It’s Fine to Go Back

Transcript

This is how your life is already wonderful.

I was thinking about how it is fine to go back.

So sometimes what happens is we dedicate ourselves to a spiritual path or personal development, these things are pretty closely related. What we find is occasionally we start to slip off into some bad habits.

We lapse and and perhaps relapse. Say for example if we are trying to let go of alcohol or cigarettes and we are out meeting some friends and someone offers a beer and we say “Yes, ok”

That is a lapse.

What happens with a relapse is, the relapse is where you do enter the bad habits again. So not just a one off action but we actually fall into that thing that we are trying so hard to avoid and sometimes maybe negative consequences or extreme negative consequences but sometimes the effect is about our own auto-exigence because we say to ourselves “How could I have accepted that beer? What am I going to do?

I am back into bad habits again. If I had just refused the beer maybe this wouldn’t have happened and now I maybe even catastrophize and go black and white. Say my life is ruined, I will never get out of this, I am stuck again and those thought patterns of course are not extremely helpful.

We do need to offer ourselves that space to transform and give ourselves not permissiveness.

We can give ourselves permission to make mistakes once in awhile.

Because we find that its not the scolding normally that makes a difference in our lives. Perhaps the occasional rebuke. Rebuke is a big different from a scolding especially when it’s within our own minds.

The scolding seems to be ongoing and making ourselves feel bad where a rebuke might be quite short, to the point and then we let it go.

Someone says “be aware of this, this is how your actions are affecting things and now let’s move on.

The point is we don’t have to be so hard on ourselves when we do slip up and go backwards. It is fine to go back as is written in the Bible.

Everything is permitted. Not everything is beneficial. Of course our ultimate goal is to move more towards those things that are beneficial and leave behind those things that do not aid us in our journey.

But occasionally if we do slip up its not such a big deal.

Once we are aware, just like in meditation our mind wanders and we will bring awareness back to the object or the focus of meditation.

If we wander through unconsciousness or even more intensely the conscious decision to take up bad habits then we return and we bring back our awareness and we bring ourselves back to the path and keep walking.

Where that path leads I don’t entirely know but I have seen glimpses of something wonderful. We can live a kind of wholesome life.

We can live up to our own standards and see farther into our own happiness. Into our own bliss. Know that there are greater states of mind, greater attitudes, greater presence and attachment.

More relaxation into this ride of life, enjoying it’s twists and turns and embracing them with the light.

That is where these paths likely lead and it is fine to go back to stray from the path once in a while and lapse. Oh, isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it glorious to continue?