We all want to be the good guys,
You know.
We all think we're like the angel food cakes,
You know,
And the other people are like the bad ones,
The devil food cakes,
And there,
You know,
We have to be on guard and defend ourselves.
But sometimes that we might not see how our own shadows are operating.
So our shadows come from all the parts of ourselves that we judged as bad and we kind of put in the closet.
So every family has a kind of an emotional climate,
A sort of,
Some things are acceptable and some things aren't.
And so all kids basically will tend to put what they think the unacceptable parts of them,
They'll kind of wall them off within them.
And this is the shadow side that we remain ignorant of until we take a look at ourselves.
So I want to give you example of a beautiful,
A woman with a beautiful heart and she saw her own shadow and it really helped her to see it.
It really woke her up and changed her life.
So this is,
This is what can happen when we see our own darkness.
So I'll tell you the story.
She had a sis growing up.
Now the sis was the favored one growing up.
She got more things,
She got,
You know,
Better presents,
She got more rewards.
I mean,
You know,
Maybe this sis did better at school or,
I don't know,
Was on teams or something,
Did things the way the parents liked particularly,
I don't know.
But for whatever reason,
This sister was sort of favored and my client wasn't so much.
And so in their adulthood,
My client went through a rough patch and borrowed some money from her sis and never got around to paying it back,
Never felt able to pay it back.
So some years went by and,
You know,
Finally after about four years or so of trying to get her money back,
The sister stopped phoning.
And,
You know,
But the way my client told me this,
She said,
Well,
You know,
My sister just stopped phoning for some reason.
I'm thinking to myself,
She didn't,
You know,
Paid her the money and she got fed up.
So she stopped phoning.
She stopped phoning.
Anyway,
We were,
We were talking some more.
And suddenly my client realized that the reason she hadn't paid the sister back is because she begrudged the fact her sister got more things growing up,
Better treated,
And it was her way of balancing out the scales.
And she didn't realize that.
So she didn't realize that really,
If she'd had all the money in the world at her,
You know,
Right next to her,
She never would have found the money to pay back her sister for this money because of this begrudging.
And it really opened her heart to see this.
It really,
It really opened her eyes and her heart.
Yeah.
Because the sis hadn't been in control of being treated better,
Getting more things.
It was just how it happened.
It wasn't the sister's fault,
You know.
It was just how the family climate played out.
And really,
It would have been everybody's karma in the bigger picture.
This karma of the sister to be the favored one and the karma of my client to be the one that was treated worse.
But the most important thing was this client to her credit,
Her heart opened,
And she really got the importance of learning how to walk a mile in somebody else's shoes.
To realize that,
You know,
The people we have grudges against,
You know,
They've got their own bag of troubles,
And their own storylines about what they think is happening.
You know,
And there's an old story about this,
Where everybody in the village put their troubles on a tree.
And then they all chose,
You know,
Somebody else's bag of troubles and took it home.
The next day,
They were all back at the tree wanting their own troubles back,
Because they really couldn't stand the other people's troubles.
It's a lovely story for,
You know,
Just expanding our hearts a little bit more.
We're getting so defensive these days.
And sure,
It's an uncertain world.
But it is really kind of it's safer to live with your full intelligence.
That's what I found.
To just live with wisdom.
That's the best defense of all,
In the sense of that takes care of so many troubles.
So many troubles just don't happen if you live with wisdom and treat yourself and others with respect.
Okay,
Bless your hearts.
