Mindful Musings - Who Knows What's Good Or Bad?

This is a reflective musing about the journey of life and how we can never really know if things are truly good or bad until more of the journey has unfolded. It is a pause to reflect and gain perspective on challenges and obstacles presenting themselves.

Transcript

Hello and thank you for joining me for a little series that I call Mindful Musings.

And these are just reflective talks to help us just reframe our minds and give us something to think about while we're,

You know,

Doing something else.

When we can't sit in meditation but we still want to create that expansive thought.

So today I was thinking about a tea leaf reading I did not that long ago where I was writing for a magazine and every month I would,

You know,

Do some tea leaves for the magazines.

Now when I did tea leaves,

It's not divination,

It's more insight that comes with the images.

And in this image,

In this little teacup image,

It was a little person,

Sort of one hand up,

One hand down,

Kind of like weighing the balance,

Weighing the scales.

And the message in this teacup was that sometimes we don't actually know when something is bad or good.

Now of course there are really crappy things that happen and life is,

You know,

Full of suffering and there's all kinds of challenges.

But at the same time,

Sometimes when we get past those challenges and we move forward,

We get to a place where we realize that even though that was a terrible time and a difficult time of growth or things like that,

That there was something gained out of it,

That there was something learned out of it,

That there was some evolution out of it or circumstances that came about,

You know.

And sometimes that's for big things or sometimes that's for little things.

And it reminds me of a story and it's like a Zen or Taoist story where there's a farmer and the farmer loses his horse and all the villagers come and they're like,

Oh no,

How terrible for you,

You lost your horse,

That's awful,

How are you going to farm?

And the farmer just says,

Who knows what's good,

Who knows what's bad?

And then a little while later the horse comes back with a stallion and now he's got this stallion and all the villagers come and they're like,

Oh how fantastic for you,

You have this stallion,

Now you can breed horses and you're going to be wealthy,

That's so wonderful.

And again the farmer says,

You know,

With a shrug of his shoulders,

Just like in this teacup image,

Who knows what's good,

Who knows what's bad?

And then the son,

His son decides to try and train the stallion and gets bucked off and breaks his leg badly and all the villagers are like,

Oh no,

How bad for you,

How are you going to,

You don't have help on the farm,

How are you going to do your work?

And again the farmer shrugs,

Just like this little image,

And says,

Who knows what's good,

Who knows what's bad?

And then a little while later a war breaks out and soldiers come to the village and they're conscripting all able-bodied men and because the son has a broken leg he's not able to go to war.

So again the villagers come and say the same thing,

How wonderful for you,

Your son,

You don't have to send your son to the war.

And again the farmer says,

Who knows what's good,

Who knows what's bad?

And it's a,

You know,

The story goes on,

I can't remember how the rest of it goes,

But the story goes on and it's just that idea that sometimes that things that seem bad,

That seem terrible or are bad,

I'm not even going to say that they're not terrible,

Sometimes things that are bad do have that element of we don't really know where it ends up or where the plan ends.

When I look back on my life I think about times that were very difficult,

You know,

When I when I got divorced and it was really hard and I had to kind of create a mantra for myself that,

You know,

Six months from now this will be a bit easier and a year from now things will be different and five years from now it'll be a memory and I just kept using that mantra because things were really difficult.

And now when I look back on that time,

Yes,

It was terrible,

Terrible time,

However,

What I learned about myself and relationships and how it's allowed me to help others in the intuitive counseling work that I do because I have insight and understanding on that,

You know,

As much as that was a terrible scenario,

It's made me a lot of who I am today or even right now,

Currently as I'm recording this,

I'm nursing a hamstring injury surgery.

I tore the hamstring,

The bone,

The muscles or ligaments right from the bone,

Had to have surgery,

But just before that things were going really great at my job,

I was enjoying myself,

It was,

You know,

I was gaining lots of insight into my leadership capabilities and all of a sudden boom,

Down I went and I was incapacitated,

I couldn't drive,

I had to ask for help from everybody and it,

In hindsight,

Now or even currently right now,

It taught me a lot about being vulnerable and allowing myself to ask for help and realizing that I don't do that very often.

It's also given me time to write,

To record,

To do some of the things I'm passionate about that on a day-to-day basis I wasn't giving myself time for.

So as much as it,

You know,

Isn't pleasant to deal with an injury,

It's made me realize,

You know,

Who knows what's good,

Who knows what's bad.

So just some thoughts that right now in your life,

The things that are not going well,

The things that are challenges,

The things that are you know,

Making you struggle,

Making you pause,

Making you think,

Making you cry,

Making you weep,

What those things,

You know,

Is there a way that we can fast forward to that six months where things will be different and a year when,

You know,

Things will be easier and then five years where it will be a memory.

Can we,

Can you try to fast forward yourself into what's the learning from this,

What can I gain from this,

What's the evolution for me in this,

What are some of the positives?

Because in every negative situation there is something positive,

Sometimes it's harder to find.

You know,

I think I come by this on an ancestral level in that my grandmother,

You know,

Often wouldn't talk about some of the tragedies that she had to go through,

But I do know some of them from her journals where,

You know,

On a cattle car to Siberia with other people that were being used as slaves,

You know,

And I,

With her children and trying to keep her children safe and horrible things and I'd ask her sometimes like,

How did you get through that?

And she said,

I focused on the positive.

If that day my kids didn't have lice or if that day my feet didn't hurt or if that day I was one of the people that got to sit down,

That was a blessing and I focus on the blessings.

Now I'm not saying to,

You know,

Pretend there's no bad things and give yourself a false positive,

But if you can,

In those moments of trouble,

Just pause and say,

Right now,

In this moment,

Is there something positive that I can focus on?

And if it is that your feet don't hurt or that you don't have lice or something like that,

And that's all you can get,

Then celebrate that.

But,

You know,

Who knows sometimes what's good,

What's bad.

And sometimes it isn't until we have a little bit more perspective,

A little bit more time has passed and a little bit more of the story unfolding in front of us.

I was listening and thinking the other day as I was driving and it was foggy and I thought,

Gosh,

I can't see anything.

And,

You know,

It was a little bit stressful,

If I'm honest,

And I was thinking,

Do I stop,

Do I pull over?

But I thought,

No,

I know this road,

I know where I'm going.

I trust that I know where to go.

And it dawned on me that that was a bit of an analogy,

That in the fog,

You know,

You can't really see what's up ahead,

But you trust that you're on the road and you're on the path.

And,

You know,

Even though the fog is a hindrance and an obstacle,

You trust that there is,

You know,

Moving forward,

There's momentum.

And so when you're thinking about the things that are struggling for you right now and challenges,

Take a breath for a moment and just pause and what is the learning?

So we're going to do that.

Just,

You know,

Stop what you're doing for a second and just pause and find just,

You know,

One stressor.

We don't need to dig into the giant big things unless you want to,

But you know,

One of the stressors,

One of the challenges,

And just take a breath,

Ground into your body,

Hold space in your heart for this mystery,

For this trust,

And just ask yourself,

What is the learning in this situation?

What am I gaining from this situation?

What is the positive right now in this situation?

What is something that I can hold on to that will help me feel a little better about this situation?

Let's just take a deep breath.

And what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

And if you don't like that answer,

You can say,

What else is there?

What else am I gaining from this situation?

What else am I learning?

What is the message in this situation?

And then we're going to ask that our intuition be heightened.

So we're going to take a breath into our third eye,

The space right in between in between your eyebrows.

And we're just going to ask that we are open to receiving insight into the positives in these situations that we're experiencing,

That we're open to receiving insight.

And it's sort of like if I asked you right now to notice everything around you,

That was the color red,

You would start noticing everything that was the color red.

That red has always been there.

It's not like I've magically made it appear,

But I've made you notice it.

So we're going to just take a minute.

We're going to ask our subconscious,

Our intuition to help us be more aware and notice what it is we need to notice to help us gain insight into what's going on,

Why these things are happening.

What is the learning in what we're experiencing?

Let's even take a breath in with gratitude for these lessons,

Because,

You know,

It's those,

It's those learnings.

It's that discovery.

It's those challenges that allow us to grow,

That allow us to become stronger,

To allow us to evolve into who we need to be.

It reminds me of another story in that there's a butterfly.

I don't remember the origins of the story,

But moth or a butterfly is trying to emerge from its chrysalis and someone's watching and watching it struggle.

And they try to clip the little chrysalis open a little bit more just to allow the butterfly to emerge.

And by doing that,

It doesn't allow the wings to pump the meconium into the wings to make them strong,

To make them fly.

So it's that very struggle that allows that butterfly to emerge and be able to fly.

So my dear friend,

Thank you for choosing this meeting today.

And I want to ask you,

What is the learning for you right now in the tricky situations that will allow you to pump those wings and learn how to fly?

Celebrate the fact that we are on a journey and we are all just learning how to fly.