Not a Judgment: Just an Observation

Not a Judgment; Just an Observation

Today I spent a few hours this afternoon with a man who I hardly knew. He considered himself a spiritual seeker, a healer, and seemed to be on a path toward the light. Yet, every thing he said and did felt like it carried a deep-seated anger within it. He is a younger man than I, but does some of the same healing modalities as I do. His talk was authentic, as we have emailed and spoke on the phone for about a month. He doesn’t live in Nashville, so he made a special trip here to spend some face-to-face time talking about our interests.

What I learned by talking to him is that unless we can observe ourselves long enough to see the hindrances that lie in the path toward our expression of good, there is little use for them on this earth. I remembered when I first moved to Nashville. I had lived in NYC for a long time. My demeanor was harsher than the southerners. I, also, was a lot less subtle than people in the south. I probably am still a bit like that, but definitely not as much as when I first arrived.

The first couple years of living here, I learned a hard lesson. People in the south just don’t like the ways of northerners. They didn’t like my accent. They didn’t like my abruptness. They were offended by me being forthright and honest.

If you want to be liked by people in the south, you have to become like them. You have to whittle away at your rough edges. You have to speak slower. You have to say kind things about someone, even it means lying. The trick was to always put, “Bless their hearts,” after anything you said.

I learned that if I was going to live in the south and be accepted by the people in the south, I was going to have to look at the qualities about myself that were unacceptable to the people around me. The lesson was difficult. I want to be honest all the time, no matter whom it hurts. I innately want to be harsher and more critical of almost everything. But, alas, I can’t be and be accepted by my peers. And I certainly can’t be a healer and a person who declares himself peaceful from a meditation practice and also be caustic at the same time.

My choice was to stay in the south and live here, because I sincerely felt as if I had been led right here. I have been content and in love with Nashville for twenty years. So, I have made it a point to make change in myself that reflect the qualities that are more positive, peaceful, and loving. The south is gentler than the north. I love that about southerners. Life is a lot less frenetic and certainly kinder to the soul here.

But my point is that if you want to be used in Rome, you are going to have to adopt the ways of the Romans. If you want to be used as a spiritual leader, you are going to have to put aside narcissism, your ego trips, and being right all the time. Spiritual leaders have faults, absolutely. But they must make a stronger attempt at righting their wrongs, because people are looking at them through a magnifying glass.

I sometimes make enemies of people I don’t even know, because of what and who they expect me to be, because of my profession. I know that’s not my fault. But it is a consistent mirror for me to be authentic always. By authentic, I mean led by my deepest spiritual light and not by my ego.

I pray your day leads you to some new understanding of yourself.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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