The holidays often bring time for reflection, whether it be upon finances or the loved ones we’ve lost or gained in the past year. For me, the clarity offered by the mirror of other people has been profound.

The sea of heightened energy and emotion that I found myself being surrounded by over the recent holidays has brought me to see how happiness is so subjective, how we (or more certainly I) have limited the opportunities for happiness throughout our lifetimes by various choices and thought patterns that we (or I) have continued to follow.

Watching a large family of people open thousands of dollars worth of presents, watching as the spiritual “observer” that we’ve all read so much about, I saw with clarity what was and was not happening between these people. There was no happiness, just expectations. There was no togetherness, no exchange of positive energies, just disappointment and things to be taken for granted.

I have always been jealous of the branches of my family that actually have “family.” Always wondered why I was left to pretty much fend for myself through childhood and adolescence and am now, more often than not, treated as the outsider.

Perhaps the reason has now revealed itself: So that I would value those things more and understand the true meaning of togetherness.

When it isn’t about the material gifts, as it so obviously wasn’t since no measure of gratitude or pleasure was displayed, then what is it all about? I think it is about energy and awareness, about togetherness, but there wasn’t any exchange of energies, no feeling of relief and joy that for one more year there is a family to come home to, good or bad.

There was a room full of people that feel alone and misunderstood in this life and yet they were not reaching out to each other, not connecting with love and acceptance.

On the drive home my mind was wandering. Why did today make me feel depressed? I felt depressed even before I arrived at the party. These past few months depression, and giving into it, have been the furthest things from my mind.

I pulled into a parking lot, empty due to it being Christmas, and I began to meditate on all of my thoughts and reflections.

At this moment, the exact place that I am at in my life, I feel as if all measure of happiness and opportunity have laid themselves out before me in this life. Yet I feel tired, scared and sad when I think about the future.

Why?

Why is the positive place that I have arrived at, through some grace of the universe, a place that finds me filled with doubt and fear and unending numbers of worries?

Then I saw it…it is because of my dreams. My dreams for the future, though grand for someone who comes from my background and upbringing, are what is limiting me.

I have carried the ideal, my vision of the ultimate goal and achievement, the one that I am supposed to have to work so hard to achieve.

I have held every opportunity and relationship up against this great and grand dream. The one that would cost me at least 1.5 million dollars and for which I assumed that I must work away at some battle of existence the rest of my adult life to manifest.

Each and every moment of strategy and decision making has been about this fantastic ideal, the impossible dream.

Each opportunity has been weighed by whether it seemed on the surface that it may lead me closer to this vision of success.

Everyone who has come and gone in my life has been either able to fit into the idealized future vision or has been simply inappropriate to my achievement of this unattainable glory.

Only now do I see that it is not the opportunities that are all wrong for attaining my goal.

It is not that the imperfections of others and our relationships are unfit for my future vision.

These things are not the limiting factor for my success.

It is the vision that limits.

It is the goal which does not fit…

Grand and presumptuous as it may seem to those who like to judge…“A wayward, low-income girl from the inner city, become a published author, drive a BMW and own a million dollar farmhouse in the rolling New England countryside? By what miracle?”

But there it is. My idealized vision of all that I could possibly attain in my future. A husband and two kids, a BMW and a farmhouse. One measly book on the shelf with a spine that bears my name. Is that really all of the greatness that I think I can achieve?

If so then what opportunities that the universe is trying to offer me am I consciously or subconsciously choosing to limit myself from?

What about publishing several books? And what about updated editions of books that have been really popular?

What about publishing ebooks, MP3’s, Cd’s and videos?

What about public speaking and counseling?

What about living in Britain or France or Mexico or Russia or India?

What about being surrounded with fun and kind people who don’t believe exactly what I believe? Do I continue to filter them out of my social sphere?

And what about people who don’t want a big, old New England farmhouse? Do I need to block them out of my life too?

We, as humans, cry all the time about people and systems that try to limit our freedom. And yet it seems as if most of the imprisonment and limitation and censorship that we experience comes from within. We are our own best oppressors.

My vision, which I had set-up as the ultimate limit of my future and my success, has become a perfectionist reality. It has become a barrier in my mind, a shop window in which only certain colors and textures, sizes and shapes look perfect. All else must be tucked away somewhere, looked at but never tried on for size. Only that which fits in the beautiful display is of a value worth keeping.

Some wonderful pictures passed through my mind as I sat meditating in my cold and frosty car, in the middle of a parking lot, under an amber streetlamp. (Talk about not needing an impossibly limiting ideal…who would chose to meditate in that setting?!?!)

I began to rock and had chants come to my mind. I chanted and chanted each one. Repeating its truth out loud, as visions of situations in which I chosen not to apply its wisdom ran through my minds eye. I rocked and chanted each one, in some state of trance. Each saying of these phrases got louder and louder, growing in a crescendo and I repeated each until I felt that I truly believed it.

I let go of my mediocre dreams and allow the great dreams to manifest in my life.

I value nothing so much as I value family.

What I own is not representative of who I am.

My imperfections are opportunities for growth.

I find comfort in simplicity and in togetherness.

I relinquish control of my destiny and prosperity to the Universe.

Each of these felt like a release. An allowing of things in the past to be as they were, without the need to carry the “reality” that they seemed to prescribe with me into a now boundless future.

I could see situations in which I had been offered an opportunity for growth and had denied it as a possibility for myself because of my chosen ideals.

I could see situations in which I had done something that I deemed to be embarrassing or negative, and just allowed them to be there as what they were: opportunities for growth and change.

And now I can see more certainly how ones thinking changes ones reality.

Maybe there is more than one way to fix this wrong and limiting goal and dream for the future.

I suppose that I could add more detail and more layers to the dream…creating scenarios where there is much success that simply is in existence but is unseen or unknown in the dream sequence.

However, I think that most freeing thing would be to simply say that I will try out new opportunities without an eye toward where they may or may not lead. Perhaps I will keep the dream in my mind as a possible manifestation of my success but that my success is boundless and can take myriad forms of expression.

The future and all of the goals in it are ever changeable and all roads lead to happiness and success.

As a matter of fact, happiness and success are already here. It is the judging of them by some perfectionist ideal that makes them seem as if they are not already manifest.

The present reality is not where the unhappiness lies, it is in the longing and desire for the limiting ideal reality that the true seed of unhappiness and displeasure is planted.

I choose not to water that seed anymore.

~Namaste

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