Love Extravagantly

Synchronicity and the Self Love of Letting Go

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:39:00 +0000

Synchronicity:

“the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together in a meaningful manner”

One of my goals for this blog is to take some of my rather “new age”-y beliefs and break them down into something more understandable for others. Since I’ve recently experienced some guidance through synchronicity, now seems to be a good time to explain this particular term.

As the definition describes, synchronicity is the idea that nothing is just a coincidence. That there is a godly order to our lives, and the things we think, see, hear, etc on a day to day basis are exactly what we’re suppose to be experiencing. And so when we witness coincidences, there is a spiritual reason behind the similar events.

Some people believe there’s a reason for every synchronicity 100% of the time. I kind of take it more casually, and only consider them as a message if a coincidence immediately makes a connection with me.

I feel like this is something many people do. It’s not uncommon to think “Hmm, maybe God’s trying to tell me something here” without even knowing anything about the behavior of synchronicities. I’m pretty sure I took a hint from God time to time back in my purely Christian days, and this concept kind of lines up with the Christian belief of predestination as well. As with many shared beliefs between religions, I think “they’re all different names for the same thing.”

However, I do feel like once you’re on to the concept of synchronicities, you give God the ability to use them more often to communicate with you. And so it was the other night.

It was about 11:30 PM, and I was parked outside of a gas station, waiting for my friend Holly to get off work. The day before had been rough. Another breakdown in my dad’s office and a panic attack later that night.

As I sat outside waiting for Holly, I considered what a mess I’ve been this last year. Suddenly a question popped into my head:

“Does spirit make things overly dramatic, such as my breakdown in the office, in order to get our attention to a bigger problem?”

I kinda shrugged the question off and started Googling depression-related topics on my phone. I ended up viewing an almost unrelated post on yahoo answers, with a response in which a woman mentioned several spiritual principals then stated:

“Sometimes the discomfort you are speaking of is a sign that you need to make a change.”

Instantly I was reminded of the very similar thought I had moments before. The answer also referenced a book I had just heard about for the first time a couple of days earlier. (And as I’m writing this, I just realized my meaningful coincidences almost always have 3 parts. Never just 2.)

So, to me, this was the universe saying very clearly that I needed to make a big change.

Through this, I realized that a big source of anxiety in my life comes from a particular friendship. A friendship in which I am unable to 100% be myself. One that causes me to be in a constant state of protecting and helping this person, even at the cost of my own happiness..

I had noticed this a lot before, but this time was different. You see, the friend I’m discussing is a really good person, and actually, a pretty great friend too. The problem is the way I respond to the friendship. It’s just something that causes me a lot of irrational anxiety. For the longest time, I just tried to make it work because the problem was clearly me and not her. It felt unfair to hurt somebody else just because I was unable to function like a normal person.

But last night I realized it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve tried to look past my anxiety, but it’s there. Until I can handle it better, I can’t have a friendship that causes it to get so overwhelming. Something has to change.

Which brings me to tonight. I just realized that the same thing is happening with my best friend. I’ve known her for over 15 years, but we’re starting to drift apart. It’s something I’m not handling well. It makes me a bitter, resentful person, no matter how hard I try to be happy for her. Overall, another scenario where the other person isn’t doing anything wrong, It’s just how I respond to her. I’ve tried to change how I feel for months, but something in the scenario is bringing up feelings of anxiety and abandonment.

So in both situations the options are clear: Continue experiencing the pain or find a way to change it, even at the risk of losing the friendship.

What this lesson points out to me is that I have to learn to let go. It’s something I struggle with on a daily basis. For the longest time, I could not separate the idea of loving something and hanging onto it forever. That’s why moving away from home was so hard for me. I was unable to hang onto the life around me. I was forced to move forward.

In the end, hanging on only hurts us. Learning to let go gives the freedom to release what doesn’t serve us anymore so we can experience new things. So we can roll with the changes of life without getting hurt. It might not seem like it sometimes, but letting go is an act of self-love.

I’m on the verge of making some big changes with the aforementioned friendships, as well as other aspects of my life. I’m at the very beginning of this new life lesson, and it’s not going to be easy. I feel as though a part of me will always be that girl who kept every little memento. Who needed a picture of every event so she wouldn’t forget. But in the end, those things only become baggage. Baggage that makes packing up and moving new places that much harder.

So I’m leaving you guys with a question, as I’m new to this as well:

How do you cherish your love for something (a friend, parent, home, pet, etc) without creating a hurtful attachment?

"I Believe" Part 1: Christian Roots

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:30:00 +0000

When the idea for this blog first formulated in my mind, I was overwhelmed with potential topics and messages to share with my readers. Unfortunately, through the process of actually creating my blog and website, I lost a lot of my passion towards the blog itself as I was simply exhausted from site building.

Despite having a few topics in mind, I knew I needed a solid start. But how should I officially begin such a project? Well, it's 2:30AM and the obvious finally hit me.

I should share my beliefs.

I was born and raised Catholic, and every Sunday in church, we'd say the Nicene Creed, "I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth..."
And although the idea of condensing my own personal ideas into a creed sounds appealing, I think I might have a much longer story to tell...

All of my early beliefs were strictly Christian. Which has been both a positive and negative influence in my life. I feel incredibly fortunate that I was born into a family where I was able to learn about God, angels, heaven, prayer, etc from such an early age. And despite some of the more strict teachings of my church, I've always had the guidance of my mother who understood the importance of love in the Christian faith.

When I was about 17, I remember my dad telling me "Never believe in something 100%. It means you're not thinking for yourself." That might have been a little lost on me at the time, but its something I definitely agree with today. It's also something he might have been worried about a year later, when I felt compelled to preach to him about the afterlife. You see, I was deeply concerned that he wouldn't make it to heaven.

About that. For a brief time during my senior year in high school, I got more heavily involved in my Christian faith. A close friend of mine had started going to a non-denominational church and hosting Bible studies, and I tagged along for the ride. It ended up being a very pivotal time for me. I learned how to really trust God and discovered that incredible things really do happen if you completely hand over your life to Jesus. I also became very sensitive to the energy around me, and could often feel if I was in a negative location or near negative people.

However, this all came with some very strict beliefs. I remember crying because my mother would not agree with me that the Jews in the Holocaust didn't make it to heaven. (Since I firmly believed only Christians were saved. Hence my aforementioned conversation with my father.) I also recall looking up Christian science and learning things like how the dinosaurs were on the ark. It's hard to imagine I once believed that, but at the time I was being taught the concept of Biblical inerrocy. So it was what it was.

Eventually the people that I was going to church with separated themselves from me and my other friends (claiming that demons were following us) and the ending of the friendship left me with a bad grudge towards them and many Christians for quite some time. I slowly fell away from my strict beliefs and resided once again in Catholicism, as it was safe and familiar. I also appreciated the structure of the church. I might not have agreed with everything it preached, but the beliefs were universal to all Catholic churches. Knowing what to expect was a blessing compared to the "on-a-whim" church leadership I had recently encountered.

I ended up feeling very lost through much of my community college years. I had studied the errors of Bible translations, and I firmly believed in science and evolution. I think I reached the place where many people just stop believing entirely. But atheism was never an option for me. I had witnessed unexplainable things and literally felt the presence of God through my Christian experiences, so I knew I would never just stop believing one day. However, since my beliefs lined up so poorly with what I was often being told, it was very hard to have the level of faith I needed to feel at home in my religion.

What I did instead was start creating my own system of beliefs. I knew that I got a specific "feeling" when something was true. A sort of excited enthusiasm backed by unmoving faith. Many times while driving to school, I would ask myself questions about my beliefs and formulate answers until I reached my own personal "ah ha!" moment. To be cliche, this was how I discovered that "love is the answer". I realized that the feeling of love was too powerful to just exist and disappear at death. In my times of weakness, that was all I really had to hang on to. The idea that love goes on, so we must as well.

I also came to realize that I could never accept the idea of good people going to hell based on their lack of faith alone. I thought to myself "If I would have mercy for these people, then God must as well. God can't be LESS merciful than me, after all."

As for the Bible, I began recognizing the Old Testament as a really great guideline for life... if you're living in a B.C. theocracy that needs to find a way to control and motivate dysfunctional society. (Granted, I didn't discredit the whole thing, as there's a lot of good old wisdom in there as well.)
As for the New Testament, I became strongly dedicated to the Gospels. I decided that if I was going to believe in any part of the Bible, it would be Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The teachings of Jesus lined up with almost everything I believed.

And so I continued to search my own personal beliefs, but school and my personal life were big distractions. My faith became something I didn’t think about much anymore, and the “mystical” side of things became even harder to acknowledge. Despite my new personal discoveries, I didn’t believe much in the power of prayer or God’s ability to intervene in our lives.
For a period of time, I became quite the realist.

However, three years after high school, I got a job at a local gas station and everything changed.

To be continued... ;)