Lately I’ve been finding myself getting really annoyed at people who complain. Right now the most complaining that I’m experiencing from other people is about the weather. The weather isn’t the way they want or expect and it feels like everybody I come across is complaining about it. And it’s pissing me off!

I know, that’s not very Zen of me, is it? You’re right. And I’m struggling with that. I am consciously trying to have peace within, be grateful for what-is, see the beauty in everything and generally get closer to Source. And when I hear these petty complaints I just want to shake them. Don’t you see how amazing everything is? Don’t you see how stupid it is to complain about the freaking weather? And then I just have to laugh at myself.

I’ve been holding my tongue. So far, I’ve made it through the complaints without telling anyone off or explaining to them how “wrong” they are for feeling like crap about the weather. And I’m grateful for that level of self-restraint. Wouldn’t I just be complaining about those complainers if I spoke up? After all the phenomenon of complaining about the weather is just as systematic as the weather itself. Only with not nearly as much organized intelligence as the climate possesses.

To seek an answer to my issue I went within. I meditated and asked myself, by way of one of my inner guides, how can I deal with this annoyance towards the weather complainers? The answer came quickly: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

That’s a quote from Jesus, but it’s one of those universal truths. We humans rarely know what we’re doing.

And it felt very true for me and for this situation at hand. Forgive them. On a day in mid-summer when the rain falls and gives life to the trees, grass, flowers and ourselves, the beaches empty as the clouds protect us from the intensity of the sun and the people get mad that their leisure time is ruined, forgive them. They don’t see what’s great about this day. All they see is loss. A loss of summer. A loss of sunshine. But, there is no such thing as loss. And the sun does not owe us anything. In times of drought they will be praying for a rainy summer. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

That’s my answer. Forgiveness. And truly, it’s the answer to everything, but for today I need an answer to how to deal with those annoying complainers. I can do that. They’re still learning about completeness and the truth about loss. We can’t lose our summer to the rain. And it’s okay that people can’t see that. I forgive them. And I pray for peace within their hearts. That’s what we all want in the end isn’t it? Peace in our hearts.

Here, I’ll go first.

I started this blog a while ago because I was taking a journey in spirituality and I felt compelled to share it. I would try to talk to my friends about it, but they weren’t at the same place as me and they would listen politely and be supportive but didn’t really *get* it. And I didn’t need for them to get it but I just felt compelled to share.

I wrote a couple of small posts years ago now and just stopped. That’s what happens a lot with blogs and I was no exception. So, I’m starting fresh and I’m giving the regular writing another try.

Every day feels like an advancement in my spiritual journey. I go for walks and the thoughts about how to be and what to feel drift through my mind and it feels good. It’s a nice balance of letting go of my thoughts so that I can be fully in the moment and exploring ways to get to spirituality via the mind. The theme of my thoughts that tends surface is that my mind seems to be teaching someone a new lesson. I think about some problem that came up with a friend or maybe it’s just a random status update on Facebook or an article in the news and my mind always has a lesson for them. My mind is imagining the conversation where I tell them the ideal way of looking at the situation. I would never actually tell the people what I was imagining but the thoughts always come up.

Finally, after many many times of paying attention to these imaginary conversations I realized that I wasn’t going through a practise run of teaching other people how to be but I was teaching myself. In The Course of Miracles they say “to teach is to learn, so that teacher and learner are the same”. And that’s how I want to use this blog. I’m going to let go of the pressures to please my audience or even to get an audience. I’m going to let go of the presumption that I’m here to teach you and I’m just going to teach myself. Everything that I think that people need to do differently, I’m going to teach myself to simply do and be that.

A friend of mine was teaching a writing course recently. At first she was having trouble working out the course curriculum so she decided to make every class a lesson for herself. Whatever she felt was missing from her own writing knowledge (pertaining to the subject at hand) she incorporated into the class lessons. She designed the whole course to teach herself. In the end the students loved the course, she learned a lot and regained her confidence as a teacher.

With this blog I’m going to take the conversation in my head between me and whoever my mind is talking to, turn it into a lesson for myself and write about it. I hope we will all be able to learn from this written expression of my lessons in life towards the highest spiritual endeavor.