(no subject)
Things are changing, I think I'm changing, and I think it's a pretty drastic change. I'm having a real shift somehow in the way I've been approaching my spirituality. I'm coming to a point where I really am starting to think spirituality is about (for me anyway) being helpful to the people around me first and helpful to myself second. I don't know if that really makes sense, but when I first started along this pilgrimage into spirituality I was only worried about what was helpful to me. And I guess it doesn't really matter one way or another, but it's starting to shift pretty much in the opposite direction.
I'm thinking I really need to get back to the kind of frame of mind I had in the past in which I just pretty much accepted that at times, I'm going to be uncomfortable, unhappy, pissed off, confused, but no matter what I feel about a situation or a person, I have to try and be helpful. I've been getting wrapped up in some judgmental bullshit in my own head way too often and I know it's not helpful because all I really do is shut down. I don't have to like everyone, this is a good thing, because I'm cantankerous and ornery by nature, but I do have to attempt to be helpful in what way I can. Sometimes it may just be telling what I feel to be the truth (with a little kindness and compassion), which is where I often have a hard time.
Though I often don't like the things that the people around me have to say or what they do, it really doesn't make me any better than they are. Nothing makes me any better than any of the people in my life except the bullshit in my own mind. I think the lesson I'm learning right now on both the small and large scale is that if I'm going to be a part of the solution, I do have to tell the truth about what I see in the world around me, but it doesn't have to be an attack on anyone or what I see as being wrong. It can just be an attempt at expressing what I believe is right, leaving the wrong alone and letting others make their decision what to do with it as they go. It's not up to me to be the arbitor of anyone's behavior of any kind. It's just not my job. I have to only worry about my own behavior.
I'm coming to the realization that I don't have to be fake with people if I don't like them, but I should try and be friendly and at least kind, because I think that's what God would want from me. At it's essence its really just getting focused on the solution instead of the problem. The problem is that I'm a judgmental prick who really doesn't like the way many people do things. The solution is to tell the truth about what I think, be kind and tolerant and let it go after that. I don't have to try and tell people what they're doing wrong exactly or even what to do right. What I can say is, "Hey, you know, it's really hard for people to deal with you when you're being smug, and in a lot of ways hurtful and mean spirited. Now I realize I may have acted the same way toward you at times, and I'm sorry about that. Why don't we both try to just not do that to each other or anyone else and maybe we'll all get on a little bit better."
It just seems like the answer is to be inclusive with these kinds of things. I've been approaching them from a very exclusive kind of standpoint. If your pissing me off, I want to exclude you from whatever it is that I'm doing or that my group of friends is doing. Somehow, that doesn't seem so much to be a spiritual kind of attitude or action. I don't think people, myself included, get better by being excluded. Being excluded probably only makes those attitudes even stronger, where as being included can show them a better way of doing things, by example.
I know all of these things end up working out differently for different people. The one thing I don't see for me though is being able to just turn a blind eye to a lot of things, it just doesn't seem to be in me to be capable of doing that. Maybe I have to take a few knocks on the chin or lose the esteem some people have for me by telling the truth as I see it, but I just really don't think I can just act like things are all copasetic and ok without saying something. I don't think that does anyone any good. Maybe my place in all of this is to be the guy who tells the truth to people as compassionately and kindly as I can and let God handle it from there. I can say for sure that more than a lot of the people in my regular group of friends, I'm really unconcerned with what people's opinions of me are and maybe that's why. I think I've always been able to say the things other people won't in both the positive and the negative sense, I just have to start to practice doing it positively more often.
I know it will all work out regardless. For me a lot of this stuff comes back to being able to get up and be content with myself every day. I believe there is such a thing as gult by negligence and it's something I don't want to have anything to do with and I guess in many ways that very thing is exactly what I'm afraid of. There are a lot of people around me right now that I'm really afraid of being right about. Part of it is definitely selfish, part of it is also a fear for their well being, and part of it is a fear that I could have better spent much of these times with someone who both needed and wanted help. It's kind of like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don't know what to really do and it seems God is really taking His time in disclosing things to me on this one, so I'm getting the feeling I'm supposed to take some kind of action on this one, right or wrong. Right or wrong, it will give me some idea of what kind of direction to go with this kind of thing in the future and it's better than the kind of mental gymnastics I've had going on so much surrounding this kind of stuff recently. I have faith that God will help me to see better in these situations if I'm really, truly willing to take action.
I'm figuring much of the uncomfortability I've been having with a lot of this stuff is probably due to an unwillingness to take the kind of action God would have me take. I know I certainly haven't been very willing to try and be very tolerant or kind to a lot of the people I've been around in the past few months. I also haven't really been looking for what God's will would be for me in these situations, I've been more concerned with what I could do to make people change what their doing that's pissing me off. That's just worked so well throughout my life that even though that's what I've been thinking about, I've at least been smart enough to not take any direct action in that area. I've been concerned very much with myself in these things, the way that I feel, and also the greater good in many ways, but the way that I have felt has been clouding my ability to see what could be done to really be in the interest of the greater good. "If people would just act right nobody would have any problems with them". Really, I'm the one who needs to look at how I'm acting, how it's contributing to the situation and what I can do differently that can at the very least remove my having a negative effect on the way things are going and the way that I am interacting with others.
I have a hard time living in the moment when it comes to the way I react to people. I really just don't expect anything but the same thing from them over and over again, whehter it's positive or negative. I'm just really not good at seeing someone who's been shitty in my presence three days ago and being able to recognize they might not be shitty today, and even if they are, what does it really matter to me, how much does that really effect me or the way I live my life. Little to none really, unless I let it throw me off and I start acting like a jack ass because I'm so focused on the kind of jack ass they are being. An eye for an eye leaves us all blind. Pray for me people. I'm a damned lunatic.