In Blog #4 I talked about ‘living words’. How can we have living words that will impact
us on the inside and change us from the inside-out. It begins with audacious hope and giving oneself
permission to look at an old solution in a new way. I am discovering there are other possible
ways to embrace what I once was taught were truths from only one
perspective. Before I gave myself
permission to ‘think for myself’ I felt like Neo before the red pill. Everyone around me spoke and believed certain
things so I adopted those things as my truth.
Before you bail because you think I am a heretic would you at least read
to the end of this blog before you leave?
My disillusionment arrived when I was exposed to possibilities outside
of my narrow thinking. Don’t get me
wrong, narrow thinking feels safe; however I was constrained by fear. What could happen if I ‘thought for myself’
rather than adopting explanations of others?
There is always danger
in this. Two possibilities are: I could discover there is ‘more’ available to
me. The other possibility is that I
could be led away into falsehoods that could destroy me. How do you determine the correct path? What I had done all my life was unfulfilling;
never completely satisfying. I had lived
my life just short of lasting joy and fulfillment with only glimpses of
happiness. Then another possibility
began to rise up in me as I read a simply written book. A quote from the book gave me a lobotomy in
my entrenched learned thinking. The
quote stated: “we cannot judge others by
their actions while at the same time judge ourselves by our intentions. (Grace
Shift, David Huskins, pg. ). I had lived my life doing this very
thing. Maybe you have done that as
well. Something was awakening inside me
that I had to explore. That quote reached into the depths of my being and
touched a place I rarely revealed to anyone.
Be honest, it touched something in you too if you really think about
it. You have either judged others or
been judged by others. That takes me
back to an earlier statement-Think for yourself. I am independent, strong minded, a deep
thinker and yet in the most important areas I had not thought for myself. . I had to explore the word grace. I will speak more about that later.
If something is congruent that means everything lines up with
it and it reinforces itself. I had spent
my life making excuses for incongruent teachings from others about a Word that
was said to give life. When
incongruences would arise I would dismiss them concluding it was probably
something in my understanding. I would
swallow the ‘blue’ pill and carry on.
That is, until I was confronted with challenges to my thinking I could
no longer ignore such as the one listed above about judging actions and
intentions. I will continue to share
these with you in future blogs.
For now let me close this blog with a challenge to think
about how it feels to follow a set of rules to achieve the right behavior to be
accepted or acceptable? Come on, really
give it some thought.
See you next time…and again, thanks for investing some of
your time reading my blog!
