"It can be really depressing when you work so hard on yourself only to lose it by losing it on someone or just kind of forgetting what you learned. But it needn’t be. If you understand that falling is part of the game, and the other part is getting back up, and going higher than you were before.
Today, when you slip back, remember to take an action that will propel you forwards."
-- Yehuda Berg Daily Kabbalah Tune Up Thursday March 31, 2011
Break the Chain
Many of us are working under the popular notion -- an assumption -- that identifying a pattern puts an end to it. That if you can name the chain -- and the nature of the links that form it -- you can automatically break it.
Name it. Claim it. Once you've got Its Number, you can control it.
Just because you wield power over something doesn't mean you get to obliterate it.
The only thing you should really seek to control is YOU.
You learn a tough lesson. It feels like, because you lived through it, you survived it, that you have conquered it, and that it will never come back. That once you have "passed" a class, you'll never be tested on that Subject again.
I don't want to disappoint you, but if it's truly a Pattern in your life, you will see it again.
It shows up in newer, stronger, bigger-better, sometimes insidious forms. It sneaks back in the door in a new disguise. It intends to seduce you all over again...
What You Can Control
You do have power over at least a couple of things here:
- Your ability to recognize it. The speed at which you can call it out when it rears its ugly head again.
- How you respond to it. The choice you make to engage, to escalate, to participate -- or not.
It's like taking a test for the second or third (or fourth or fifth... or hundredth) time -- you already know the answer.
Why would you repeat the entire course as if it's your first entanglement?
You know how to protect yourself, disable its ability to impact your life in a negative way, and send it packing. You know.
While you are whining "Why, oh why, does this keep happening?" you're wasting valuable time and endangering your hard-won peace of mind.
- "Why do I keep repeating this scenario?"
- "What is it about me that keeps attracting this type of person?"
These are valid questions. Of course the answers would be of tremendous value to you.
But you may never possess those answers. Or, at least, you may not know the answers in time to make a good decision now.
And yet you still must act.
What you do have is a choice of behavior. Your initial response.
There's the fire again. It sure did suck the first time you got burned, didn't it? Just about killed you.
- Why would you hesitate this time around?
- Why would you choose to try to hold another hot coal?
"NO" is a Complete Answer
Maybe the "action that will propel you forwards" is saying "No."
It's a simple and powerful decision.
Red flags are the tools you earned. You acquired them at great cost. Why carry them around and not use them?
- Repeating a lesson?
- Engaging in another relationship with another person that you have recognized as Another One?
You may never know how they keep getting your number... You may have no power over who or what comes calling...
But, for now, what's wrong with just choosing not to answer?
Image credit h.koppdelaney via Creative Commons on Flickr