99 steps to reclaiming your individuality Step# 44

Sure footedness in an ever changing world:

Probably the number one pit-fall travellers experience walking awakened, is the illusion that awareness alone prevents discord. Awareness simply opens pathways to alternative outcomes. The awakened individual must choose to accept those alternate options and then act on them. This should bring us back to the triune principles we accepted at the beginning of this course, these will always be our constants, our grounding points , our built in early warning system. Remembering this though, when events arise, and our awareness is not always forthcoming is sometimes disconcerting. Not to worry, our goal is not perfection, our goal is first recovery then acceptance and then action.

It is not really that complex to figure out why our conditioning has led us to the belief that we will somehow, at some point in time, reach a plateau where we will finally be in control of all situations, circumstances and outcomes, the linear tracking of a life-cycle lends itself to that misinterpretation. The hidden jewel in all that is that we can reach a plateau where we will more consistently be realigned to the essence of the circumstance and the further realization that there are alternatives.

This leads us to another one of those pesky paradoxes that life is full of. The realization that (a) life has a beginning and an end, and one should keep that ever present in their reasoning. And (b) to always return your focus to the reality of the ever present moment. Which is it then? Both, because one of your feet are both the same, it all happens to depend on which one is the object of your focus, and the nature of the criteria. As an example, when a captain of a vessel is guiding that vessel to port, he can maintain that he will dock the ship safely, while in the interim be communicating the discharge of the passengers and unloading of the cargo.  Docking the ship is the paramount objective, for without it, the other criteria are impeded, but, the lesser duties in this example even though dependant on the outcome are operating seemingly independent of it. Life is like that too.

There are times in life when circumstances compound one another, but when we refocus on the ultimate goal we have established for ourselves, what ever that may be, we then rightly order the sequence of events that is occurring in our life at the moment, thus dethroning the article and re-establishing the primacy of our goal.

We all at one point or another in our lives, have fallen into this trap of over reacting to the moment, and then regretting it later. or even worse fallen into a perpetual loop of trying to justify our actions, over and over in our minds further exacerbating and prolonging the resulting situation. The only way to break this cycle, or minimize the probability of it occurring is to supplant in ones consciousness an equally viable alternative. And in the very essence of doing so, not only are you presenting an alternative option, you are changing the dynamics of the mechanisms that precipitate the action in the first place.

Most of the above is a reiteration of the core ideology behind the motivation to write these steps. It is just that simple. At each step of the game we are presented a scenario, how we respond establishes a routine on how we will respond to future events. It is not in how we respond, in as much as how many options we have to respond with. When we give ourselves the tools to respond to a multitude of situations with a multitude of alternatives. We are greatly increasing the odds of more favourable outcomes becoming the norm.