An ongoing personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love reflecting on the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network .
Today’s pairing is:
Divine Guidance sees people as divine beings, equals and counterparts, there to learn, grow and teach with you.
Ego sees people as competition, better or worse than you.
I’ve always hated competition. It’s practically the foundation upon which school and our early domestication is built. There are spelling bees, tests, debates, tryouts, and cliques. Everyone is jockeying for position. I could never understand how certain people seemed to thrive on it. It is more in my nature to collaborate, but having no choice in the matter if I wanted to be part of something, I would enter the ring full of anxiety, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but always at the mercy of an authority who told me there was only room for one winner. Winning was often no joy either, as it incurred the wrath of those who used it to abuse themselves for having lost.
This early training reinforced for me the idea that in all things, only competition was possible. There was no such thing as collaboration; that was just a now foggy concept in my head. I think it is one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to the unusual and novel. If there was less competition, after all, then I wouldn’t have to compete. I could avoid all the unpleasantness that competition brings out in people.
Eventually though, things would catch up with me; the novel would become popular. I would feel threatened, jealous and defensive, and mad as hell at myself because somewhere deep down I knew it wasn’t supposed to be like this. The jealousies and defenses of others weren’t all that pleasant an experience for me either! Why were we doing this to ourselves?
Thankfully, an angel helped wake me up, and it changed my life. This angel helped me to understand that I couldn’t manifest a vision I was nursing all by myself and delivered unto me the renewed dream of collaboration.
This began a chain-reaction healing in me. I had, at first, to face all my misplaced faith and the emotions that misplaced faith had been feeding over my lifetime: possessiveness, jealousy, envy, fear, control, and a need for specialness. It wasn’t easy. It was painful, but it was the kind of pain I knew was going to bring me treasure.
I didn’t want to suffer with such feelings anymore. I wanted another option. If nature had room within itself for everything, then why couldn’t I align myself with nature and make room inside myself for both myself and others? How could I alleviate the suffering of others who might have felt in competition with me and include them instead? Maybe I could, and maybe I couldn’t, but I would take steps to try. I wanted to nurture people’s gifts, not feel threatened by them. I wanted to collaborate! Ah!
We all bring something unique to the table. We all have a right and a reason to shine. When we do it together, our light is even brighter. When we need to maintain our specialness, when we need to stand out over and above one another, when we believe that another’s light can eclipse our own, we are asleep to our own magnificence. It not only keeps us from doing greater things, it keeps us from so much joy, possibility, fun, and love. This is truly one of my life’s greatest lessons, one I am eternally grateful to that angel!