Today I came across something interesting in my new meditation book.
“Most of the time I’m not learning what I think I’m learning. Something different is taking place, something deeper. It’s as if the universe gives us something to occupy what writer Natalie Goldberg calls “the monkey mind” so we can move forward along our path.”
Imagine that. We must be distracted from ourselves so we don’t impede our own learning. I get this. Many many times over 35 years of teaching I shook my head at such intelligent children who get in their own way and impede their learning. And now, as an adult involved in my own journey, it happened to me.
For eight months I thought the lesson I was supposed be concentrating on was letting go of certain things. Today I realized for the first time, what it meant not to be a victim. Nothing to do with each other, yet born from the same incident. A long time ago I let someone bully me and pummel me into the ground. I folded. Caved. And have been berating myself ever since and just trying to let it go. As I spent so much time on that, something deeper was taking place unbeknownst to me. I was growing a strength I never in a million years thought I could possess. I now know, in that situation, I should have been extremely quiet and unemotional. I should have very matter of factly stood up for myself and my friend, then walked away. I now know why I didn’t. I was a victim. Being a victim stems from thinking you are less than than the bully and cannot win. Now, I realize it’s not about winning anything. It’s about knowing you are worth just as much as they are. You are an important person in your own right. And how do you do this?
Haha! My very first new value I learned on this journey. When attacked, you immediately step back and quiet yourself and never succumb or shoot from the hip. If you don’t have the right words at hand, you breathe, turn around and walk away. You don’t let anyone pummel you into the ground. You are not anyone’s victim. That will never, ever happen to me again.
I now think back on that particular incident. I think what tremendous self control and courage it would have taken to do that. I never had that strength. I never had that confidence. I never had that belief in myself to be anything but a victim. I do now. I know it deep inside me. I didn’t know it was growing all these months underneath everything I have been writing about throughout this journey.
And so, as another day goes by, I did not realize the depth of truth in my words the other day, when I wrote on my blog anniversary that now, one year later, “I am a mere shadow of the person I was one year ago”, and …I have written.
So fun article is! I know more from it.