Is a crisis really an opportunity or a meaningless annoyance? Spiritual self help author, Barbara Huffines, teaches that every crisis reveals an area within our lives that needs healing or awakening. Every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, creates an opportunity for us to grow and evolve personally. The crisis is the teacher and we are the student being presented with a lesson for our betterment. A crisis may reveal a hidden aspect of our lives or some unresolved part of who we are that needs our attention. A crisis signals that we need to get ready to do some inner work and possibly take action. Something within our lives needs our attention--it needs our unconditional love, understanding, compassion, forgiveness and our willingness to work with it.
A crisis can lead us into healing by helping us to realize that we need to forgive ourselves and others, so that we can emotionally move forward. We might need to forgive other people to break the continuous cycle that we find ourselves in. We may need to make peace with our circumstances instead of trying to fight them. Our circumstances are here to teach us if we are open to learning from them. Anything that challenges us and hinders us from living the life that we desire is a call for healing. It does not need to be a full-blown crisis for it to be an opportunity for healing. Think about the challenges that you are facing in your life. Can you see these challenges as uncovering an issue that you need to address? Who can you forgive? Can you forgive yourself?
Barbara's teaching really helped me to gain some new insight into my challenges. It is no secret that I have not always had the best relationship with my neighbors in the past. As I have desired to move out of this pattern of unruly, disruptive neighbors, I realized that my relationships with other people in general needed deeper reflection. I needed to do some emotional healing as I thought back about my past relationships and interactions with people. I could see a long trail of my distrust in other people. I have been afraid to trust people and believe in other people's good intentions, after years of being in competitive, backstabbing work environments. My earlier experiences with deceptive, unharmonious neighbors added to my distrust of people. It was easy to assume the worse about someone's actions instead of giving the person the benefit of the doubt. Could such a negative, limiting view of other people be a factor in my poor relationship with my neighbors?
I decided to think more loving thoughts about people throughout each day to remind myself that every single person has goodness within his heart. I have been working on not judging the actions of other people. I realize that I cannot really speculate on someone else's motives or intentions. I simply have to work with what is. It will take time to think about people in a different light, but I am willing to do the work. I really do want to have better relationships with other people.
Whatever challenges that you face have a larger purpose in your life. We usually regard our crises as annoyances or nuisances that we try to get rid of. We wish away our challenges without realizing the powerful opportunity that exists within them.
It may be difficult to see ourselves as being emotionally wounded. Over the years, we have been told that we are not good enough. We may not believe in ourselves as we see ourselves as hopelessly flawed beyond repair. We may see our lives as broken and unfixable. Other people may have hurt us and left us emotionally scarred where we have difficulty trusting or even loving others. We may still be carrying all the negative emotional baggage from all of our past relationships and experiences without fully realizing it. We are all people in need of some kind of healing.
Take a closer look at whatever annoys or frustrates you within your life. Look at what you consider a problem or a crisis. Now ask yourself, "What is this situation telling me that I need to pay attention to? What is it that I need to know or look at within myself? What needs healing in my life? Who do I need to forgive?" The answers may not come right away, but know that every circumstance in your life always holds a benefit for you.
Be open to healing which means being honest about limiting, negative beliefs that you may have about yourself, life and other people. You may not like what you find as you dig deeper within your beliefs. Be willing to confront the ugly that we like to hide away, so that you can work on healing. Be willing to change. Be willing to forgive until you no longer have the sting of resentment and anger toward yourself and others. Be willing to see the good in yourself and people instead of believing the worse. Be willing to believe that life can actually support you instead of be against you. Believe that you can actually be happy instead of settling for misery. Believe in the possibility of your life moving in powerful, new directions that create happiness instead of assuming that you will always be trapped in an unhappy, unfulfilling life. Let life come to you instead of believing that you have to know how your life will unfold ahead of time. Be open to all kinds of unexpected possibilities showing up in your life.
Be willing to dig deeper and get inside your challenges to see what opportunities that they are presenting you. Dissolve the resentment and anger about the situation. See the situation as being a helpful, loving teacher who will help you grow and heal in new ways. Just be open to seeing whatever you face as an opportunity for healing. If you need help with your healing, seek a therapist.
Believe that healing is possible for you. It is never too late to heal our emotional wounds. We never have too many wounds to heal. Healing is an important, powerful process that always supports and benefits you. Learning to allow ourselves to be emotionally healed is a powerful act of self love. Love yourself enough to allow yourself to be healed. Healing will bring greater inner peace and joy. Healing may also help us to connect with a greater sense of who we are.
We need to be willing to change and approach our lives differently. Often, we become attached to one way to thinking and approaching our lives. We cling to that familiar way, even if it creates more misery than joy. Our crisis moments are calling us to consider a different way. We have to be willing to change rather than demand that other people, external circumstances and our environments change. We have no power over anything outside ourselves, but we do have power over ourselves. The same old way will no longer work for us, so we have to be willing to embrace a new, different way. We need to be willing to stretch ourselves emotionally into new territory. Unleash the power of healing in your life.
Copyright©2007 Jeannine Robinson All Rights Reserved