OC: Loyalty and Faith

Every moment is an opportunity to release yourself from limiting emotional responses, reactions that keep you trapped in a cycle of unending melodrama. It is important to feel all that is yours to feel, and yet it is a great gift to be able to watch and witness situations, and the feelings they produce, as if from a distance. We must learn to have the awareness that enables us to stay somewhat detached, while still being fully aware of the feelings of the body.

We take the world too personally. We become too easily enmeshed in thoughts and feelings that belong more to the past than they do to the present. We rarely see what is actually in front of us. We all too frequently see situations, as we fear them to be, not what they are in actuality. We superimpose our beliefs and anxieties onto every situation that presents itself, and so we rarely have an experience that is fresh and unencumbered.

Whenever a pattern of behavior brings ongoing pain or disappointment, we can be sure that we are being held captive by false prejudices. Something is seeking healing within us. It is then that we must commit ourselves to do the work of releasing ourselves from these patterns.

To know who you are, look around you at the friends and companions with whom you choose to travel. These friends are the reflection of yourself at this moment in your life. Now is the time to relinquish what no longer serves your highest purpose.

It may be easy to choose to change what no longer serves you, but the will and commitment to stay with the choice you have made is difficult indeed. Choose one thing and do it well. Then choose another. It is a step-by-step journey. Do not be discouraged by the miles ahead. Focus on the step directly in front of you. This is what creates the opportunity for and eventually leads to a breakthrough.