when jealousy is the anchor for one’s poor behavior – these are just a small number of examples in a laundry list of many.

One time is too many, two times should never happen. The first  time a person calls  you out your name, using their lips to spew hate, using their hands to curate harm is too many… – But there is no excuse: childhood neglect, bi-polar disorder, alcohol/drug abuse, depression, low-self-worth that should allow that to happen again. There are clinicians, medications, facilities, and a host of other interventions that can prevent a second occurrence.  If people can powerfully decline help, then I can powerfully decline their apology and let them go. 

Remember, in letting go of harmful people, letting go of broken people, letting go those who use low self-worth and depression as a response to poor behavior – let them ALL go. Because you have nothing to lose, by letting go of what does not serve your highest calling. 

In all things, toward all people (most importantly yourself) move with LOVE.