Projected Mirrors

The last three years, well more truthfully, the last 33 years of my life have taught me a lot about relationships. However, it wasn't until recently that I truly began to pay attention. Most likely because ever relationship in my life was on the fritz somehow. They just weren't working for me anymore. The painful part was that most of these relationships were with the very people I held the closest to my heart, and I loved them very much, or so I believed I did. I loved them, but I also hated and resented them. To make matters more complicated and frustrating I believed that that they were the problem, not me. Yes, I was a saint....Heaven sent to save these wayward souls from self-destruction. The fall from sainthood has been a Godsend. A flight downwards into the stink and darkness of my shit. I realized through a lot of painful and honest self-reflections, that the very devils I despised were really the shadows filling my own heart. I never truly loved these people. How could I??? I was too busy hating myself and projecting it onto them so I wouldn't have to be the problem, to truly even know them. And in doing so, I failed to see the beauty and individuality in their imperfections and my own. On this difficult and lonely path (no one could do this work or transformation for me, although I wished it many times I could pay someone to) I began to see how easy, too easy it is to cause pain and suffering to another. It seemed far more difficult and counterintuitive to be authentic, honest, open and loving; especially when the risk of rejection was the greatest. I have seen my neediness, my insecurity, my shallow, selfish and unforgiving tendencies and habitual patterns. I have seen the old wounds and memories of childhood play themselves out on every relationship and circumstance in my life. And because I asked to see the darkness in myself and know the truth, I have also experienced the freedom that love brings. Not the love of movies, or sappy romance novels. The love that transcends all rational understanding. The love that warms your heart from head to toe just because it can. The type of love that flows spontaneously for no apparent reason. This is the love that I always desired to be and give. I pray and talk to God everyday so that love is the guiding principle that moves me into every single moment I spend in relationship to the world around me. Do I forget and lose my way....Absolutely. But God never leaves me and I trust God that I will be shown the way back. Despite the gnashing of teeth and the moments of forgetfulness when the dramas of life cloud my heart and better judgement, I know that all is just a mirror. These moments of despair, sadness, anger and grief are not to be borne long, they are to worn lightly and to be used to set me straight on the path to loving-kindness again. Forgiveness and acceptance have been the most transformative tools I have utilized up to this point in my life, and I have never been disappointed in God for all the love and support I have been given on the way. All the relationships that were not as I desired them to be three years ago have changed drastically, miraculously. I couldn't have asked for more out of life. The rest in icing. Today, I thank God for all the angels in my life posing as despicable devils. For in the those dark shadows my redemption and freedom were borne.