Who We Choose
Imagine your life was a simulation… like a video game, except the end goal is love, joy, peace, and enlightenment. In your video game, how do the challenges in your life advance you towards this endpoint? Who are the people in your life that call upon you to grow, to be better, and to rise up to greatness?
Every challenge in life presents an opportunity to inquire into our own resistance. Where is it that we choose the path of efforting, of forcing ourselves to be something that we are not? Each person in life—and particularly those that we choose to bare our naked hearts to—these are the people that represent to us the greatest mirror for growth.
Relationships are hard. They often begin with a burst of euphoria. The novelty is delightful, they can do no wrong… but when the initial wists of a puppy love fade, our patterns start to present in such stark clarity that we can ignore them no longer. Where there was once had a cute quirk might now be an annoying itch—and the only thing that changed was time.
Why does this happen? The more we open ourselves to love, the more we expose the innermost sanctuaries of our soul. In the video game of life, we allow ourselves to be more vulnerable because we feel safer. This opening can create a tender dynamic whereby we subconsciously ask our partner to hold the inner child bits of ourselves that we’ve long since suppressed. When we are hurting, sad, ashamed, guilty, or fearful, it is natural to seek outwards for comfort and soothing… so often, this is who we turn to. This is who we choose to allow in.
But the journey into Self is to own our own Inner Power. When we look outside ourselves for the answer, we adopt the role of victim or slave. When we blame our loved ones for not seeing us, hearing us, or honoring us, we are ignoring the precious gift of the reminder that we get to see ourselves, hear our own inner voice, and honor the Truth that craves so desperately to burst forth.
Who we choose is a mirror for us. At Ceremonia, we have a workshop called “Sword, Mirror, Jewel”. The Imperial Family of Japan had three sacred treasures: Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the sword, which represents valor and courage; Yata no Kagami, the mirror, which represents wisdom and introspection; and Yasakani no Magatama, the jewel, which represents benevolence and the hidden self. When we feel missed or angry, when we feel like we don’t matter to those that we wish to hold us most, the sword can be the statement “you should not have…”
This is resistance at its finest: the denial of reality. “You should not have yelled at me”, “you should not have ignored me”, “you should not have blamed me”... each of these statements can generate a fire within, a not-so-subtle contemplation of fierceness grounded in what we believe to be right. But we must ask ourselves: do we want to choose reality or our opinion of reality? This is where suffering begins.
The mirror can be turned around: “I should not have yelled at you”, “I should not have ignored you”, etc. How does it feel to utter these words? How much truthfulness is in this statement? The mirror often presents a level of understanding… an opening to recognize that what we expect others to not do to us, we often don’t do for others. It’s because the only reason why we get triggered in the first place is because the trigger touches something within ourselves that is unacknowledged, that is tender and wanting to be seen.
Finally, the jewel–the benevolent self–lies in the statement, “I should not have ____ at myself.” This might be “I should not have yelled at myself”... how often do we have an inner voice that criticizes, that yells at ourselves for being stupid or not good enough? It might be, “I should not have ignored myself”... how often do we ignore our intuition and give in to the pressures of the outside world or our tiny fears? Giving space to this jewel often brings on catharsis… a firmness of clarity that was missing when we pointed our finger outwards at someone else, holding them responsible for how we feel internally.
Who we choose, we choose for a reason. Our Highest Self, the endpoint where we pass with a smile in our hearts, has reached back into time and guided us to choose this person to teach us a lesson. If we give up too soon, the lesson might be: try and try again. If we endure and muster the courage to take ownership of our reality, the lesson is: you have the Power. It was you all along.
