No Complaints

I’ve been working with a “mantra” from an article ( http://www.inlightimes.com/2002/11-02/al... ) that a reiki master friend of mine (check out her website it’s quite wonderful: http://www.worldhealing.net ) sent in her weekly mailing last week. The author, Alan Cohen, shares a healing mantra which goes as follows: “Thank you for everything. I have no complaint whatsoever.” I think this is a brilliant and ingenious affirmation. It makes me feel happier when I say it. It makes my eyes twinkle. It seems to kind of outsmart my resistence, my natural tendency to focus on the negative. It aligns with my belief (however badly I live by it) that, as the Hawaiians say, “energy flows where attention goes.”

This isn’t to say that problems go away. I’ve had an abysmal week. I’ve had the flu – not super sick but miserable enough. It’s been bitterly cold here. It’s 10 degrees today with a “real feel” of minus one. Ugh. My appointment with VESID (the grant people) was supposed to be today but transporation didn’t work out so it has been postponed. My pitiful part time job is now in jeopardy. For the 2nd month running, they have underpaid me by 8 hours (actually to be fair, last month they compromised and sent me half). This month they have basically told me that I can quit or accept what they offer. This makes the “no complaints whatsoever” mantra a bit more of a challenge. It brings all the self-pity, “why me?” voices wailing to the surface. I just want to complain and complain and complain and then I want someone to charge in like a white knight and rescue me.

It seems to me that my landlord problem and my job problem fall into a pattern. The universe is “inviting me” to change my response to the challenges it presents to me. It’s pushing me into the path of my most primal survival fears and giving me the choice of continuing to give in to my self-doubt and insecurity or to claim my power. It’s really scary and I hate it. But even as I hate it, I really am also grateful (sort of) for the opportunity to face down my demons and heal old wounds. I’ll be honest. I’m not sure how to do this. Should I quit my job and hope to miraculously get another or get reiki clients? Should I stay and try to negotiate or take them to court? I know that I’m no longer willing to just accept being cheated. I’ve spent my life accepting less than my due and waiting for a white knight to rescue me or a nurturing parent to hold my hand. Alas, as is true of our dreams, all the characters in our fairy tales are aspects of our self. I have to be my own white knight, my own nurturing parent. The fact that I don’t want to is irrelevant. I need to learn to want to or at the least I need to learn to do it even though I don’t want to. I need to learn to trust Life (God/Goddess) and I need to learn to trust myself. I need to override a lifetime of feeling helpless and hopeless and worthless and powerless. I need to let go of worrying so much about the other guy’s feelings that I put no value on my own. I need to learn to flow with Life rather than swimming against it’s current. I need to let go of judging myself and others, of wanting them to be who I want them to be or of trying to be who I think they want me to be. I need to want to do this. I think I do want to do this. I want to learn to do it fearlessly and joyfully from a place of faith and love and hope.

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