to unfold. No idea what it has in store...one can only open one's eyes to each new day and pray for strength to get through whatever the day has in store.
We'd gone to this absolutely wonderful forest reserve - the Pench National Park. It is also a tiger reserve. The place we stayed in - The Pench Jungle Camp - is a beautiful property. The resort is like a camp, and it is set in a forest area. It was an amazing experience to once again reconnect with Nature - Nature at its best.
After a very peaceful stay here, I went on to my nephew's wedding.
Back home....
I had the time and space to think about a lot of things during the time spent in Pench, at the wedding, and on the journeys.
1. Perception. How different perception is from reality. Perception depends on the state of mind we are in at that moment; it depends on how we are feeling physically; it tends to get entangled in the processes of our thinking and feeling; and, there is the danger of old knowledge and old thoughts, drawn from the deep recesses of the mind, pushing themselves into the present. I'll give you one example - a friend saw me yesterday and said I was looking fairer after the holiday. Few hours later, another friend saw me and asked me what I had done to myself - I was looking darker than before I had gone on the holiday. Fact is my face didn't change color in the space of a few hours....it was the same. Why were the two comments so different? One clue is that while the first friend is coming out of a phase of depression and feeling upbeat about life, the other friend has recently lost her husband and is trying to come to terms with her new life. See, it is our perceptions of one fact that change, not the fact in itself. I do know that the first reaction to something hurtful said to us is one of disbelief followed by a whole storm of words pouring out helter-skelter. Give a few hours, or even a couple of days and our response to the hurtful words said may well be - oh forget it....it's not worth thinking about. The words have remained the same through both reactions....our perception has changed.
It is not what happens to us, but how we perceive it that determines our quality of life. - Kabbalah meditation
This is why it is so important to create that space around us which will just help us to walk away from situations we don't feel we can deal with.
2. Justifying ourselves. As always when in a spot I talk to my DD. At one point, she asked me point blank why I was so keen on justifying myself. This brought me up short and I realized that a lot of the time this is what I tend to do. Why? Because I don't want to be thought badly about. (Chances are that after all my desperate justifying myself, the person still sticks to his point of view anyway!) But does it really matter what others think? If you think about it------NO. It really does not matter what anyone thinks about us. What matters is that we act according to our conscience. If that is clear, then nothing else matters. Fact is the only person/people we matter to, would not, ever, put us in situations where we have to justify ourselves.They will believe us implicitly. So, in fact, we are justifying ourselves to people who really don't matter to us...we want the approval of those who have no role to play in our lives...and who are eminently forgettable.
“When you do not seek or need approval, you are at your most powerful.” - Caroline Myss