One day on vacation in Italy things didn’t go as planned.
It wasn’t the morning of the flat tire … or any of the other days of missed turnings. It wasn’t ordering the wrong item on the menu. It was the day I started to feel sick at all the bends in the road. Literally queazy and sick. Trying to navigate while on a roller coaster will do that!
I blamed the roads, the driver, and the need for map reading as the GPS was in some other part of the country with the same name! This blanket of negativity started to wrap itself around me. I felt miserable. I stepped into the self righteousness that comes with being put upon and I embraced it. In doing so I became a miserable person and a miserable passenger to be sure.
On reflection, I can see things so clearly. Here are my insights from this experience.
Life energy, essence or source is always within us and around us.
Yet sometimes we feel miserable and think that life sucks.
It is our thinking that makes it so.
When we feel hurt, we go into our head and more thoughts take over.
Our hearts become guarded as we lose touch with our own essence and sense of Presence.
We cannot fully connect to ourselves .. or others.
There is interference in the force.
Our life energy is blocked.
We become defensive, judgmental, withdrawn and irritable.
There is no grace or gratitude in this place, because we know – by this pain and sacrifice – that we are right!
Our heart closes more as our thinking ego casts blame and seeks retribution, and to find any way to end this endless perceived agony of discomfort!
We feel miserable and don’t stop to understand. We try to figure it out in our heads but get tangled up in a web of thoughts and further judgments.
And then in a quiet moment we are able to step back …. and we know.
We know that this is of our own creation.
This is the time to come into the present moment. Step back. And plug in to our deeper self and inner wisdom.
Let the life energy flow.
Feel what needs to be felt and hear what needs to be heard.
Be with it.
Letting go so we can open our hearts once more.
For me, I got out my yoga mat. Sat in meditation, focusing on my breathing and feeling my sitz bones grounding me. Spine tall. Heart open. Breathing slowly.
The thinking slows. The body relaxes. The witness takes over from “me”.
Then moving into child’s pose until my body feels the same grounding and sense of connection too.
Slowing moving with grace and gratitude in full realization of the highs and lows of this life.
Letting the life energy flow.
We lose touch with our Selves and don’t know it until we realize we feel miserable. The real lesson for me is to be mindful enough to recognize this as it emerges.
Val x
Find Your Middle Ground 
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