If you give it power, it will survive

Symbols are huge in Spirituality, but this does not mean that they have to have all that power we give them!


I can never take away the pains of atrocities from the past. At the same time, to continue to allow events and things which are symbolic of a painful past gives those symbols we hold near and dear - and even not so near and dear - more power than they are due.

Yeesh...


I enjoy much an online life which allows me the ability to debate in a forum which is not so "in your face" as is the live version. This does not mean that there are not things that I post which do not upset people - that's kind of my lot in life...to make people think and to even, in some cases, see things from a different angle. Recently I have been debating with some of my Facebook friends about the power that we give to things. The 'thing' in question is the Confederate Flag and how even in this day and age there are people who still see it as a symbol of a past which is mired in pain. Though I get what my Facebook friends are so upset about (I do get it, ladies), what I do not understand is that, if we are such powerful people, then why are we so intent, too, on giving power to things, namely things that should have NO power whatsoever.

I know already that there will be people who will prefer to no longer be "friends" with me in that social network, and I understand that there may be people who are of my own ancestry who will find that what I have offered as my counter-argument in this debate over a past symbol of hatred and negative power who will be very upset with the idea that my thinking is that whenever we give power to something negative, we are robbing no one but our very selves.

It is like when we tell our kids that we want them to ignore the ugly things that other kids say to them. "They are just words, honey," is what we tell them, preferring that our own kids not give in to the idea that someone else is far more powerful than they are on their own. We want our children to know what it is like not to judge, not to do more than question, and not to start a fight over something as trivial as symbols and what they mean personally to each of us. We want for a better life and peace and prosperity in the Now, but we want to be able to hang on to a past mired in pain and the rubble and shards of our lives as they once were. We want the world and people and even our place in history to evolve but on our terms and at our pace. We want to not hurt from the past, and we want to heal things that we are not comfortable with, but we are not willing to see that there are some things that stay the same, but in general, everything evolves, including the way that people think.

Even positive can end up being negative


For generations in the USA there has been the prevalent thinking that owning more things than everyone else in our circles of communication makes us the most powerful, most important people in our world, and sometimes in theirs as well. There is truth to saying that we do not own our things and that in some cases, our things own us. They make us feel good about ourselves and give us a false sense of being. Our things make our egos feel like we are important, and the more our things cost us, whether monetarily or otherwise, the more importance they hold for us, therefore making our things seem way more important than they really are.
Even though we love our things, even as our things make us feel better to a certain and limited extent, our things can never really 'be there' for us, no matter how much we tell ourselves that they are as important as we make them out to be.

We get comfort from our things, but eventually the things that give us comfort end up no longer being sufficient . We end up experiencing an emptiness inside which prompts us to gather yet more things to compensate for the things that no longer do for us what once they did.

We feel a rush of positive emotions when we acquire something new, whether it is brand new or just new to us. We are gatherers of things, we human are, and it is in our survival mechanisms for us to collect things, because things make our lives better in some cases, and things make some of the things that we have to do during the day easier for us to accomplish. It is not that we are not supposed to like our stuff, but that we are not supposed to like our stuff to the point that our stuff runs our lives, not literally, but figuratively. There are those of us with whom we share the planet who feel like they are nothing without their things. Some folks like to parade their things in front of other people, showing off and behaving as though just because they have the means to acquire all their things they also have the same right to shove it in other peoples' faces. This is when our things which once were positive symbols for us become vehicles through which we find our power, but what we are not realizing is that this is not power, but is instead being owned.

When we let those things and abilities which are outside of ourselves be what speaks for us, be what is of utmost importance to us, be what becomes our ability to love and to be loved, this is when the positives that once were symbolized by all of our acquisitions turn into negatives. They become negatives because we give them the power that should be ours. We give power to things when instead we should be learning how to use the power that we have to help change the world around us for the better.

...but we can't do this unless we are in control of ourselves and of our things and not the other way around. Humans are funny. We want to be in control, but we allow things to be in control of us. That's worse than letting other people be in control of us, but that always follows the things being in control. Trust me - I know this. I used to be one of those people who allowed their things be what spoke for them, and that is very odd seeing as how I am pretty damned outspoken. I allowed my house, my cars and my bank account be the things that were more important to me than the intangibles in my life. These days my things are limited, which means that I have to do what I can so that not only other people know and see that people, not things, are more important to me. And frankly I like it this way. I like it that I have to make sure that I am at my best, even when I am at my worst, and I have to make sure that what I say is real and true to who I am.

It was not easy to learn to do this, but it was very well worth it. I can replace all my things, and I am intending them all everyday, but I cannot replace me or the people in my life. Priceless is the only word that comes to mind. We are priceless, worthy of all the things that we desire, but we are not so pathetic that we should allow our things to become more important than we are, ever, for we are more precious than all the diamonds that this finite world can offer us.

On the flip side of it all


We never realize that there is real power within us all, power to change the world around us. We do not know our selves until time and turmoil force us into choosing for ourselves what we never thought we would ever have to. None of us ever thinks that we will lose our jobs, our homes, our cars, our stuff, and it is not until we have had to make the choice between what we have and who we are that we finally know the sweetness that is life and all its wonder. We can never know the joy within if we are so busy having joyousness through our stuff. We cannot ever know the pleasure that is physical love, really and truly, unless we have experienced a void of those things. It is when we no longer have our things that we start wondering what it is that we are doing here, why it is that we work so hard at a job we hate for years and years, and please, don't get me started with the crap about "you have to have a lot of money to survive." No, you do not - you have to have a lot of money to have a lot of nice things, but in order to actually, physically survive, we need very little.

So long as we have the ability to look up into the sky and squint to see the bright sun, the birds in flight, and the clouds as they float on by, we have the ability to survive. When the day comes that we cannot plant, cannot harvest, cannot breathe, then and ONLY then are we not able to survive. We do not need a glut of things to live. We need Love to live, and we need to learn to be as blessed as we truly are. This is not to say that we do not deserve to have nice things, but rather, is to say that as much as we glorify our things, we, too, should be glorifying our ability to acquire those things, and if we can have those things through efforts we lovingly do instead of efforts done out of a sense that we were raised to accept our crappy jobs so that when we are finished doing unsatisfying work for a thankless stranger we can hopefully find time and space in our lives and in our boss' demands for work that we actually were placed in this life to perform.

It is not as hard as you think it is to detach ourselves


Detachment is not as harrowing as any of us is raised to think it is. There is no written law that states that that which we acquire we also must keep until we are old, crippled, forgetful of things and people, and peeing on ourselves. Things are temporary, no matter how old some things are. Things come and go, but Wisdom stays, and Wisdom is only acquired through loss, not through acquisition. The more that we have, the more that we have to account for, and that is where we get lost in the confusion that is what we think is love but isn't. It is not loving for us to be enslaved by our ego's need to have more and more. It is not loving for us to compare our things and our selves to those who do not have as much as we do, and it is not loving to be empowered by the finite.

Detaching ourselves from outcome, from assumption, from the stuff that we are lied to and told are more important than Love is not simple. What we have to do in order to detach is to stop believing what we have been told our whole lives is correct and right. While it is nice to have a lot of things, there is nothing quite like the knowledge that we have our things - NOT our things having us.

If you give power to anything, it will have power - YOUR power. Be careful with what it is that you hold near and dear, and be absolute in what you know is worth your time, your efforts, your attention and especially, your Love.

It is not until we have none of our things left that meant anything to us that we realize the importance held in knowing that it is not the thing which is important, but the effort and namely, the Love it took to have that thing in the first place, no matter what it is.

I LOVE YOU ALL !!
...Roxanne...