What Was I thinking when I chose this life?
by Julia Jensen
I’ve been thinking lately about how important family is to me while a recurring theme in my life is feeling abandoned and alone, without a caring supportive family. Now I’m wondering what kind of lesson my soul needs to learn that is being brought to my attention. Here’s how I believe it works—the soul decides what lessons are needed and then finds a way for us to learn those lessons. We can look at those issues that seem to continue to come up in life, the ones that we find so difficult to change, the ones that we are sure are never going to come up again. Then once again we find ourselves experiencing the same theme.
Are we right back to square one? Did we do something wrong to have this same issue show up over and over? I think it’s much more complicated than judging ourselves. I believe that if we could fix it easily, we would have done it already. We would not have had to dedicate a lifetime to fixing this issue. The question then becomes, “What is the lesson that I need to learn?”
I’ve been reacting to the issue as I judged myself harshly for not having solved it. For me, it seems to be the theme of no one there. Now I’m looking at it with different eyes. What if that is not the question I should be asking myself? What if the question is more along the lines of putting myself out to all of you, or me giving a part of me from the heart? Would you even want my heart energy coming in? Would that action on my part send me into a “family?”
My reaction, over the years, to feeling alone has even gone into despair as my family seems to be busy living their lives. I felt abandoned. It happened with the immediate family I was born into—an only child with older parents who did not take care of themselves and passed away when I was in my twenties. It happened when my first marriage ended and ultimately led me into a new way of being that meant finding my adult “sea legs” and my positive attributes but at the time it felt like I was abandoned.
I’m wondering now about the spiritual significance of this issue of feeling alone. The Pathwork teachings are clear that we come into life with a mission that needs to be resolved. Is this mine? How do I resolve it? I immediately know the answer is to feel it. I wonder if I could be the one doing the abandoning. Could I have reached out more? Was it me?
I think it’s a real possibility. I’m going to have to spend some time with this. The Pathwork teachings let us know that whatever issue we are bothered by in others is probably in us.
I’d love to know what issue you see as recurring. Or am I the only one?
