My friends and I are in love with each other. Our eyes twinkle when we meet, our hugs squeeze joy into our bodies, our laughter raises the vibration of everyone nearby and our excitement at merely looking at each other acts as a drug to bliss. There is no sex in this particular love story -- my apologies -- however, in the most sincere sense of the meaning, there is in-love-ness.
Our paths, combined, blend to create chaos . Messy book shelves of life spilling over with badly written chick-lit, travel biographies, heart-wrenching romances, psychological encyclopedias, family sagas, comedy journals and fairy tales. Our individual shelves, however, share and portray one common theme: seeking.
Seeking Ourselves Through Each Other
Seeking adventure. Understanding. Love. Acceptance. But mostly, we're seeking ourselves and we're learning about ourselves through each other. All of these words can also be grouped into one - spirituality. Not to be confused with religion or meditation, nor anything to do with orange robes or mantras, but definitely something beyond hair and makeup, diet, other women and relationship woes.
To us, this multi-faceted word conveys Oneness, Unity, Love, Compassion, Acceptance. The desire to seek within the realm of our internal selves, to learn and to grow, can strike at any time and, once lit, can easily be extinguished by the stinging flames of life's lessons. But, surrounded by sincere relationships, the embers flicker undisturbed, with full knowledge that the light will return -- with a little help from your friends.
Avoid Giving Energy to Negative Representations of Women
It's not always easy, especially as women, to foster sincere friendships. The ego loves to sink its teeth into thoughts provoking jealousy, competitiveness and insecurity. Women often love to hate other women. Judgment abounds. Nasty comments over clothing choices, boyfriends, hairstyles -- even the color of someone's nail polish -- fill magazines. Whole hour slots on TV are devoted to 'bagging' what celebrities wear, how fat or thin they are, who does their boobs and who hates who.
And people love it. Absolutely lap it up. The most popular reality TV shows bank on arguments between females to lift their ratings. And they do. That's a rather large pile of egotistical rubbish to crawl out of, so we often choose to live in it, rather than becoming aware of the negative impact it has on our own unmonitored thoughts and emotions.
The easiest way to disassociate ourselves from this behavior and start cultivating nurturing friendships is to, simply, stop. Stop reading it. Stop watching it. Stop fooling ourselves into thinking it makes us feel good. We're not going to be any prettier because a movie star gets fat. Our relationships won't be better because a famous rock star cheats on his model girlfriend and we won't be any less addicted if an actress gets sent to rehab.
We will, however, be wasting an immense amount of valuable energy and manifestation time, mindlessly observing the hyped-up lives of others.
Nourish Your Own Mind
Our brains require nourishment as much as our bodies. What we feed it will and does have an effect on how we behave outwardly. We can be mindlessly programmed with beliefs, and even acting them out, before we think to pick up the remote control to change the channel. Learning to direct our own thoughts puts us back in the drivers' seat of our own lives and onto fresh paths sprinkled with delight in others -- and it's much easier to do without the mud of society's transient 'must dos, must haves, must wants' splattering and staining our own individual views of the world.
Don't Drink Poison
Once we've sorted our own views out, when faced with unacceptable behavior from others, be it jealousy or bitterness or unfair judgment, here's a relevant quote:
"Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering." --Miguel Angel Ruiz.
Unless advice given to you resonates as coming from the 'heart' of a friend (as in, you really are being treated badly or you really do need a new job or you really should stop drinking vodka for breakfast...) then simply disregard it as their issue , not yours.
No one can actually project anything 'bad' onto you. You never have to take anyone else's poison. When we refuse to take another's issues on board, we reflect the issue back to them, whereby, hopefully the issue can be observed, by them, and worked on. But that will be entirely up to them.
Embrace the Challenges Together
The road to nurturing female friendships is not always pretty. The twists and turns can be littered with land mines ready to explode into emotional turmoil. Stir in periods, hormones, relationship breakups, family dramas, wrinkles, cellulite etc, and it's truly remarkable any of us come out alive, let alone the best of friends.
But it's the challenges that form unbreakable bonds and it's up to each and every one of us to become aware of the insidiousness and superficial idiocy of jealousy, judgment and clone-like impersonation of trends, in order to have space for the challenges, the fun, the love and the very special freedom that comes from having fabulous female friendships and our own individual personas.
My favorite source of inspiration on this topic is SARK -- read her work to further invite 'succulent' feminine energy into your world.
And then... by all means let's get back to talking about shoes and Johnny Depp, it's endless fun once we've made the effort to clear out the rubbish of the mind and appreciate and accept each other for the wonderful beings we truly are.
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