“Enough with the Zen bull s**t”, she snapped as I challenged her in a pressed situation. My friend clearly was not in the mood to hear my truth at that particular moment. I was taken aback, but then thought, “Ok, I am not responsible for her reaction to me, let it go”, which I did.

This was a year and a half ago and the situation came up again in meditation the other day. What lesson from an eagle eye view perspective can I gain from this encounter? There are several lessons for both her and me:

• Patience with others
• Accepting that we are at different stages of our paths, and sometimes different paths all together
• Timing and discernment
• Stress is a chosen state of being
• etc.

I would argue though that the biggest lesson is, that in order to fully heal, we need to heal all the way and not just to a point where we think we’ve “had enough”. As I have been on my journey people have told me that I need to stay a little angry, bitter, judgemental, etc. so that I don’t lose touch with “reality”. I’ve come to realise that as long as you leave remnants of those negative reactions to your emotions in your system, you will not fully heal. It’s like having the flu and stopping getting well when you have a runny nose left; just so you don’t lose sight of how it felt to have the flu. The point is not to avoid the emotion and the human experience, but rather to express it in a constructive and healthy form and understand why the emotion came up.

You might think that my point above is naive and that someone who always looks at the world through one’s heart is running a fool’s errand. And yes, if you lack boundaries and don’t protect your own energy, you will be used and trampled all over. Also, yes, you don’t want to go from a primarily ego based reality to fairy land of fluffy pink clouds and rainbow-farting-unicorns , that would be like a person on heavy phychopharmaceuticals quitting cold turkey, it will end very badly indeed. None of your bodies (subtle, mental nor physical) will be ready for such a radical change. I had something like that happen to me (not through pharmaceuticals) and it took some time moving through the energy and learning to balance the ego based reality and the newfangled discovery of self that I found myself in. Have I found my, what Buddhists call, Buddha Nature yet, i.e. enlightenment?  Nope, not yet, but I am working on it.

That is the real point that I am making, striving for that ultimate goal of complete healing is part of the healing process. View your thoughts, words, actions and interactions every moment of every day (including when you sleep) and constantly make adjustments towards the higher vibrational state; away from anger, bitterness, judgement, self loathing, critisism, etc. towards love, compassion, union, blisss, etc. As you do this, little by little you will move with your boundaries and not take s**t from anyone who is trying to use you because you are all love and compassion. You will say no because with that higher vibrational state of being you will have a newfound love, compassion and respect for yourself as well as others.

So the outcome of the interaction for me is that I will not stop with my Zen bull s**t, I would be doing you and me and everybody else a disservice. It is my responsibility to be the best I can, and so it is yours as well. Use the ripple effect to all our benefit!