The Mountain As a Metaphor...
My friend (insert a name, I will protect his privacy), who is a life long gambler, has been engaging in an email dialogue with me this morning, he wanted to know if I still believe that people can change...
A naive view he thinks; his belief, as an 'unlucky gambler', is that he has no control, he was born unlucky and that this will continue
I agree with him...
But he likes to argue the case from the perspective that I am saying that he, and everyone, can change...
I do not say that...
I say that if we are truly willing to explore our patterns, and risk finding out who we truly are, then who knows what might happen...!
I agree with him, when he says that he will stay unlucky... He is caught in his pattern and in his pattern, he is likely to remain...
He then likes to say that my own life is random and I have no control either...
Again I agree with him...
What is control over our life? My own experience is simply that if I keep aware of the reactivity within me, and willing to clear it, and if I am committed to noticing where my patterns play out, that I find myself more able to live in the now, moment by moment and to see where the now takes me...
Having engaged in this random conversation this morning I ask myself as I have often been asked in 'therapy sessions'... 'Why did I invite this in today...'?'
My guess, is that I invited it in because it demonstrates to me what I know, that most people will live out their patterns, often quite happily... Why look when it is all working okay?
And perhaps they are living out what they came here to do and be...
It is not for me to judge or pass comment... We do not know the path another treads..
.
And if we are invested in someone else changing, it is a good exercise to enquire within at the deepest level, and ask whether it is for us that we desire the change?
If someone requests our help then this is another matter, we can all support and guide one another... But uninvited advice is usually not received or acted upon... Or if it is, it may not be for the highest good of the other...
Of course it is never pleasant to see another human destroying themselves or hurting themselves, in any way, or in any kind of distress - and we will naturally throw the rope or offer assistance; but it is up to us to grab the end of the rope... And if lifted from the ground having fallen, then be willing to learn to walk again ourself...
Focusing on our own lessons is all that is truly required, and recognising that we are responsible for the way we see things, through the filter of our own stories and experience...!
If we practice this way, we will be of much more valuable service to ourself and to others... Knowing when to take action and when to stay still...
Today we walked up the hill to Teide for 9am and sat on the step waiting for Jack to pick us up. He arrived, we clambered into his land rover and he drove us to Capiliera, where we met Maggie who had walked there with their two Collie dogs Cassie and Jess....
Maggie manages the little White House where we are staying and has been invaluable in helping me book hotels for my clients, speak Spanish when I needed more than 'Cafe con leche por favor!' and generally support our stay here...
The other day she offered for her and Jack to drive us up higher in the mountains than ever, and off the beaten track to the reservoir and 'the barrier' to expand our running routes further and higher...!
The track wound up and up, bumpy rocky, challenging even the land rover... Up we climbed, the air getting thinner... Glad today to be in a vehicle, and as is often the way when I am resting from running like today, it feels hard to imagine I have within me the energy to traverse these trails under the steam of my own energy tank...
Maybe tomorrow I will find out...?
But maybe not, as on Wednesday I will once again be working here with a client, and then next week we leave...
So perhaps today I was simply shown a new gateway of possibility...
I have discovered that this is how life works in my paradigm...
Vistas of possibility are shown me, I catch a glimpse, physically, emotionally... Possibilities...
I see something new, something I may have always thought was possible but not been able to attain straight away...
And usually I have discovered that once my soul has seen it and engaged with it, It finds its way there....
Yesterday I was reading over my new book 'A Girlfriend for a year' (it truly is almost out in the world!!)
I looked up and said to Anadi... 'I had glimpsed what I knew was possible in love in the mirror of relationships, my own possibilities reflected back, and through having seen that possibility, with you I experience the deepest love within myself now shared every day... Re-reading this book reminds me of our journey here - to this moment - through the series of moments we kept leaping into together despite the early challenges...!' The mountain as a metaphor...
The peak, higher and higher, never ending trails offering new adventures and expansion...
Possibilities opening....
