101 Insights - Insight #1

Insight #1
Strengths
Be proud of and use your strengths! The lessons that you have chosen to learn in the past will serve you well. They were necessary. They made you aware of the helplessness and the despair that humankind can take on. Will you show others that there is another way? You have enough lessons and truths inside you to be able to touch each heart with love. Let those who encounter you see your magnificence! Touch every heart with love.
In most people’s lives, and probably yours, there may have been great and difficult challenges. Those challenges may have resulted in much emotional struggle and turmoil. It is from the pain of these struggles that present us with an opportunity if we change our perception. If we look close enough and let go of the pain and the emotional drama we may be able to see what the experience has taught us. What appears as painful, what appears as threatening, what feels uncomfortable can be turned around and lead us into developing or recognizing our strengths.
Personally, I lived with an alcoholic, sexually abusive father. While he also had positive qualities, the addictive and abusive parts caused me the most pain and required me to bring forth my strength. Those who know about sexual abuse know that the focus is about power and control, not sex. I learned early what it felt like to be overpowered, to be given no choice, to be forced into unpleasant situations, to have someone try to manipulate me into doing things I didn’t want to do.
As a young boy I began to recognize the lack of choice or freedom that I had in this situation. As I matured in age, I made a conscious choice to not copy the abusive choices of my father. But more importantly I made a choice to never force anyone to do anything they didn’t want to do (My children might argue that fact, as they recall the numerous times they were “persuaded” to eat their vegetables.)
The point of this Insight, the very first Insight I received, was to show me that I could choose to turn what seemed to be a loss of choice in my life into strength. I wondered to myself how many other people had experiences or were having experiences where they felt they had no power, no control, and no choice. How could I possibly teach people that there is a way to let go of all the anger, all the hate, and feelings of victimization? How can I show people that Love is the only way out of the pain? And how can I have the wherewithal to teach anyone else anything?
Here I am a man who has stifled his past, buried his emotions, now innocently writing his first Insight about love. I confirmed to myself that I know so little about love.
My strength to BE was being challenged by my perceived pain from the past. I can turn the pain of the past into my strength.
Then as coincidences go, I read a short story. It went like this:
A man looked out into the world and saw despair. He saw the starving millions and the brutality of war. He saw the devastation of nature and the selfishness of man. He wondered why this was so. One day he was so overwhelmed with all that he saw that he got down on his knees, pounded his fists into the ground, and yelled at God. He yelled loudly with tears of anger running down both his cheeks, “God there is so much hate, so much crime, so much killing and you don’t do anything about it. Why don’t YOU do something about it?” Much to this man’s surprise God responded, “I did do something about this… I sent YOU.”
This one short story called me to BE.
The urge for me to present myself as a person of love became a driving force. I chose to help others even though I was having enough problems just coping with everyday matters, never mind trying to solve the riddle of Love. I pushed forward into my strength. I know I have much to learn about love. I continue to learn. It is a never-ending process and a never-ending joy.
From the yet unpublished book “101 Insights” by Phil Walmsley