Awareness

There is a wise saying "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."  I love this and happen to know it is very true.  This morning as I sat stretching in the floor of the lobby of the Seattle business building that I attend school in,  I looked out and noticed a white Chevy truck stopped in the street in front of the school.  For a moment, I thought it was someone waiting for a parking spot because he sat there for a little while, however, it was the father of my classmate that doesn't drive or have a drivers license.  Her parents bring her to school everyday in the hustle of Seattle traffic they drive her about thirty minutes to an hour one way each day she has class.  I never asked if her parents pick her up from school, but that is a wonderful commitment regardless they make for her.  The old me would have evaluated this situation very harshly and I would have judged the crap out of this young sweet girl.  I probably would have internally called her a needy person or a baby and internally asked the question what the fuck is wrong with you that you can't get your grown self to get to school.  This is very harsh and rude, but I have to be honest about this dark side of me that is very critical and judgmental.

With my new sense of compassion (that I work on each and every day)  I notice my judgement and do my best each time to meet it with compassion.  The truth is, there is no right or wrong way to live or be in this world.  People have free will to do and say and act as they please.  As for me, my one and only job is to not judge another person for the way they want or choose to live their life.  We as humans can not begin to understand the true, deep feelings that another person experiences.  We can not expect to understand another person through our lives because every person has had a different past, every person has a different chemical make up in their brain, every person digest and perceives life in a totally different way than the next.  What might be very simple for one person is extremely difficult or challenging for the next person.  When I learned (from my teachers)  that judgement of others is a true reflection of how much we don't love and accept ourselves - - - - my mind was blown and ever since that time, I have wanted to try to have compassion instead of judgement.  Please know, it is human nature to look at any situation, plant, person, material object and judge - this is a natural condition of our brain and how it works for survival purposes.  However, the move evolved we are in our lives the more we can become the witness to our thoughts, feelings, and judgements of the things we see all around us.   This is what awareness is all about, being the observer of each and everything in our lives with a more open mind instead of a one way street mindset (which I have lived with my entire life)

I thought that sharing my understanding of this would help shed the light on this process not being an easy process, however, just like riding a bike or brushing our teeth - the more we do something each and every day - the easier it gets and the better we get at it.  I want to share that this is something I require a lot of attention and dedication to and it is a daily thing for me to practice.  What I have learned is that no person wants to be anything but loved, and the struggle of the human journey is to live with love and to learn through the eyes of love.  We are all evolving and growing and we all want to be loved and not judged.

Speaking of riding a bike,  I was cold on my bike this morning while commuting to school.  When I was in the sun it wasn't to cold, but in the shade?  Brrrrr....  I had a sweatshirt and shorts on today.  It was sixty degrees this morning during the commute, however, it will get up to almost ninety degrees today.  I am pretty excited to take a friend of my stand up paddle (SUP) boarding today on the lake in my town.  It will be a lovely workout and a nice refreshing way to cool off in the heat.  I don't have air conditioning in my home (because it really isn't needed) and the cold lake will be a great way to bring the body temperature down after a hot day of bike riding back from the city after school.

The picture with this post is me touching one of my favorite things - MOSS!  Since I was a child, I have always been fascinated with the feel of it beneath my fingers and feet.  On my last camping trip, I put my feet in a running stream of water and there was a huge bed of moss carpet on the rocks and I think moss is absolutely amazing.  Do you ever stop to relish in the beauty of the simple things around you?  Do you feel the grass or moss beneath your feet?  These simple things bring us into pure awareness of the moment and I have come to understand these joys for me are what life is all about.