By Mac Guerreiro
Since eye was about 17 years old eye’ve geared my life towards becoming self-aware. Eye was lucky to have a mother that valued personal growth and many of the books she read and listened to got passed on to me. Many of these books detailed the importance of being able to see yourself in an objective light; this too is often the goal of meditation, to allow yourself to observe your feelings, thoughts and body without judgement.
In my early twenties, eye was guided towards Teal Swan, one of my favorite spiritual teachers of all time. Eye make such a bold statement based on the fact that up until that point she was the only person actually showing me how to move THROUGH my feelings rather than around and under them. Spoiler alert, around and under doesn’t work… the only way to move beyond feelings is to run towards them and FEEL them until they naturally shift on their own. Anyone who’s seen a child cry after scraping a knee knows what eye mean. Mom asks what’s going on and the child cries struggling to explain, but after a few moments of mom holding space and saying validating things such as “I’m sorry you’re hurt, if I fell like that I’d be crying and feeling hurt too” the child begins to calm down. They allow mom to wash off the wound and put on a band-aid and sooner than later they’re back on the playground. Adults’ emotions work the same way, but we’ve taught ourselves to resist the feelings we don’t like and cling to the ones we do like for dear life. This makes it impossible to allow our emotions to be as fluid as they’re meant to be and it often also removes the option of validating our own feelings. That last part is huge, because validation is one of the real keys that unlocks our ability to fully feel what’s present within us, be it given to us by others or by our selves.
Eye’m sure you’ve noticed that my titles have much thought behind them; so, how does this all have to do with remaining unaware? Those whom choose to bulldoze or completely resist their feelings are choosing to remain unaware of themselves. This may not be a conscious process, although sometimes it is and eye just have to remind myself that it’s not my job to care, but let’s assume it’s not. What do we do when we see someone who’s stuck in the same infinite loop of emotions and therefore circumstances? We could be “blunt” and just tell them they’re creating all this and if they did X, Y and Z they’d have a shot at breaking this cycle and moving beyond this. We could also watch them self-destruct. Neither is very effective and to be honest, eye love a good middle ground. In this case, my middle ground option is to really feel into the fact that in order to do X, Y and Z they would have to destroy their self concept and much like, at times, eye wasn’t ready to do that, they may not be either. So eye send them love. Eye ask that their angels and guides protect them from themselves. Most importantly, eye TRUST that they’re on the correct path for themselves regardless of how it looks to me.
So, next time you’re watching someone remaining unaware, have some compassion, send them love and be grateful you’ve learned to see yourself from the outside in.