darkflavor

maybe one or two years ago i ridiculed a friend for having a certain person named angel in his top8 on myspace. i put him and his choice of supporting and believing in her down. i painted angel out to be selfish, shallow and insincere. i put him down for supporting her. after all this time i now realize those were not my thoughts. someone else put those thoughts into my head causing me to lose faith in angel and turn against her. call me weak, but also call me reflective. when i look into the reflecting pool i see a hideous, distorted image of myself. i barely recognize my face anymore.
although the negative thoughts held toward angel were not original to me, i hold responsibility for allowing them to enter into me and most importantly, i hold responsibility for believe in them. as you can see by clicking and reading this older blog entry about angel here (3rd section), this new, ugly belief in angel is quite opposing to the blog entry i wrote last year regarding the tremendous impact she had on my reality, say, eleven years ago.
making her into a villain turned me into a self-doubting, insecure person. i began a painful and self-defeating questioning of all my judgments, beliefs, and feelings. i began to wonder if what i felt toward anything was true and accurate. i began to think maybe i am being lied to, maybe i am seeing things incorrectly, maybe there is no such thing as love.
a few days ago i reread that blog entry i wrote last year and wondered what happened to my beliefs in her. where did they go? how did they get all convoluted? is she selfish? absolutely not! angel has a strong heart and – important to me – shares for the experience it creates. is she shallow? how can someone be shallow when they can open their heart and make a connection? is she insincere? this is starting to get silly.
to reverse this false belief i first sent angel a short message supporting her purpose and acknowledging her impact on me. then i messaged my friend apologizing for putting him down for supporting her. i admitted that my behavior in casting angel as a villain reveals i have a much deeper problem. lastly, i told him that we need to support each other, bring each other up, not tear each other down like dogs, giving nods to the connection between us three.
here is the message to angel:
i am happy that you are creating and living and working toward your dream. i believe in your success and affluence.
i also thank you for being open to meeting me one autumn night outside of panos ten years ago. my experiences with you transformed and recontextualized my notions of reality, love, and creation while continuing to serve me as a reminder of the magic life really is.
sincerely and best wishes! *end*

she responded appropriately thanking me for opening new doors in her life as well.

for years she was a villain who i believed opened false doors.

i do not have the other message sent to my friend because it is voice mail, but i think you get the gist of it from reading above what it consisted of.

the lesson to learn is realizing how powerful the people we bring into our lives are in impacting our beliefs. one person opened doors, another convinced me this same doorway to inspiration was false. once i stopped believing in magic, the magic disappeared. but today i believe once more and now my heart fills with gratitude and joy for our existence.

how can you know with certainty what you believe is truly what you believe? how many of your beliefs originated from your friends, family, culture and environment instead of from within your own heart?