FROM ATTACK TO INTERACTIVE

One of the greatest gifts I've been given is the realization that I can change the way I'm looking at anything...that is acceptable behavior in this world. Back in the day, if I formed an opinion, which I could do before you could snap your fingers, I was stuck with it, had to defend it, and walked away from more than a couple friendships because I was right, and she wouldn't admit it.

I was then left with my attack thoughts...a constant rerunning of justifications for my behavior and/or judgments on his behavior. A resentment's hallowed ground.

It has been  an important learning tool for me to call my defects by their most basic, i.e., harshest, meaning...in order to get my attention that this is a defect of my character, not an insignificant bump in my road.

Only after I fully accept that defect and all my consequences around that defect, can I call it by a softer name...else I start beating myself up with it. It is very easy to sit in judgment of another, but once we learn that we're picking up mud and slinging it in our own face, those attacks turn on us and beat us up because (chants our attacker), we should know better, we're never going to become a decent person, etc., ad nauseam.

The first step is to stop slinging the mud. Then we find, what a surprise!, that does not stop the attack thoughts. The second step, then, is to remember that "all our problems can be solved by spiritual principles." All spiritual growth begins in our mind, through our raised consciousness. Which takes time, time and more time along with diligent, daily effort. Very simply, that means we sit down daily and make ourselves available to God. Just ten minutes each day to start is sufficient.

Learning to change the way I'm looking at whatever I am resisting means I no longer regret my attack thoughts for they are the way I walk toward freedom from self. It is in having those thoughts that I can experience the un-ness of them...unhealthy, unwise, unproductive and unholy into the bargain.

My attack thoughts have been transmuted...they are now my "interactive thoughts." I use them now to find the gold, the God, in the person, the activity, the thing I was sitting in judgment of originally.

Thank You.