Fate vs Karma

C.G. Jung — ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’

Relationship.

Am I destined to repeat the same cycles over and over again in love?  Am I meant to be alone? Am I meant to be in one, life long committed relationship with a man? My answer is “NO!”

I am in relationship with everyone who crosses my path; young, old, male, female, dog, cat, tree. I am in relationship with nature. I am in relationship with my Self. Everything gives and everything takes in order to achieve balance. My life is a part of the balancing act of the whole world combined. I am doing my part in the relationship to create a more beautiful space for me to live in, the world in my mind is very different than the one I lived in externally.

My patterns in romantic love come from a variety of sources and some of them, I believe, came with me from past lives because I believe in Karma. These are the lessons I was meant to work with in this lifetime and they are what bring me closer to enlightenment or oneness and ultimately freedom! This gives me a positive outlook on my life no matter what comes to me because I see it as a gift. A gift that will lead me towards understanding myself and facilitates change.

So my patterns with male energy are obviously Karmic as they are very deep and have  been my most painful lessons, this last one no exception. But one thing, one very big thing, has changed – I am aware of myself playing them out as they happen and can make changes in the moment. I have learned to listen to my thoughts and see my actions before I act on them by practicing control of my energy, emotions and self.

Awareness does not mean or even imply perfection, almost the opposite in my view. To be aware means that I am watching for my imperfections and flagging them. If they are something that I want to change, I begin to consciously watch for them with the intent to make a different choice. Not every imperfection needs to be changed but the ones that cause me repeated pain are the ones I focus on.

(These finger glasses help me to focus on my unconscious behaviors…..or this is just a funny photo!!)

Even with years of practice, I still play out unconscious behaviors, which when they become conscious I cannot help but think – how they heck did I let that happen – AGAIN?? Thank goodness for friends that are wiling to hold me to my truth (Kristen, Carrie, Catherine) and not judge me! All the work that I have done in this area including intensely practicing celibacy for 4 years has given me room for much growth but also reveals to me how deeply these patterns are ingrained.

(Amanda: I think I found Mr.Right!!!! What do you girls think??? Carrie: Ummmmm, that’s a blow up doll, he’s not real Amanda!! Kristen: “We’ll he’s got a mustache but I thought you didn’t like mustaches? Catherine: “What??????????”)

Celibacy for me is a dynamic experiment in which I engage in my sexual energy in various ways to give myself real life experience of who I am and make changes to facilitate who I want to be. I am currently teaching myself to be friends with men, to respect them and see them as real people. As I engage with willing participants in the experiment I learn about the patterns, I like to call them worm holes or rabbit holes that my mind loves to drag me down), and watch how my mind can create something out of nothing. This is the power of the imagination (Third Chakra) and it is also something that can be redirected towards positive, healthy outlets. I spent most of my time in relationship unconsciously and was always unhappy on some level because my partner was never going to live up to the person my imagination had created  in my mind.

(My friend Brian helping me learn about being in a loving, kind, caring friendship with a man and what an amazing young man you are! Gratitude for you!)

Once I learned, through experience, that the energy which drew me to that person was created within me by my Karma, it flipped everything on its head. I began to question the idea of Soul Mates, Marriage, Purpose, and Love to the point of ….well…… Truth (for me anyway!).  If the energy that drew me to someone who I thought I was supposed to marry and be with forever  is now gone, as well as his physical presence, then wouldn’t that mean I was not living my life according to “the plan”? Would that not mean I would be very unhappy now in life? The way that the energy simply disappears after time leads me to believe that I have healed the part of me that was drawn to this person.

(www.amysenecal.com)

Karmically, I was now free of that burden and the lesson had been learned. Fate is then nothing but an unconscious pull towards old wounds of lessons unlearned in the past and we can choose to stay in this unconscious place OR we can choose to see it, learn, and grow.  This may mean letting go of the relationship and the idea of Forever with that person and it may shatter our facade of our safe and secure lives, at least in our minds. If we hold tightly to the security of the idea of Soul Mate then we may be keeping ourselves in an old pattern that serves to create more pain.

(Check out the size of that “Rock” on my finger! It was big enough even to fool me, the biggest on non-believers in this type of demonstration of Love.)

He was not my “one and only” or  my “Soul Mate”, none of them were, at least not in the way most people use those terms. I feel everyone who crosses my path in this life is a Soul Mate as they are here to teach me something. Imagine all the souls out there in the Universe, floating around waiting to be reborn,  and of all of those the ones who are on this plane right now are all meant to be here so we can learn from each other. Some come into my life in much more intense ways and I feel that we have lived together in different lives in the past. Others may be new to me energetically and as I do the work to heal my soul I will be met with a more and more enlightened earth in which I live.

I know, Im getting a bit “spacey” here but is it possible that when we do the work in one life we can come back to another life (or “Earth”) that is on a new level and eventually we reach a place called Nirvana, Ananda (Bliss), Heaven, Shangri-la? Are those places that can exist in a human form or are they reserved for our Souls only? Who knows, I sure don’t but I can go there in my mind and if that is what gives me Joy and gets me through this life then so be it!! The mind is a powerful tool and each one of us can choose to live in whatever  reality we desire!

To me, Sexual energy is Creative energy. When I  stopped using it soley for sex (and all that comes with that ie: clothing, self-worth, language, etc.) I saw just how much of my time and energy was consumed by this unconscious pull towards mating, relationship, security, and reproduction. As I learn to channel it into things that I want in my life, I see how powerful it is! It is creative energy that created my life, it literally created me and is the reason I am alive. It also created a lot of pain. Now I use it for expression and living life authentically. The redirecting and control I now have over my creative energy (First and Second Chakra) has given me an amazing last 2 years of my life and especially these last 12 months.

(Self-expression through my outward image became a tool for creativity and a vehicle for change! This is costume making day for Thrill The World Kigali and it was an amazing creative project for all of us!)

At the Ashram, I stripped away everything that I thought was sexual in nature, ie: clothes, my hair, make up, self care, speech, eye contact, relationships, and focused very firmly on awareness around the subtle ways in which my patterns still managed to impact my life. I was lucky enough to be in a community that wanted to help me with whatever area I was choosing to work with. I had a lot of people to offer me insight into what I was not able to see for myself.

Situations were presented to me in order to call on my strength and many, many challenges in which to find my voice and see myself more clearly. I had a wonderful mentor who gave me support in a way that I can only explain as a gift from God. Firm, commanding, no nonsense kind of support that said to me, “ok, you say you want to change well this is what I see.” Not many people can give this kind of support in such a loving way and not many people can handle this kind of honesty but when we really want to change the most important ingredient is Truth, especially the truths that we cannot see or choose not to see for ourselves.

I  have allowed men into my life who treated me the way I felt I deserved to be treated.  Because of the way I was raised, where I was raised, the way I was taught to see my role as a woman, societal pressures, media, and of course my Karma were all factors in these pairings. Now, here is where there is a thin line between blame and acceptance of facts. To acknowledge that I chose this life and everything in it, from a Karmic point of view, takes the blame away for me as I believe it was my choice to have this exact experience so I could learn these lessons. I also believe that the lessons get more and more harsh if they have not been dealt with and the more times I take the same path, the more severe the consequences. So this is one area in which I know I brought a lot of Karmic baggage but I am doing the work this time for sure and I see how much growing I have done in a relatively short period of time. The men that come into and stayed in my life in the last 4 years are different because I am different. Especially the men I met in Rwanda, Gilbert, Justin and all the young men dancers. They have transformed me and healed me!

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(Justin Bisengimana, my brother, my friend, my mentor and my healer! Ndagukunda Cane Cane!)

(Gilbert Rutaremara, my inshuti, my creative partner, co-creator of my vision, my inspiration! We are Love In Action!)

I believe that all of my work up to this point was to heal me in all areas of my life. Everything is intermingled within our minds and lives, there is no way this issue of sexuality has not impacted every area, every choice, every word, every thought. Im working with some very powerful energy and as I learn to become friends with it, which literally means becoming friends with myself, I see the beauty that it holds when it is used consciously.