Take Time to Get Your Guest House in Order

Being human is like being a guest house. Every morning we encounter new arrivals-- joy, depression, meanness-- or some other emotion that comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they be a crowd of sorrows that violently sweeps your house empty of furniture; still, treat each guest honorably. These guests may be clearing you out for some new delight. Dark thoughts, shame, malice-- meet them all at the door with a smile and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each is a guide from beyond.
Rumi (Remixed)

The human being is indeed like a guest house. We host endless thoughts and the emotions they evoke. We also host many desires, wants and needs. Thoughts are by far the most numerous of the many guests who visit us daily-- and they are the worst. They usually refuse to phone ahead or make reservations! They simply appear at our door or fly in through an open window within our minds.
 
Some thoughts bring us happiness and comfort, while other thoughts leave us fearful and flustered. Either way thoughts always demand our complete attention and they sometimes force us to handle their unwanted emotional baggage. We may carry that old baggage to their guest rooms, but rarely do we stick around for a tip. Every emotion has a tip to offer us about ourselves and our behavior. So instead of running, we need to learn what each thought and emotion has to teach us.
 
Restless and frightening thoughts tend to demand great attention from our inner-world's guest services department. We spend hours and hours ruminating over how to solve the problems they impose on us. At the same time, we work equally as hard at avoiding the complicated and uncomfortable emotions attached to them. Many of us simply scurry these difficult feelings to the guest house whirlpool, where we hope they will eventually drown-- and the quicker the better. Unfortunately for us, many of them do-- to our great disadvantage-- because drowned emotions always come back to haunt us. They are the ghosts who haunt the halls of our inner-world.
 
Among the most frightening of these haunting emotions are shame, guilt, fear and anger. Many of us also find ourselves facing the hauntings of ugly feelings that tell us we aren’t good enough, or we don’t count in this world or we’re simply worthless and unlovable. By running from them, we give tremendous energy and power to these deadly feelings and the thoughts that fuel them. So, it’s time we stopped in our tracks, moaned (allowed ourselves to feel the pain) and screamed “Boo!!!!!” back at them.
 
Facing feelings gives us our power back. We can face our feelings by sitting with them in a form of meditation known as Centering Prayer. This form of prayer is like inviting all of our inner guests to a dinner dance. We invite all of our thoughts to the table and then we take time to dance with each emotional visitor we encounter. God will lead us in our dinner encounters and the dance. But, as Rumi says, we must greet them all with an embracing smile.  As we embrace and learn from them, we also take our energy back from them. They become weaker as we become stronger.
 
Freeing our minds and hearts of negative thoughts and feelings allows us to give more attention to positive thoughts and feelings. We all have wonderful guests who arrive on our doorsteps: love, self-esteem, happiness, wholeness, contentment, gratitude, beauty and kindness are but a few of our favorite guests. Yet they rarely receive proper hospitality from us because we are so preoccupied with our negative guests. Maybe we should stop judging our guests as good or bad. Maybe we should start seeing them all as necessary for our well-being. In doing so we will probably achieve more balance in our daily lives. Seeing all emotions as necessary will allow us to learn from them all and this knowledge will help speed our healing process.
 
Let’s learn to be grateful for all of our inner-guests by greeting them warmly, embracing them and allowing God’s Spirit to help us learn from them. In doing so, we will help our souls to heal and allow them to shine.

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