Month: October 2024

Patterns

by 8hummingbirdway

I have discovered many patterns within myself recently. Patterns I don’t like. Patterns I am ashamed to carry.

They keep showing up one by one.

It’s part of what occurs during the healing process I am on called Soul Convergence. I wrote about this in July, when I was 3 weeks into the journey. Now, in October, I have several weeks to go and I cannot imagine each time I receive a new guided meditation, where it will bring me.

The process contains more than I can describe. It is not for the faint of heart, but it is profound and deep and healing. An amazing amount of love is provided by the Angels who support the process.

It is also exhausting on some level that I don’t understand. I am simply spending about an hour each day listening and opening to the messages …but I am navigating a great deal internally.

As well as love and healing, I am confronted with myself, over and over, more and more deeply. Recognition of patterns I have carried show up during the meditations, in my dreams, and in my behavior. I suppose I am seeing with different eyes these days.

In my last post I wrote about recognizing a pattern of judgement – and speaking about another in a disparaging way about their choices in parenting.

I have also recognized that I have had trouble letting go of what is past – people, ideas, feelings.

I learned that I have interfered in the lives of others. I haven’t been about to mind my own business.

I noticed that I have carried a tendency of thinking I know what everyone ELSE should do, even if I haven’t said anything.

I’ve discovered that I shared what people have said about others with those others – without even realizing it.

I have realize that I act like a spoiled brat sometimes.

I have seen myself being lazy, selfish, and judgmental.

This has all been deeply upsetting and difficult. But I’ve come to understand that this is part of the path I’ve chosen and I have learned to navigate each instance within a few hours, to make a different choice more aligned with the integrity I WANT to align with, and to return to balance fairly quickly.

Making a different choice helps me to release the pattern …and activate a new way of being.

I am happy to say that my family still loves me. They did even before I learned these things about myself. Not that they want to hear about all this. I get that. We all have our own paths.

I am looking forward to landing on my feet after this Soul Convergence.

Next month I will see who I am.

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Judging another’s way

by 8hummingbirdway

Recently I spoke with someone close to me about another person (I’ll call him B) and his interactions with her grandchildren that were problematic and concerning for her. At some point in the conversation, I shared with her some faults I had perceived in B’s childrearing in the past.

Later in the day, my words came back to me. I felt uncomfortable about my words that judged B’s way of parenting his child. Why did I feel it would be helpful to share my negative perception of him (and his wife)?

I have to say that I don’t think I was trying to be helpful at all.

It feels, looking back, that I was attempting to gain attain additional closeness with the person I was speaking to by aligning against someone else. This is a pattern I experienced in high school that was toxic and mean-spirited.

The conversation and my part in it kept returning to me, and I eventually reached out to my close friend and shared my self perception, apologizing. This didn’t really accomplish much, but she understood.

And I recognized a behavior within myself that I want to change.

I realized, after further thought, that this was a direct reflection of something that had occurred in my past. A friend of mine didn’t approve of my parental choices when I was having challenges with my oldest daughter in her teenage years. She kept telling me that she would lay down the law and correct the situation. I was more lenient in my response, trying to allow some freedom to my growing daughter. My friend (who had no teenagers) did not let up and eventually got 2 other friends involved with her opinion. Eventually she arranged a meeting and she told me that they (collectively) could not support my parenting any longer. I walked away from that meeting after that first sentence and she actually ended our friendship then next day, which was deeply painful for me.

Shortly afterward, in sharing my experience with another, I was told firmly that my children are my children to raise. That the spirits who come as children to us have come to us in clarity of choice, knowing what they will contend with in us, and what kind of parents we would be likely to be, who we truly are. I liked her words, because they exonerated me from doing wrong with my daughter. I felt I stood on more solid ground with this concept.

But now here I am, on the other side of the fence – speaking judgmentally toward B. Not even having the courage or integrity to speak to him myself about it. Never having said a thing to either him or his wife as I witnessed, with some level of discomfort, parenting “errors” over the years. And I spoke to others about them back then – others who knew the family and who may have been influenced by my thoughts in a negative way.

All of this feels terrible. I would like to be a different person that the one I have been in the past …as recent as last week.

I know we all grow and change. I don’t feel it would be helpful or kind at this point to share the way I behaved in relation to B. All I can really do is recognize this behavior within myself and make a different choice in the future.

To be clear, B was not harming his child. He was simply making a different parental decision than I would.

I have more to say about changing patterns.

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A gift to me

by 8hummingbirdway

I moved to a new house last summer in a new town – about half an hour from my beloved dream home in the Catskills. (It got too steep for us.)

We’re in a small charming village and it feels right. There are fun town events, a music venue, a few decent restaurants, and a community garden.

I missed my walks for the first year – in the woods, on the streets, up the hills. Somehow I just wasn’t keeping up with walking.

About 2 months ago a new person moved in across the street from me.

She grew up in the house and had been away for work, raising a daughter, and for the past year she was in the Peace Corps. Recently she had been renting the house out as an Airbnb, but now she has come home to settle in.

She is funny and lively and she likes the Fall and she likes to keep busy.

She sees the world much like I do … and she likes to walk!

It’s lovely to have a friend to walk with. I’m walking much more than I used to. Long walks up a nearby hill and walks through the village. Walks early in the morning and walks in the dark.

I’m deeply grateful for this turn of events.

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