BREAKING DAMAGING PATTERNS
Ask yourself: In what areas of your life are you repeating old patterns? In what ways are they damaging to you?
Exercise for the day:- Identify and describe one damaging pattern that you want to break in the coming year. - List one thing you must do in order to break that pattern.
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Today's posting spoke to me so much, that although this is a record of my personal journey and work for these 2 months, I felt I wanted to post the entire lesson. So it is down below to be able to reread it and refresh its lesson again and again.
Areas where I am repeating old patterns:
- computer usage (devours time! Time that could be spent oh so productively)
- speech (devours people, mood, spirit)
- lack of personal contact with extended family/friends (loss of a gift, conveys lack of caring,loneliness)
- putting off what I am not confident in and/or worried about (a mess, a fear, a worry, a lack of serenity)
In the coming year, I want to break my pattern of:
- Avoiding what I am not confident in/afraid of
- spend a minimum of 15 minutes doing that very thing at least one day a week (to start)
- and work my way up to daily,
- and then further to more 15-minute sessions per day.
Moses' Elul journey actually begins seven generations earlier, with Abraham's journey.
In the Book of Genesis (12:1), G-d speaks to Abraham and says: "Go from your land, your birthplace, the home of your parents, to the land that I will show you."�
This is very strange because when you tell someone to travel, you specify the destination in detail, but you don't describe over and over again the point of departure. After all, the person knows where he/she is leaving from.
But here G-d tells Abraham to leave his land, his birthplace, and the home of his parents—three descriptions of his present location—and then, when it comes to the destination, He only tells him to go "to a land," without naming it or even hinting at where it is.
Chassidic thought, which gives voice to the inner dimension of the Torah, explains that in truth this verse is really a commandment issued by G-d to each of us: "Go on a journey of self-discovery. Leave behind anything that might hold you back. And then I will show you the landscape of your Divine soul—the true you."
If you want to discover your higher self, this is the secret.
Many people get inspired and motivated to go on such a journey; they actually pack their bags—literally or metaphorically—and set out on their way. But after a while, they end up coming right back where they started, repeating the same old patterns.
Good intentions are pure and real. When you decide to leave, you really want to get someplace. But you have so many things weighing you down, so many "golden idols." So the key to meaningful change is not so much knowing how to get to a new place, it's knowing how to unload the past, so that it shouldn't shape your future and bring you back to your old patterns.
