Our journeys are holy. . .

Everyone we meet is on a holy journey, just like the one we are traveling. Embracing this idea changes every encounter we experience, if we let it! I know. It has happened in my life. 

This is a huge idea, and one that, if you believe it, can change every other idea you hold. A number of years ago, I made the decision to believe it. There wasn’t one writer, in particular, who influenced me, or one philosopher or book or workshop or friend or spiritual teaching. When I try to reconstruct how the change in my thinking occurred, I’d say it happened gradually as a result of the interplay of all the ideas I was being introduced to and because I was seeking a life of greater ease, greater simplicity, one in which I enjoyed more peace.

I was no longer interested in trying to make sense of why certain people showed up in my life and others didn’t. I no longer cared why some people were hard to tolerate and love and others felt like a blessing from the moment we met. Embracing the idea that I was supposed to encounter all who came into my circle lessened my constant anxiety. Coming to believe that everyone was on a “holy” mission that was connected to my mission gave me a sense of comfort and relief.

I would have to say that this principle has answered more questions than any other principle to which I now cling. The turmoil of my relationships in the early decades of my life, the infidelity of a former husband, the sexual abuse as a child, the acceptance and forgiveness that I finally cultivated after growing up with an angry father all had their place in the tapestry that was to become my life. I don’t mean to suggest that all experiences were appreciated at the time they were occurring. On the contrary. Many were profoundly painful. Many were emotionally distressing. But with hindsight, all experiences now fit comfortably like pieces in a very large, very scenic, very intricate puzzle.

Perhaps you don’t currently believe that your journey is holy and that the others whom you encounter are also traveling a holy path, but try, for now, to cast all doubt aside. Try to see those earlier, possibly troubling friendships as offering you lessons that you needed on your journey. Maybe you can see the infidelities, if there were any, as the information you can use to help others who have come to you for help. Even lessons from sexual abuse you may have suffered can be valuable for a still-suffering victim; sharing your lessons can be what he or she needs in order to realize that moving forward one day, letting go of the past, and seeing it for the lesson it offered, just as you have come to see it, is possible.

Lest I be misunderstood, I don’t want to suggest that at the moment of any form of abuse—sexual, verbal, or physical—we can sing the praises of the experience’s lessons as a holy encounter. It always requires hindsight. But healing and understanding will come. I know this. It has happened in my life, and all because I decided to believe in the “holiness” of all encounters.  Why don’t you consider embracing this idea too.