Chapter 10: Taking Responsibility For Your Destiny
You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey of Self-Awareness, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros.
34 “You have many lovers, and yet I alone love you. Other men love themselves in your nearness. I love you in yourself. Other men see a beauty in you that shall fade away sooner than their own years. But I see in you a beauty that shall not fade away, and in the autumn of your days that beauty shall not be afraid to gaze at itself in the mirror, and it shall not be offended. I alone love the unseen in you.”
– (Jesus talking to Mary Magdalene) Kahlil Gibran
My friend, the ego would have you search for someone who is your opposite, murmuring that this mysterious person will make you happy, complete and whole. The ego provides you with the main rule of its game, that you must play the game with one partner until your or your partner’s death to truly experience victory, success and happiness. Notice how the ego subtlety hints and whispers that you must search outside yourself to find and experience happiness, completion, victory and success. For if you must search outside yourself, then by the process of elimination – happiness, completion, victory and success cannot be within you now. Notice how the ego suggests that the opposite of who you are will make you happy. What do you think the ego is implying with such a statement?
Like prisoners, we play the ego’s game because we believe that this is the only game in town, that this is the only game that will, in the end, satisfy our needs. So again, we play the game and end up losing and alone. We become upset, but soon other egos come to our own ego’s defense letting us know that this is just how the game is played. Other egos tell us not to worry, that we might lose again but some magical day we will win and find “the one.” They talk to us about their pain and how this pain is absolutely normal and felt by everyone. And so, in the end, we relent to their constant assurance and once again, when we are ready, we start the game again.
Other egos tell us to remember our pain. They tell us that this will help us succeed in our next game. So we carry this pain, like a virus, from the previous game into our current game and this colors and affects everything we see. We believe that this pain will protect us in our next game, but instead of victory we infect everyone we meet. Soon we and our partners experience pain, become sick and again we lose the game. We blame ourselves, our partners, everyone and anyone who might have participated in the game. Our pain and sickness grow, but again other egos tell us that this is normal. They tell us to take some time off, to get well before we return to the game. They tell us that we’re getting better and better at this game and that some magical day, when we least expect it, we will find our “complete opposite,” and that partner will make us happy and whole. We have trouble believing that, but again we accept that this is really the only game available, the only game that will some day offer us the victory of finding that mysterious person who will make us happy and whole. We believe this because we see and experience everyone else playing this same game. They seem to suffer and complain just like we do, thus it must be real; it just must be the way it is.
Every game we lose makes us feel more like a failure, for the ego tells us that the only way we can win is if we play the game with one partner for the rest of our lives. Thus, every game that ends before the end of our lives or that of our partners’ is defined and seen by us and everyone else as a failure. And without thinking much about it, we believe this definition and we begin to see ourselves as failures. With an emotional knife, we inscribe this belief in our hearts and we carry the scars and pain to the next game. And so we begin each new game with this painful virus, with this perception and belief that we are failures, and that we are incomplete. We somehow still believe that this conviction will help us win and find completion and happiness. My dear brothers and sisters, we are not failures; it is this whole game and its rules that are a fraud, a scam, a deception and a lie.
If we truly saw ourselves as whole, we would have no opposite. We call our brother or sister an opposite because we perceive him or her as having something we don’t. We believe that we will find in someone else what is lacking in ourselves. We believe that such an individual will make us complete. We desire completeness, but no one can give us what we already have. Completion is not acquired but realized. If we bring someone into a relationship because we believe he or she will offer us something that we lack, then we will find the relationship lacking. We will find it lacking because no one can fill the empty holes we believe ourselves to have. If we see ourselves as incomplete, as lacking, then we will keep creating areas of lack in our lives that this individual sooner or later will be unable to fill. As he or she becomes unable to fill these areas, we begin to look for someone else who might be more able to fill these new needs. This becomes a downward spiral that can only end when we realize that no one can make us happy and whole other than ourselves.
As we recognize our wholeness, we look for an individual who is himself or herself whole. This relationship will not be lacking because we can now understand that there is nothing we lack. The relationship shifts from trying to get what we lack into one of sharing our wholeness.
My brother and sister, because we are already whole, we are also already successful. The truth is the truth, and our only decision is to recognize it or to veil it. Every moment with our brother or sister is a success; for in such a moment, we are either experiencing our truth or making an effort to recall it. My brother and sister, there is not one relationship we have ever had, be it for 50 seconds or for 50 years, that has been a failure. Every moment and every brother and sister with whom we have had contact allows us the opportunity to recall our wholeness. Just as the ego-self has us take failure and pain from a past relationship, the Godself would have us take knowledge, love and forgiveness. In the end, what we decide to take from a relationship is a decision we choose to make. In the moment, we have our choice of teachers. Each teacher has lesson plans available for us to follow.
Be still for a moment and review the lessons you’ve taken from past relationships. Once you understand the lessons you have experienced, you will know whose teachings you have been following.
34. Kahlil Gibran, Jesus the Son of Man: His Words and His Deeds as Told and Recorded By Those Who Knew Him, Copyright 1995 (Knopf).
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