Once upon a time I thought one of the aspects of being spiritual meant to take the higher road, to turn the other cheek. Which basically meant keeping your ego on check... I thought that was a GI-normous feat in itself considering the state of affairs the world was in as well as my history of being short-fused and “not letting people get the best of me”...yes, I was a combative one.
Here is a bit of my back-story just so you know where I'm coming from...I have come a long way from how I used to be in my younger days. I grew into an angry hypersensitive teen then continued on as just that into adulthood. A product of my environment growing up in the inner city neighborhoods of Chicago. Don't get me wrong...Chicago is not a bad place. Some neighborhoods were rough and I happened to have grown up in one of them. My disposition stemmed from always having to be watching out, trying my best to not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...always looking over my shoulder for predators and on the look out for a hiding spot in case a gang shooting broke out as I crossed neighborhood gang boundaries. I had to be aware of my surroundings at all times. If you would have asked me 10 years ago how my childhood was, I would have not given it a second thought and told you it was just OK, a typical childhood. Now that I've done a good chunk of the self-work and healing, my hindsight is 20/20. Although I have come to understand we plan what energetic environments we incarnate into, families we are born into, milestones and events that are to happen in our lives - I realized I was always in survival mode back then. I didn't know any other way of life and thought it normal. I made it out basically unscathed with some near misses, scrapes and bruises. Ya know, when I think about it...I realize I had a hell of a team of Guardian Angels for sure. It definitely could've been worse. I did make it out in one piece, went away to college, came back to make a life for myself, started a family and moved west of the big city. As I got older, I got wiser. However, the temper and Ego didn’t get tamed until I started aggressively pursuing my spiritual journey. Ironically, I was a door mat to those I knew and loved. I got stepped on, taken advantage of, was boundary-less, always giving people the benefit of the doubt whilst knowing from the get go they were bad news and always in the pattern of give-give-give to those I knew and loved. But to those I was acquainted with and strangers it was a different story. I was still angry, had a major chip on my shoulder and absolutely hated anyone getting the better of me. I had built a very sturdy wall making it impossible for anyone to get through. I made myself invulnerable. The difference is at this stage in my life, the fuel that continued to feed the chip on my shoulder was being let down and betrayed by people I cared about too many times. I felt things deeply and it was a protection mechanism...protecting myself from getting hurt. SO...I had no clue how this thing of keeping your ego in check was going to work for me, how this was going to be achieved let alone how in tar-nation people were able to go about their lives like that in this day and age. Seemed like an impossible task. It seemed to me to be a trait of the weak at the time. Checking your Ego at the door, to not be angry and to not hold grudges. Well, as years went by, I did the best I could. The more I researched, the more I understood, the easier it became and the more it naturally became who I was as a soul. I allowed my soft side to re-emerge. Even so, there was always that struggle with my Ego. Throughout most of my journey, I resisted meditation. I knew meditation would play a major role in this. I knew mediation was the act of listening and taking control of yourself, of your energy. I knew that being the way I used to be was toxic for myself and I had go back to the beginning and work out my issues and figure myself out as well as start practicing creating boundaries, speaking my truth, practicing self love and self respect, make a conscious effort to receive more as opposed to giving, consciously using the Law of Attraction, take charge of my thoughts as opposed to it leading me, to understand that the way people behaved was not about "them against me" AND somehow incorporate this meditation thing I kept hearing about. I knew I had to incorporate all of this until the scales evened out so I can then create a balance. Along the way, I never really understood why these spiritual people (the "awakened" ones) were more peaceful people, why they took the higher road, turned the other cheek, or how were they even able to keep that ego on check? The epiphany came one day. I came to understand it wasn’t a weakness. In fact it took great courage and willpower to not cave and lose it on someone let alone have the wherewithal to turn those thoughts around. Definitely swimming against the tide this was. No matter, I went about my practice daily and tried my best to tame my Ego. To create that balance between my old and new self. Although, I have found that it is a work in progress...the truth is the ugly does come out every now and again even to this day. All you can do is catch yourself before you start to go there... and if you went there? Go within, recenter, take stock of your energetic bodies (mental, emotional and spiritual) and pick up where you left off. I'll admit there are times where instead of being proactive in being conscious of my thoughts and behavior, I sometimes am caught off guard. But I have noticed that this is only when I’ve been slacking on my daily practice and meditations. Warning.... proceeding to read this may be a bit of TMI for you as it will have you bare witness to one of my rawest of moments. What I am about to tell you may seem petty and infantile to you. And that's ok. It is what it is. I own that. I am not proud of what happened. This is not common and these scenarios happen infrequently now that I'm further along my journey. BUT none-the-less I am still surprised that I still go there. Crazy. I know. But as you will see, Lightworkers are still human and by far are not perfect. Life seems to always be a work in progress doesn't it? ***Commence Drama*** In mid-June, I was driving on the expressway (or what some of you would call a "Freeway") one morning. I merged into a lane that merged from 2 lanes down to 1 lane. There was a spot that I slipped into between 2 cars. Happens all the time. It’s the rhythm and flow of traffic. Some people don’t like to play nice in the sand box, though. Most drivers know if you aren’t paying attention to your driving and wait too long in a lane such as this, you’ll have a whole slew of cars that will pass you up and get in front of you. Happens to me whenever I’m not being as reactive and alert as I should be while in traffic. About 30 seconds after I claimed my spot behind a vehicle in traffic, a woman zooms right beside me leaving only literally inches between our cars. The car in front of me crept up, I crept up and she crept up along side me. The lane became narrower and narrower. This lady wanted to get her spot back in a bad way and it seemed she was trying to literally push me out. I became reactive. I stood my ground and she eventually backed off. She wasn't happy. For about another minute or so we drove on this lane which eventually merged into another lane. I noticed she was trying to hold out until I merged. Eventually, however, she seemed to have given up and was merging in about several cars behind me. I drove further to create space between us and merged even further from that still. After I completely merged in, I saw her pull back out of the lane and zipp by me honking her horn at me, mouthing something, flipping me the bird and off she went. My lane started to move and I passed her up. And wouldn't you know it, she gave me the bird again. This lady wasn’t letting this go. I had enough. I rolled down my window and gave it back. Yep. You read that right. Not very high road of me is it? Anyway, that wasn’t the end of it. She was ahead of me and moved over another lane. At this point, I started laughing at myself. I couldn’t believe I let myself get sucked into this road rage. At the next passing, she was mouthing something at me and all I did was blew her kiss and in the final passing I waved at her. All of sudden I became super aware that my Spirit Guides were uber quiet but observant the whole entire time. Not in a judge-y way. The energy they gave off was that of “lets see how she is going to recover from this one” (Gee thanks guys! Could ya have helped a sistah out before this all went south???) ***End Drama*** That wave good bye may have been a bit much. But none-the-less I course-corrected. I told myself "I'm not letting this get to me”. I started to feel remorse though. I felt bad that possibly started a chain of events which would have entailed her giving an unsuspecting and undeserving person that backlash and would start a domino effect of negativity. I’m not proud of what I did. However, I am proud that I did turn it around. Not as fast as I would’ve liked. But this is the way I see it... I’m still human living in a fast paced world having to co-exist with people who don't play nice in the sandbox. I have always played fair on the road. I figured out along the way that temper and ego have no place on the road. When on the road, I understand if I snooze I lose and so that dance happens between each car in traffic..no harm no foul. But you always come across those certain people. I’m not making excuses here. I’m just being real. I still struggle with my ego self and my soul self. It’s always a conscious effort to keep that balance. It definitely gets better as you go but sometimes...this happens. It’s ok though. You just forgive yourself, forgive him/her, turn that situation around and send them love. The moment I caught myself, I immediately released that incident, called back my energy, sent her love, light and blessings, asked the angels to surround her to help her understand what just happened so that no one else would have to endure her wrath and cleared my energy...hoping she didn't go about the rest of her day taking out her bad mood out on everyone else. It wasn’t until hours later when it hit me. It wasn’t until that day I understood what taking the higher road meant. It came to me as a quick download. So here's the scoop... If you react, you are reacting to someone that isn’t where you are vibrationally. They aren’t awakened. They are still driven entirely by their ego and still let their thoughts drive their lives and have not taken the creator’s driving wheel of manifesting in their lives. I’m not judging. I was there for a very long time myself until I decided to change that. At the end of the day, it was toxic for me, my family, my neighbor and even Bob down the street. How they (we) are feeling will add to the collective consciousness. It affects them and affects everyone. Now that is NOT to say being spiritual means you are supposed be stepped on, chewed up, spit out and thrown out with yesterday's garbage. You do need to pick your battles, fight those said battles and speak your truth. These seemingly minuscule events, I think, have the most impact on our energy and the energy of our collective consciousness. The reason we take the higher road is because it is a responsibility to yourself and to others to maintain a certain energetic frequency. It affects you, others and the environment you live in. For now it creates that balance in the world. It was this epiphany that I finally understood that concept. It was something I couldn't grasp before. It’s a responsibility especially if you are in the arena of service to others. With that said, I stand corrected and guilty as charged. I have forgiven myself and her and have let it go. I know the conscious balance between your Ego and your soul will always be something we have to be mindful of. The struggle is real folks. But it becomes easier with time….I promise! My wish for you is to find and experience Peace and Harmonious interactions wherever you go and with whomever you meet. With Love,
Maria
Comments