Bodhi under our coffee table
Last summer I was invited to a party that I felt more like an intimate family gathering, but I accepted because I didn’t want to appear rude and ungrateful, and yet even upon arriving, I felt somewhat like an outsider. To my absolute horror, a few minutes into the event, I overheard the host saying something, that had the tone of, “Why is she here?”
My feelings were hurt, but I know that nothing comes into my life without me attracting it, and as painful as this was to witness, what I “overheard” was a match to what I had been thinking and feeling about myself before the event. I was the one feeling like I didn’t belong, and then that uncomfortable thought came out of the mouth of someone else. A part of me wanted to defend myself on the spot and say, “Hey I was invited and I didn’t even really want to come!” but I didn’t do it.
The conversation that needed to happen was with myself. Our imagination is such an important and powerful tool. But like any tool, we can use it to imagine ourselves as rejected, unloved and small or, we can envision ourselves accepted, loved and expansive.
How do we really know what we are thinking/imagining? It shows up as the people, circumstances and events of our lives…there is just no getting around this spiritual truth. People see us the way we, deep down, see ourselves.
“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them“. Numbers 13:33
