Happy Sunday Friend !

You’ve surely wished, at one time or another, for something very deeply from others:
– I wish someone would understand me.
– I wish someone would truly listen to me.
– I wish someone would forgive me.
– I wish someone would let me be who I am.

What if we offered ourselves what we’re asking for?

A strange law of the heart

A simple yet profound idea from A Course in Miracles is this:
We cannot keep what we refuse to give.

If I decide that some people don’t deserve my forgiveness, I teach my mind that forgiveness can be withheld.

If I decide that someone must remain trapped in their past, I teach my mind that the past can imprison.

And, sooner or later, when I make a mistake myself, guess which law my mind will apply? The same one.

What I grant to another becomes, inwardly, what I allow myself to receive.

We sometimes meet a story rather than a person

Someone hurt us a few years ago. We see them again. Their face is right there… but our mind is already in the past:

“There’s the one who did this to me. She’s always like that. I know how he’s going to react.”

Before they’ve even said three sentences, we’re no longer really meeting who they are now. We’re meeting our story about them.

And we do the same with ourselves: “I’m not good enough. I always mess this up. I’m too old. People like me can’t…”

What if I’m not the story?

“I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.”

This doesn’t deny the body. We live in a physical world: we eat, sleep, take care of our health, pay our bills.

But is the body, our age, our successes, our failures, others’ opinions… our entire identity?

A pause can change the story

This is why I love the idea of the Holy Instant. Just before reacting as we always do, we pause.

Someone says something that irritates us. The old story arrives: “I knew he’d do that.”

Then… a breath. And inwardly: “I don’t have to follow the old story. Show me another way to see this.”

The situation hasn’t changed. The other person may not have changed.
But, for a few seconds, we’ve stopped asking the past to write the next scene.

And in that small space, something new becomes possible.

The freedom I give becomes mine as well

I wish to be understood? I seek to understand.
I wish to be listened to? I listen.
I wish to be forgiven? I practice forgiveness.
I wish to be free of my past? I stop defining others only by theirs.

Not to be “a good person.” But because each time I give someone the possibility of being more than the story I’ve told about them, I teach my mind: “I, too, am more than my story.”

🕊️ The Little Flight

This week, when a relationship feels difficult, let’s ask ourselves just one question:

“What do I wish to receive here that I may not yet be willing to give?”

– Understanding?
– Patience?
– Respect?
– Forgiveness?
– The freedom to be myself?

Let’s choose one. And offer a little of it.

Not at the expense of our boundaries. Not by accepting what’s unacceptable. Simply as an inner experiment.

Then, if the old story returns:
– A pause.
– A breath.
– “I don’t have to follow the old story. Show me another way to see.”

Perhaps we’ll discover something surprising…

The first person set free might just be us. 😊

With all my gratitude,

Janice

A few resources to nurture the light within us

📚 Reading

The Four Agreements (Don Miguel Ruiz)
A small book with simple yet deeply liberating teachings. Don Miguel Ruiz invites us, among other things, to stop turning every word, reaction, or behavior of others into a verdict on our own worth. When we stop making everything about our personal story, we create more space for freedom—ours and others’.
https://link.amazon/B09cy6Ils

🎥 Film

Invictus (2009)
Inspired by true events, Invictus shows us what becomes possible when we refuse to let the wounds of the past alone write the future. Mandela does not deny what happened; he simply chooses not to make it the only possible path. Sometimes, freeing another from our condemnation is also a way of freeing ourselves from what the past continues to keep alive in us.
https://youtu.be/o2isdUuHmFY

🎧 Music

Let It Be (The Beatles)
Two words that can become a small practice: Let it be. Not giving up on action, but ceasing to demand that the past be different from what it was. Doing what belongs to us today… then opening our hands. Some things only become light when we stop holding on to them.
https://youtu.be/CGj85pVzRJs