Clarity

As you can tell from my profile I like to keep busy with my creative pursuits, sometimes getting caught up in a dream/astral world to the point where I have to ground myself.  That being said I do a pretty good job maintaining my reality.  I returned from Colombia 2 1/2 weeks ago and just hit the ground running with projects.  I spoke to an MBA class on Leadership, began working on a painting for a show in May and have been preparing for a workshop on Manifesting for this upcoming weekend.  The objective for the painting is to translate how in order to truely be our authentic selves we must embrace our shadow, not ignore it.  So, in other words, we must accept our negative traits along with the positive, the yin/yang, so to speak.

The saying is "Art imitates life" but my experience was the opposite this last week.  After starting the painting I found myself facing my shadow on quite a few occassions with my significant other.  This tends to happen often while I'm working on something, the universe gives me some material for inspiration.  Like they say in 12 Step programs, if you want to know your defects of character get into a relationship!  Observing my reactions I became embarrassed and then proceeded to get angry at myself and full of shame for still responding the same way I have for years.  How could it be that after all of these years of self-analysis and practice I could still be facing these things, on a much smaller scale, of course?  This, I realized, was self-defeating and instead I decided to explore it in my meditation.  What came to me was that these reactions are based on events, samskaras (imprints on the soul) or karmas (deeds from the past) and have nothing to do with the person I am in the relationship with now.  Whether I keep it in this lifetime and say that these reactions developed as a child through my relationship with my parents or if I go deeper and say that I brought these behaviors came with me from previous lives,  either way I have to look at it as my own stuff, my karma!  Our natural state of being is love,  it's all of the other stuff that causes the fear.  Learning to come from a place of gentleness and compassion with myself, not force or shame because without darkness we could not appreciate the light.  This is Tantra Yoga!

I have had the awareness for quite sometime but it's no longer enough, now I have an opportunity to do something different and change my reaction to things.  Not react the same over and over and just apologize!  I need to continuously come back to that place of love, while in these moments, before reacting, not a place of fear.  Responding as Danielle now, not the 3yr old inner child with these vritti's (fluctuations of the mind) that are telling her a false story.  We are not the mind, we are much greater than that!  Recognizing that this beautiful soul, and every other soul for that matter, is here to show me where I can be better, they are my teacher.  Trying to move past the situation and on to the lesson, this is my goal.  Healthy relationships inspire us to communicate better and grow and I am fortunate to be experiencing that today.

Needless to say the week ended with me feeling pretty good about myself and grateful for my relationships, my practice and all of the tools I have been given over the years. This helps me to live a life of reflection and guarantees that I will become a better version of myself everyday.  I will continue to polish this beautiful soul of mine.  And also, to take myself a little more lightly because everyone has "their stuff", not just me!  Now off to finish my workshop planning for Sunday:)

All the Love ~*~