Who Is In Your Box?

When you think of someone, how do you think of them?  Do you think of how they made you feel?  Did they make you think?  Did you resent or did you like what they made you think about?  Did your perception of them change when you did or didn’t like what they made you think about?  Do you now base your whole perception of that person on whether you liked or didn’t like what they made you think?

Often, we come away from relationships with a “feeling” about a person and that feeling carries on to our thoughts about them.  Quite possibly that person didn’t fit into the box you fit your relationships into.  How we classify “friend” from “foe” often reflects our own perceptions of how people should or shouldn’t react to us.  These feelings may create more stress than we need and those we have in our boxes may have a tendency to draw on our energy.  We end up giving more energy to people or situations we don’t like even though we don’t need that kind of stress eating up our energy.

Relationships either blossom and grow or they whither and die based on what we decide a friend should be.  Judgment takes a heavy toll on people in our world.

I remember a woman who would come for treatment on a regular basis and she drew a particular response from me that I resented each time she would come.  This made me not care to see her and it put a strain on me, not her.  After a time I realized that I held a particular judgment in regard to her and made it a goal to drop the judgment and just accept her as she was.  Our relationship blossomed after that and we became good friends.  It was my own perception and judgment that made me feel resentment toward this person that kept me from appreciating her knowledge and her gifts.  She was truly a gifted individual and I would have missed out on her wisdom had I decided to just drop her.

Since that time I’ve decided not to put anyone into a box of my own making and, no matter what their gender, their politics, their religion, each of us has something to give to the world.

There are, however, times when people take too much of our energy and it’s best to let those people go and wish them well.  Bad relationships tend to draw more energy than I am willing to let go of.  I need all the energy I have and then some to get through each of my days.

I remember a story from a long time ago.  We were in a teaching from Grandmother and she was talking about how she would deliberately seek out the homeless and bring them food in exchange for their stories.  She talked about how she met a man who was enlightened beyond all the others she had spoken to. He told her how he had found his soul at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey.  To me, that was profound.  Absolutely no judgment.

That story had a great impact on me.  How we judge others for their decisions and therefore limit our perception of them because we limit ourselves and our own experience.  When will we learn?

Each of us comes here, to this beautiful Earth mother, to share our time, our gifts, our perceptions, our love.  We don’t need love as much as we need to give it.  When we can think of ourselves as Love – loving just comes naturally.  Letting people be themselves, without our judgment of them, makes loving a lot easier.

Who is in your box of limited perceptions?  When you let them out, you let yourself out of your own box of limitation.  That’s when life becomes easier and more joyful.