By Karen Sue-A-Quan. Pediatric Critical Care Pharmacist at The Hospital for Sick Children. Spiritual Life Coach.
The First Circle - Your Core
Imagine a stump of a tree trunk standing in the middle of a forest. You walk up to it and look down at the stump. You see the concentric circles from the centre – each circle growing in diameter. A small circle at the core, a slightly larger one surrounding that, and an even larger one surrounding that, and so forth as it radiates out from the centre.
Imagine a very very still pond of water. You drop a small pebble into the water. You see the circles of ripples as it radiates outward from the centre.
Each image of concentric circles radiating out.
Imagine relationships in this very same way. A concentric layer of circles that radiate outwards. At the core, is your Relationship to your Creator – from where you originate. The next circle out is your relationship with yourself. Next circle even further out it is your relationship to Other– whether it be friend, relative, spouse, or child.
Let’s go into your quiet space now, as we move together through your own concentric circles of relationship.
Starting at your own very core, where your own pebble dropped, a spark of creation resulting in you.
Whether you believe you are solely a product of human creation or a product of divine creation from divinity, source, God ie any other word attached to a non-physical existence is left up to you to explore through your own beliefs. Nevertheless, at your core, you are Creation - a creation of Love. Imagine that your Divine Creator has fragmented a piece of itself to live within you. This loving Creator lives within you for you are the created. It forms the core of your trunk within your mind whereby it knows nothing other than love. This divine fragment within you knows your truth. This divine fragment within you sees only beauty. This divine fragment within you finds the goodness. Your deepest layer of divine self knows that you are created as a child of God or simply of Creation. This core relationship is your relationship to your spiritual centre. In this relationship to your spiritual centre or your divine fragment, it connects to an inner knowing that you are simply love. The strongest connection to your spiritual centre leaves you feeling strong, loved, and enough.
Check into your relationship with your divine fragment; and when I say that you are love and only love, what do you become aware of?
This core relationship is fundamental and at the crux of all your relationships, and yet very often is our weakest relationship.
Develop a closer relationship to the divine fragment within you. Pray, meditate, and even speak openly to your own divine fragment that lives within your mind. Notice anything that obstructs you from this knowing of love. Just notice. Allow any emotions, thoughts to surface as they may for there is no room to judge anything but to simply allow.
The Second Circle
Now, we move to the second circle of relationship rippling out – the relationship to yourself. Who are you? This circle is the bridge between our Relationship to our Divine Self of our core and our Physical Self. Our Divine Self knows that we are just simply love. Our Physical Self was granted a mind to have free will and choice without being controlled by our Creator. With this free will and choice, you make conscious choices about everything, including your choice of how you see yourself. Realize the qualities of your being which are good, for until you can understand the goodness that you are, how difficult it will be to understand and see the goodness in others. You have free will and choice to see the best in yourself. In this relationship to self, this is a moldable and evolving relationship for it is the layer between your external world and your core central spiritual world. Your relationship to self is heavily influenced in your mind by information coming through your senses that is stored with every life memory and experience from your external world. Things that you have heard, seen, felt, smelt, and tasted are stored in your filing cabinet of memory, interpreted, and concluded in your own mortal mind.
“Self-mastery, therefore, is learning to control the external stimuli and influence and to use it in a way that benefits and feeds the emerging soul. Meditation and deep thinking are beneficial to keeping control and steering the ship toward new horizons and the adventures of high-value experiences (survival value experiences). ‘Awareness’ is being present in the moment and in the layer of the real-self. Challenging your own self-limiting beliefs, connecting more to your spiritual centre is a way to brush away the shadows of your relationship to self to allow more of your light to shine.
Everywhere you go as a light you dispel darkness. Darkness only exists by an absence of light, that's the condition for its very existence. When there is light, darkness is dissipated.
Therefore as a light beacon, you go around and change your environment. You flood your environment with light and darkness recedes. You literally change the environment around you with your conscious act to bring the light with you. It is that simple, just simply being a light is all that you have to do and your environment is changed
Reflect on how you see yourself. How might you turn up your own inner light? What needs to shift in your thinking about yourself that results in you radiating more brightly?
You are a unique personality — there's never been nor ever will be another you. That's because personality is a divine and unique gift from the Father, yours being but one facet of a nearly infinite whole. This unique and divine personality is now being expressed in human form as yourself, but what you believe to be your personality and what others see as you aren't that unique and divine entity, what's being observed and experienced is your character interpreted as you.
Your personality is changeless, but your character will change as it becomes more in tune with your personality. It will appear that you mature and grow and develop wisdom during this life; still, this is only the bottom rung on a ladder of progress stretching to eternity. Your personality is so rich in endowment that unfathomable time is required for your character to develop its full potential in expressing that true personality.
Here on earth, you are also a product of your environment and of both biological and cultural heredity.
Environmental and cultural hereditary defects can be overcome by exercising your character and another God-given attribute, free will. If you choose to let the circumstances of life dominate you then you will have hardly exercised your free will at all, exhibiting instead character weakness that needs to be strengthened. If you invoke your free will in overcoming hardship and privation to build a life of accomplishment and joy character growth will result.
Your character is the result of the choices and decisions you make; how you think about and treat yourself, other individuals, and the world around you; honesty, loyalty, truthfulness, responsibility; your attitude toward life and your place in the cosmos.
So, you are a nearly infinite potential being expressed through a developing finite character. You have the aid and guidance of unseen spiritual forces to assist and you have the influence of the Holy Spirit and of the Spirit of Truth to help you with the challenging decisions life requires you to make. You're a tadpole striving to become a frog which will eventually transform into a prince as long as you keep the goal in mind and continually strive for God-likeness. God is the home to which we all yearn to return.
The Third Circle
Now, you move outwards to the third outer concentric relationship circle. This is the Relationship to Other.
This relationship circle is one of the hardest circles to maintain. Imagine again one pebble dropped in a still pond and this represents your ripple of influence. And now imagine another pebble dropped in another spot rippling out towards the first one which is representing another person’s ripple of influence. Watch in your mind as your ripple crosses their ripple. There will be some turbulence as the ripples mix into one another.
Relationship to Other is often filled with expectations, assumptions, demands, and judgment. But just as you have your memory storage bank of mental filings of every moment and experience, so does that other person. And you are connected to your influences of your prior generations and so is the other person.
Very often in romantic love and in interpersonal relationships – child-parent love, there is an aspect of wanting good done to one’s self. This is self-centered rather than other-centered. It is in this sense that human love, or what is called love, is dependency-based, in that one tries to get their needs met through the other person. This is different from desiring good for others.
Understanding grows when minds are sympathetic. There may not be complete understanding, but harmonious relationships are certainly attainable. Empathetic, mutual and non-judgemental attitudes are essential in this love growth. One does not have to agree with another person’s choices or give up their own voice to avoid an argument. This relationship to other requires mastery of knowing thyself and knowing the other to a harmonious point of understanding, not needing righteousness.
Where in your relationship can you develop more understanding – letting go of the need to be right, but that each person has their own ‘right’ or perspective of seeing things?
How are you seen through the other person’s lens?
With every person you meet, make it a habit to reflect on the positive, on the goodness, rather than on the weakness, the negative of that individual. When you do this, your relationship with that person will change, for they will be seeing their own goodness reflected back by you. Always see your brothers and sisters of humanity as if you were looking through the eyes of God.
How would God see the two of you?
Marriage is the bringing together of two people of different strains, different tensions so to speak, different readings on life. Some marriages dance, others plod along, some trod the same path but look east and west separately. The most effective marriage is one in which two individuals, two different minds, learn how to communicate over great gaps of understanding. There are so many things to become accustomed to. There are habits and behaviours your partner has that you cannot possibly comprehend as to why. A true marriage takes continuous maintenance, communication, and a willingness to see one’s own mistakes. A healthy marriage does not point out one another’s faults but stands in commitment to assist a spouse with understanding and honesty, not as a superior individual who knows more, but one who is willing to be open to new possibilities. In a good marriage, you are allowed mistakes, you are allowed to grow from them, you have the support of one another instead. The non-reality you show a prospective spouse to win their affections, passes away as the reality of seeing who your partner really is becomes clear. This is where real work begins.
What ‘fault’s’ of the other go completely against your values, vs against your preference?
The quality of forgiveness is of twofold nature, the one being forgiven and the one forgiving. It is easy to intellectually forgive an occurrence but real spiritual forgiveness is the continual sense of feeling of it, that never quits. Both individuals are elevated through the sense of the life-giving qualities of this energy, this transfer and exchange. Through this experience is discovered that the article of offense, the action, the behavior was an episode in time that has passed, but that the individuals involved continue a relationship on an energy level that doesn’t have to be at a physical existence level.
Let’s move back in our circles back towards the core
Your outermost circle is your relationship to OTHER - another human being – spouse, child, parent, sibling, friend, etc. How you show up is a reflection of something deeper within you – based on your own life memories, your values, your intergenerational influences, and your cultural influence. That is mixed in the pot with the other person’s life memories, values, intergenerational influences, and their cultural influence. Communication, understanding, and forgiveness is the path towards healing this most outermost circle of relationship.
Let’s move into one circle size smaller now – the relationship that you have with yourself. How you value yourself, how you speak about yourself, how you show yourself kindness and compassion is so important - for it is the middle circle connecting to others and to the divine center.
Let’s move into yet another circle size smaller – the core circle. This is the relationship you have with Spirit from which you are created from and the fragment of Spirit that lives within you. Spirit is simply light and love and you have the fragment of light and love right in your centre. The stronger you stay in your core center where you are a divine being of light and love, the more light and love you give to yourself (middle circle) and the more you give to another (outer circle)
Remember your Soul Journey is your time to explore these three concentric circles of relationships. Ultimately, it is the training of the mind to move back to the core where your divine fragment lives. In that divine fragment, it allows the mind to simply see beauty, know what’s it’s own truth and realize the goodness of every moment and experience. Memory is an important function of the mind, for it is the seat of identity, the history of your experience. You have 3 types of memory: short-term, long-term, and soul memory. Short term is used to allow you to function in time-space, to navigate your environment, to experience the moment to moment passage of time. Long term is the storage house for significant events, relationships and moments that are passed on from the short-term memory and retained as part of a library of comparative experience that you will draw from when making decisions about new experiences and how you will process them – the ability to learn, adapt and grow wisdom. These are the memories that contribute to your personality growth. The significant events, relationships, decisions, and experiences that contribute to the perfection of the human personality are recognized by the indwelling spirit as having eternal value and routed to the soul memory. These memories of eternal value are treasures of an ascendant personality for they are the building blocks of the soul and become the ‘new child’ of the universe hereafter.
#lifecoach #goodvibes #positive #reflection #heartandsoul #karensueaquan #concentriccircles #ripples
All posts are intended strictly for educational purposes. It is not intended to make any representations or warranties about the outcome of any product/service.
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