Do It Anyway

Recently, I posted on social media about my daughter’s graduation, when she was awarded a degree in Psychology with high honors from a well-known university. I was really proud of her, and wanted to share it with the world.

Many friends and family commented on the post, with congratulatory excitement and kind remarks. But later that day, I noticed there was also a hurtful comment on that same post from my mother.

In the post I had misspelled the words summa cum laude and my mother’s comment read, “Ask your daughter how to spell summa cum laude.” That was it. It seemed short and cold. My heart sank. Not only from the public embarrassment of her comment, but more so from the insinuation that I lack intelligence.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you ~ Wayne Dyer

A couple of my friends commented back to her, not knowing this was my mother. They also felt she was rude and that we were supposed to be celebrating my daughter’s achievement.

Is soon realized that this incident hit upon an old core wound of mine. I was raised to believe that unless you were a hard core intellectual who was not bothered by silly little emotions, you were useless.

My mother graduated from Wellesley College in the 1950s. I also attended Wellesley in the 1980s, but I did not finish, by my own choice, and left school to start my own business.

Being an intuitive, coming from a long chain of seers in my family, somehow psychic perception and sensitivity skipped over my mother’s generation. As a child, I was often told I had a overactive imagination and if I ever showed that I was hurt by one of her degrading comments, I was laughed at or made fun of for being overly dramatic.

In the thirty something years that I’ve sat at the feet of some of the best spiritual teachers, I still come back to this core wound within, to examine it and to see through it. Over and over again, when I look closely at my childhood and my relationship with my mother, I continue to see her pain and the love that she never received from her own mother, who crossed over when she was only 13 years old.

Some spiritual teachers talk about the stories we carry around and that they are simply an old story. However, the emotions to these old stories are still very real and here in the present moment. When I take a close look at the pain that stemmed from these old stories, I find myself viewing the past, where I actually go back in time to the event, and see the situation from a place of awareness and non-judgment. When I do, I see that I took something personally that was never personal. My mother, myself, and all of us, have a way of seeing the world through certain filters. Remove the filters and there is just seeing.

Remember, in our inmost being, we are all completely lovable because spirit is love. Beyond what anyone can make you think or feel about yourself, your unconditioned spirit stands, shining with a love nothing can tarnish ~ Deepak Chopra

This  becomes true for me each and every time I go inside to examine my story. The emotions that arise within me aren’t to have me suffer over and over again, but rather are resurfacing to point out any leftover or residual filters that I carry around.

My mother is 82, and I love her very much. I wouldn’t have so much of the knowledge that I do on grammar, religion, history, and so forth, had it not been for her presence in my life. The fact that I didn’t get the spelling gene isn’t so bad, for in return I was gifted a mother who taught me how to be confident and independent. When I take off my old filters, I can finally see my mother and all of the ways she tried to love me. Again, I am reminded, it is not personal.

I believe on a macro-cosmic level that more and more of us are now stripping away our old, dirty lenses and filters. As they fall away, it reveals the light of pure awareness that we all are. We can see life so much differently when we do this. It really goes to show how close we are to God/Goddess, and awakening to the pure consciousness of who we truly are.

The following poem was reportedly written on the wall of Mother Teresa’s home for children in Calcutta, India, and are widely attributed to her:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.