Daily Reminder # 28

You become the thing you hate.

Anyone who knows me or who has visited here for any amount of time (not many any more since I am a very bad and unreliable blogger), knows that I say that a lot. It's probably pretty irritating, but I think it's true.

I actually started out feeling all cranky and was going to write about how impatient everyone is these days. ("Life is not a movie" was my lead in line.) But I was a couple of snarky peevish paragraphs into it and I was thinking that I wasn't liking myself very much... and then it struck me that I was feeling pretty impatient with all those impatient people out there who think the world's problems can be solved overnight by some kind of magic and with no sacrifice on their parts.

So I thought maybe it would be good to change directions a bit. I'm not exactly cured of that crankiness. I've been listening to politics this week and that's always bad for me. Even the Daily Show didn't quite cheer me up tonight. The bees are gone from my yard and they took the dandylions with them. There's oil spewing in the gulf and people don't want to wait six months to make an effort to make sure it doesn't happen again. I understand that many of them make their livings working for the oil industry. They need to feed their families. They have reason to be anxious and impatient. Yet they have reason (I would think) to want their children not to drink oil with their breakfast or to live in a barren world with no wildlife. So that kind of impatience makes me impatient. And I need to look at that. Because I think our thoughts have power and that what we give our energy to we feed. So maybe I need to find not just intellectual compassion for those impatient souls who want their country to function without taxes and who want the Gulf cleaned up as long as it doesn't interrupt their willingness to make money polluting it.

Right now I'm stuck in my irritability. And I can't find a way out of it. Stumbling around for some way out of my dilemma, I reached for Emanuel's Book which is one of my favorites and was just returned to me by a friend. I opened it to the following on page 100.

Look to understand your negative feelings

as a loving mother would understand

a confused and frightened child.

When the denial of God within you

is being challenged

it is a most propitious time of your life

Do not deny the part of you that is in darkness

or it will manifest again.

When you become aware of misjudgement,

of ill-timed, ill-conceived thought and action,

when you recognize your desire for vengeance,

your anger or unforgiveness,

that is the time for self-congratulation.

Your new insight now allows you to handle these things

in a far more conscious way

It is an opportunity.A door has been opened.

A light has been turned on.

That's all I've got today. Cranky with a side of Emmanuel. And pictures of a baby bird and it's mother (father?) who hopped around in view of my camera this morning. Mom would (I think) periodically give the young one a little snack (or a peck on the cheek... literally).

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• The mother/baby bird who posed for my camera this morning
• reiki
• ice cream
• my house
• my camera