a year of lessons

there are so many lessons ive learned this year I don’t know if I can even recount them all. but in appreciation for all that I Have and all that I AM and all that I Will be, I will do homage to this year of very hard lessons.

                for one thing I learned I was living in a bubble and that it was by choice. in psychology I learned about social conditioning and government control and research.  I learned how wonderfully vast and expansive our collective consciousness is, just how many thoughts and opinions are out there and I respect them all.   ‘I Respect them ALL’ does not mean I agree with them all, but I respect the human being and the right for the human being to choose for himself.

                i learned about duality and how the power of our desires will shape our future -both individually and collectively. I learned how truly powerful we are, IAM, the human race is. I learned, more in depth, about emotions, specifically how our triggers reflect the same thing that we hate residing within us [^{enter the ‘I hate trump’ parade of individuals who blame one man for outwardly displaying the same behaviors we all possess. we all possess and ALLOW while we play hide n seek with our lives, pretending, “posing”, “flossing”, allowing jealousy and feelings of superiority to infiltrate our consciousness, all the while pretending we are fine, we are not jealous – we just look at what everyone else has and decide we want that too, we decide that other people have it so easy while we have it so hard, that’s not jealousy, its……, we are not racist we just don’t believe other people should have the same things we have, we just believe we should be on top and they should be underneath us. everyone’s equal, but some are more equal than others. that’s not racist that’s…… we are not sexist, its just that we believe women deserve to be raped if they wear that outfit in public. they asked for it, that’s not me acting out my own desires to rape people plus I still have God’s favor because the bible says women are inferior so that means we are meant to abuse them right? have I read the bible? no, I don’t have to because I know who I am…}] Yes, we have all become quite adept at hiding who we really are in the closet while pretending to be someone else in public. we just expect some things to stay hidden in the closet. but truth will NEVER be hidden; not for long. Truth ALWAYS comes to light. ALWAYS [^{enter mr trump with his limited filtration system}]…Peruse through any history book and you will notice a constant battle between humanity’s fears and humanity’s desires (the fear of being powerless and the desire to be independent, along with all the ways we work those two needs out on each other. which is why we have greed and separation. Truly we make things so much harder than they need to be.

                strength and courage

the ability to hold everyone’s truth as my own truth and to still maintain my own thoughts and ideas -this was expanded upon in a new way for me. it went far beyond respecting others’ opinions and moved into understanding all aspects of ‘why’. why we do the things we do, why we feel the way we feel, why we hide the things we hide, why we hurt the way we hurt and don’t say anything.

this was a painful reality at times, because everyone has a point, a perspective that is valid in their own life. I have gone back and forth many, many, many times on the realities of social conditioning versus personal responsibility. I will hold that divine truth will reveal itself as it always has and that God knows what is in a person’s heart. this places each driver in his own driver’s seat. including me.

                confrontation

the kind of confrontation i am referring to here is confronting myself. digging into that figurative closet and tossing out into the open childhood traumas, even if seemingly not so traumatic, tossing out into the open anything lurking in the shadows that i run and hide from, tossing out into the open behaviors that were not serving me, fears, insecurities, powerlessness. tossed out into the center of the floor, on display. look at it. own it. its mine. now that I have accepted it is mine, address it, one by one. CLOSE THAT CLOSET SO IT CANT RUN BACK IN and work with each of my struggles one by one. by one. by one. that’s all for now. I may find a few strays later. I’ll be back in that closet to continue the clearing work that needs to be done. Why confrontation? For integration, for peace. (When you know who you are you have peace within) I was not scared because it is only me and also, ive always embraced my shadow side. however the work was still hard, still difficult, unpleasant, even painful at times. and I thought if it is this hard for someone like me, how much harder is it for someone who has spent their entire life running away from who they are? how hard indeed – and judgment goes away. and respect for other enters the room. that is the work of confrontation or shadow work. and it is ongoing.

                a year of love

                i don’t believe i have loved humanity as much as I have this year – the good, the bad and the ugly. not sure if I really loved humanity at all; definitely not like this. I loved their good side, but the bad? this is the peace of integration. it is understanding, embodying, embracing that the good And the bad are within each of us. We all have the Capacity to do both good and evil and many of us do both good and evil, we just don’t see the evil part because it is us and we have our reasons why we do the things we do.

                a year of integration

                embodying myself in all its parts and embodying humanity in all its parts, embracing the oneness that we all possess – it takes a lot of work to get there. this is not the hardest thing I had to face this year. the hardest thing was facing myself.

                a year of loss

                this year I loss two people very dear to me.

                my beautiful grandmother: Mary Kenner, who passed away but left me with a wealth of love and words to live by, namely ‘Draw Close to God’ and ‘Enjoy Your Life’. Truly I have learned these lessons most powerfully this year and they were reinforced directly from her mouth to my ears. I Will continue to embrace these truths.

and my beautiful friend, Lisa Rose, who embodied what it means to be both pure of heart and bad-assed. A rare soul, a brave soul. I miss you and think of you often, as you know.

this year has put me through the ringer. but i had one final lesson to learn before the year was done and it was learned on new years eve. a powerful lesson, a painful one, a revealing one, a spiritual one. i took to searching and journaling and praying and what was revealed to me was what I already (conscienciously) knew. Only now I knew through actual experience (that’s the suckey part but I already knew better so I brought the suckey part on myself). Stand in my power as the human being that I AM and ALWAYS Was. The Choice Lies With Me and No One Else. Lesson was learned and I AM even more POWERFUL for it. which was actually scary for the same reasons being powerful is scary to many of us. I cannot relinquish my life to anyone. I AM here to live MY life and to enjoy MY life. That is MY TRUTH.

and I AM no different from anyone else.

I know my next steps for the upcoming year and yet it is a blank canvas. this is a new way of Being for me too, but exciting. this is the human experience: to Live For Each Day.

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at the end of the year i came across Whitney Houston’s song ‘The Greatest Love of All ’. such a beautiful song that sounded new to me. as we embark on the upcoming year, lets really lean into the words this song relays. it is no accident that these beautiful words came from a beautiful woman who possessed such a heavenly and beautiful voice.

Listen: