The Mana'o Blog: From Rock Bottom to Rock Solid

A new way to think about hitting "Rock Bottom"

"...a Wise One builds their house upon rock, and when the rains fall, and floods roar, and when the winds come howling through and beat against the house, it will not fall for it is built upon a rock foundation. However, if a person reads these words and does not follow them, it is like a charlatan and a fool who chooses to build their house upon sand. When the rain falls, and the floods roar, and when the winds come beating against the house, it will fall and be destroyed for it was built upon a shaky foundation of sand..." (Matthew 7:24-27, N.A.V.)

Many people at this time in our history are both victim and witness to the terribleness that is the economy at the moment. I can sit here and blame a whole lot on the economic climate of the world right now, but I won't. I won't because there is already too many of us thinking that we cannot get out of this without someone else or some entity being the target of our blame, and for what, I have no idea. Since when was it always someone else's fault or even their problem for how we feel about anything? To think that somehow our foundation that is already shaky because we chose to built it through the demands of the Ego is one truth, but to believe that somehow we are not who needs to take up the kuleana, the Soul's responsibility and learn to not only take our lessons when they come to us but more - take it on the chin when it applies...that screams VOLUMES about a person.

Most of all...it tells us all about how we each handle having hit that place called "Rock Bottom."

Screaming volumes about your shaky foundation in Spirit

I know the shakiness that is the unsure Soul. I know it because it was me not too many years ago. Before I embraced the Soul within me, I had to learn to embrace the fact that I was not always right, that I was playing more from what my Ego wanted instead of what my Soul needed. Once it was that I stopped with the "okay...everyone bow to me and my gifts" thinking and once it was that I began to see the importance, not only of building a solid foundation built upon the Rock that is the Soul within us each, but more, of adopting and adapting the idea that no matter what I did, tried, said...nothing was going to make things different for me if what I believed was not in right line with what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I knew a long time ago that what I was doing was not what I was meant to do. I mean, yes, I loved teaching hula, and yes, the money was really, really good, but all the while my thoughts were that of "how can I do this and still get my message across and not have to worry about charging people for this beautiful thing that I know?" and ALWAYS was the thought there with that first thought that there was no way that I would be able to do anything for free unless and until I had something else that would make up for the lost income.

Needless to say, it was a few years before my halau just sort of died out, and that is when I knew that what I was doing was not what my Soul needed me to do. While I cannot say that those kids and that halau of mine did not serve me with a whole lot, I will say that if I could have done it differently I would have, and it would have worked just fine. I know this. What I had not yet accepted was the idea that I could have made it if I had just thought more about what else it was that I could have done to implement what it was that I knew then as opposed to the things that I have learned in the interim.

In the Interim

The interim is a funny place. A lot of us think that this is where we cool our heels, and it is, but also that it is our place to just not think about the things that we think all the time. My thought about The Interim is that it is meant as a time of both rest AND reflection, that where we are when we reach The Interim is meant as our being shown to the one place that we need to be at the time and it is meant, too, to show us that we have options, that we can choose any direction we want to go in, that we have to really think about the things that we will lay as our foundation, as the rules of life by which we will choose to live, by the very sense of Integrity within us.

The Interim is that place where all of our life choices, and all of our bad choices, and all of our choices period come fully into play and hop up in our face and make us take notice of the things that we each need to give our attention to and the things that still need to be given closure to. The Interim is not the place where we end up that is also called "Rock Bottom," because the term "Rock Bottom" is all about the foundation about which I am writing. Too many of us want to see this place called "Rock Bottom" as being the end of the road for us, as being the place where losers show up and are granted their loser button. The truth is different, at least for me, that is, in that the play on words and the idea that a foundation made of rock is the strongest one of all, is the one that you would want to build your future and your life upon, let alone your house.

Rock Bottom shows us so many things about ourselves that can be used as a tool and the most of us choose to see this place as nothing more than one more thing that has marred and scarred us, but the truth is that in the minds of the very evolved, Rock Bottom is something to build our lives upon, because Rock Bottom to a few of us rings more like the foundation that we need to rebuild ourselves.

A new way to think about being at "Rock Bottom"

You can think of it as being a brand new piece of paper upon which you will love writing your new story on, and you can think of it as being the thing that cleared away all the stuff that is not needed by you and is not useful in the idea that who we are now is not who we used to be, that what we are doing now is not the same things that we used to do, and that the way that we think about things now is more evolved and that, too, we need everything in our midst to be as evolved.

We can think about Rock Bottom as being a black eye to our ego, or we can think about it as being a new starting place for the Soul. The Soul always is ready to take us to where we need to be, and the Soul is waiting to illuminate all these things that we know is meant as our Now. We know that being at Rock Bottom can be a bad thing in our thoughts, or it can be the thing that we see as our new opportunity.

There are a whole lot of people in my life who are here for the purpose of showing me what they are no longer to me, and what they are now are simply a constant reminder of what was and what was no longer fits. It no longer fits because I have grown and have evolved and now it is my turn to take this Rock Bottom and turn it into the thing that dreams are made of. And the truth is that while it is slow in going, it is, indeed, going the way that it needs to go and it is not disappointing me at all. The things that we wish for require time, and require some effort, because even the Law of Attraction will not work if there is no energy of effort behind it making things happen for us. I know that the energy that I am in the middle of now is fraught with the hurts from the past, and that daily I am shown that those things are falling away, albeit slowly. While I am not one who likes things - at least not a whole lot of things, that is - slowly, I now know that no matter what, all the things that are meant to be, they will just be, and I know, too, that I have proven this to myself over and over again, and that just like everything else, the things that are upon me now were once a thought, were once just a vision in my head.

When our lives give to us the idea that we are at the very bottom of the barrel, it is at that point where we know that the only way to see things is through a new set of peepers, and preferably NOT the kind which wear the infamously famous rose-colored variety glasses. We are meant to see the the things in front of us as they are, and we are meant to see who we are in relation to it all. We are meant to know within ourselves that what we are looking at, no matter how ugly it is, is meant to teach us and that it is our Kuleana to make things right and our job to turn what we see into what we want to see and what lives inside of us and what makes us want to do more for ourselves. When we can do more for ourselves, the entirety of mankind somehow benefits.

When we can stop and look at the things that broke us as being the things that made us be who we are now, this is when we know that while we are still at Rock Bottom, that truly, the only way to look, the only way to go and the only thing that we should know is "up".

And that alone gives new meaning to the term "Rock Bottom," now doesn't it?

Yes.
Yes, it does.

Aloha ! I Love You All !
ROX