I had an experience a few days ago.
I was with someone who was moving through a challenging space in their life, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by navigating it.
During the time we hung out, they were constantly sighing, moaning, complaining, and bemoaning their life, and I found myself negatively affected by this.
While with them, I remember experiencing judgments about how they are currently handling their life. I also remember blaming them for pulling me down with them, for “making me feel miserable”.
I grew increasingly irritable and annoyed with who and where they were in that moment, thinking that they should know better than to complain about their life without doing anything about it.
Pretty soon, I was stewing in resentment, and all I wanted was to get as far away from them as possible.
And even more, I didn’t put much effort into hiding my negativity and animosity, as a way to get back at them for pestering my life and disturbing my peace of mind.
No-One, No-Thing Can Make Us Think Or Feel Anything…
All the while I told myself that I was absolutely justified to be angry and upset and behave in this way - I mean, who enjoys being around a complainer, right 😉.
But the thing is that each and every single one of us, in every single moment, are 100% responsible for our own experience.
We cannot always control what happens in our lives or in the world. We certainly cannot control what anyone else is doing or not doing. But we absolutely have the power to stand in our own authority.
Just as I unconsciously stayed hijacked by the sense of being a victim. Just as I chose to buy into, entertain, and even perpetuate my own judgments and complaints about their complaints, I could have just as well chosen compassion, understanding, and forgiveness.
Rather than turning my attention to all the things I thought they did wrong, I could have turned my attention toward grounding, centering, and anchoring myself in the nowness of this moment. Toward doing all I could to stay in a high vibration.
Only I didn’t.
They didn’t force me into the negativity I was experiencing. It was I who made the albeit unconscious choice to stay in the downward spiral of negative thoughts and emotions.
Everything is nothing until we make it something.
Nothing is ever good or bad, right or wrong, until we, by virtue of how we perceive it, how we interpret it, make it either good or bad, right or wrong.
No one outside of us is forcing us to think or feel anything, or to make any choice for that matter.
It is all us. We are the ones doing it.
We may not mean to do it. We may not even be aware that we are doing it. We may not be able to make another choice in the moment.
But, nonetheless, we are the ones doing it to ourselves. Not them. Not it. Us, only us. Always us.
Let’s take a moment here to reclaim our minds, to reclaim our sanity.
So I invite us to, for a brief moment, stop reading, stop whatever else we are doing, close our eyes, put a smile on our faces, and then take three deep, conscious breaths.
Breathing in… And release.
Breathing in… and release.
Breathing in … and release.
Now that we have grounded and centered ourselves in the nowness of this moment, having taken our minds back from being hijacked by thoughts and emotions, and reclaimed our attention, let us gently remind ourselves that:
All is Well
Something Wonderful is Always Happening
Everything is Working For Our Highest Good
Perfect Preparation and Unfolding are happening now, always, and forever
Heaven And Hell Are Nothing More Than States Of Consciousness
Being hijacked by mental stories about what should and should not be, judgments, resentments… these are all dimensions of hell.
Whenever we attach ourselves to such low vibration thoughtforms, whenever our consciousness contracts into lack, scarcity, and separation, we can be said to be in hell.
Hell is not ever a place outside of us. It is always and forever a state of consciousness. We put ourselves in Hell. We keep ourselves locked in Hell.
Nothing outside of us, no one else is doing it. We are the ones, consciously or unconsciously, choosing every single one of our hellish experiences, as we are 100% responsible for our own experience in every single moment.
Conversely, Heaven is also a state of consciousness. Whenever we are in joy, harmony, love, peace, balance, and abundance - we are in Heaven.
Once again, this has nothing to do with anything that is happening in the external world. It doesn’t even have anything to do with what is happening in our inner world.
We can have an experience of something, and the moment we become aware that we are being hijacked by a story, belief, or emotion, we set ourselves free to change our perception, our point of view, or perspective - thus creating a completely different experience.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the stories or emotions immediately dissolve, but as we are no longer attached to them, they no longer determine our experience.
Let Us Set Ourselves Free
So, freedom is not having everything be the way we want it to be.
But freedom is finding, sustaining, and expanding an inner sense of peace, joy, harmony, and wholeness - regardless of what is happening in the world around us.
It is staying in love, compassion, and forgiveness, regardless of what anyone else is doing or not doing.
While it is normal for us humans to look to the world to give us peace, harmony, and joy, if we want to live in the field of perpetual, ever-expanding peace, joy, and harmony, we need to realize that the world cannot give us any of these.
The world cannot set us free. Only we can set ourselves free.
And it all starts with the intention to be free. It all starts with the intention to move through life more and more untouched and unmoved by the external world.
This does not mean being indifferent or cold-hearted.
It simply means that we recognize and acknowledge that we have supremacy over our own minds and attention. And thus, in effect, our experience.
Just as I let myself remain hijacked by my judgments and opinions about the other individual. Had I become aware of being attached, I would have had the choice to come back to the breath, reclaim my mind, and turn my attention to that which had lifted my vibration and expanded my consciousness.
Let us have another moment of coming back to the nowness of this moment. Another moment of practicing breaking free from the stories and beliefs we may be hijacked by.
So let us once again close our eyes, put a smile on our faces, and take those three deep, conscious breaths.
Breathing in… and releasing.
Breathing in… and releasing.
Breathing in… and releasing
And from this space of being fully here and now, let us again recognize that:
All is Well
Something Wonderful is Always Happening
Everything is Working For Our Highest Good
Perfect Preparation and Unfolding are happening now, always, and forever
It Is Simple, But Not Always Easy
Breaking free from being hijacked by the mind is this simple.
It is as simple as coming back to the nowness of this moment and then choosing to turn our attention away from what we don’t wish to experience to what we wish to experience.
It is simple, but not always easy. Actually, it is simple but rarely easy.
The ego loves hanging out in judgments and opinions. These feed and inflate a sense of being better than or superior to others.
But that it is difficult is no excuse for us not to do it. The first principle of transformation states: unless we change, nothing will ever change.
Sure, we can stay in the judgments and opinions. Sure, we can stay in complaining and bemoaning, putting on the victim suit, and placing blame on anyone or anything outside of us for our experience.
We can keep doing it for the rest of our lives, but doing so will not set us free. Doing so will place us at the eternal mercy of external conditions and circumstances.
Doing so means giving our God-given power to live, be, and move in ever-expanding peace, joy, harmony, and wholeness away to something outside of us.
It is our choice and our choice alone. No one can make it for us, and no one will really ever care if we make it or not.
Walking the Path of Freedom is not easy. It is difficult. It is hard work.
Taking full responsibility for ourselves is not something most of us learn growing up or in school.
But it is something we need to, and will want to, learn once the pain and negative effects of not doing it become too excruciating to ignore.
Or as Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith so powerfully says:
“Pain pushes until a vision begins to pull”
Invitation And Empowering Questions
The invitation for us in this moment is to bring to mind a recent experience where we blamed another individual for our mental and emotional experience. Where we basically said to ourselves: “They make me think or feel this way. It is their fault. They are to blame”.
So we are invited to bring that into our minds, and then take full responsibility for that mental and emotional experience.
Let’s take an honest look at who and what it was that gave rise to our experience.
Let’s recognize that it was not what they did or did not do, what they said or did not say, but our own thoughts and opinions about what they did that opened up the gates to Hell.
An empowering question to augment this healing is:
How can I choose to stay in Peace, Love, or Joy?
As we ask this question, we need to be aware that the answer will never be about changing anything outside ourselves.
Having said that, obviously, if we are in immediate risk of being hurt or are in danger, we first need to remove ourselves from harm's way.
But what we are talking about here is freeing ourselves from the sense of being a victim of external conditions and circumstances.
So, the answer to the question will always be about us either releasing or letting go of our own small and limited thoughts, stories, beliefs, or habits, or about us cultivating a new way of being or moving through life.
And sometimes a combination of the two.
The point is that we are giving ourselves permission to be in ever-expanding peace, love, joy, harmony, wholeness, and abundance - regardless of what is happening in the world around us, and even in the world within us.
Complementary Audio Treat
The complimentary audio for this post is called “Heaven or Hell - We Get To Choose and it speaks directly to what we have just talked about.
Join Our Community Chat
As always, I would love to connect with you on this. Have you recently caught yourself blaming something outside yourself for your own experience? How did you bring yourself back to center?
Leave a comment below or join us in our Community Chat to share your experience!
If this article resonated with your heart and soul, I would deeply appreciate your support in expanding this work—whether through a financial contribution or by sharing this blog with someone who might benefit from it. All support is received with deep gratitude.
Until next time, my fellow Spiritual Warriors, I bless, bless, bless our days, and I bless, bless, bless our ways. Knowing that All is Well, that Something Wonderful is Always Happening, that Everything is Working for Our Highest Good, that Perfect Preparation and Unfolding are Happening, Now, Always and Forever.
With much love and many blessings,
Namaste ✨💜🙏🏾
daniel roquéo