Recently when I was visiting the UK I had an experience I’d like to share with you. It was one of those moments where I could have felt that I made a mistake and I could have easily been hard on myself about it, but instead I had such awesome support from the people around me that it didn’t feel like a mistake at all but rather a moment to learn and grow from.
The Story…
I was visiting a little town in England called Frome, in the county of Somerset, southwest from London. I was there to attend an Esoteric Yoga Course presented by the awesome complementary medicine wonder of a company called Universal Medicine… and yes, they are that awesome. On the premises where I stayed there are different levels of accommodations on offer, some providing a space to be able to cook for yourself. I chose to stay where I didn’t have that much of a possibility to cook, but where the beds and the sleep provided is pure heaven so my choice fell in favour of that. So when it came to the food bit I had to fulfil that need someplace else. So… I decided to go to another facility which to be honest didn’t feel right from the start as I was accessing services that were otherwise intended for other guests.
Just to say that I’m in the process of really aiming to listen to what I feel about things and situations and not to override them with my head, but at this point I was still pushing through what I actually felt. And hence perhaps the reason for what then occurred…
So…
I had prepared some lamb meatballs to be done later on and when that later came I put them into the oven on a tray, not being too focussed or aware of the program I chose. It turned out that I put it on grill function with a fan on 200°C. Now for those that are not too savvy in the kitchen let me tell you that 200°C with the grill generates a lot of heat. It took only a few minutes for the oven to start puffing out smoke through its openings, and we had to literally evacuate the kitchen because we couldn’t breathe properly. At the same time I had to make sure the door was closed and that the smoke didn’t get out otherwise the fire alarm would have gone off. At this point I could feel the heat in my face starting to present itself: and that was not just because of the heat in the kitchen let me tell you!
The funny and interesting thing was that I didn’t find the situation to be that big a deal, even though I said I’m sorry a few more times than one. The people I had stopped from accessing the kitchen were amazingly supportive and I feel that was a big reason for why I could experience the situation as something to learn from, and I was actually quite surprised by how at ease they were in the midst of it all, or mist to be correct. If they had all started yelling at me or saying not so very pleasant things I might have experienced the situation differently.
It cannot be denied that The Way of The Livingness that these friends and I are now students of, presents a very healthy way of approaching life where you don’t feel that you have to get all sucked into whatever is happening around you. That you can actually look at life and let it be where it is and respond accordingly, and not react. And to be honest, being the one that was having a potential moment to learn from – usually called making a mistake in our everyday language – I’m glad I was where I was. And perhaps no mistake either (!).
The presenter and founder of The Way of The Livingness, Serge Benhayon, has been presenting since 1999 that it’s well worth observing life and not absorbing it. Now that can be just words until you actually get to experience what it actually means. And if I take the example of the meatball story, I see very clearly how that approach looks like in real life. So even though I have no need to glorify anyone, it sure was a glorious moment for me to be given the space to make my little “mistake” and to learn from it, which I did.
By Matts Josefsson, Student of Behavioural Science & Life, Sweden
Further Reading:
No Mistakes: Just a New Learning
No Doubt
It Was Meant to Be and Everything Happens for a Reason
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
What enrichment of our life do we get if we go into blame, and how much do we get from any situation when we are asked to simply observe what has taken place and understand the energetic meaning from what has transpired?
Being able to stand back from a situation, either in the moment or hearing a story recalled and be aware that there’s an energetic factor in the background of it all to be aware of and observe has changed my life in so many ways. It helps prevent me getting sucked into situations and emotional dramas and much ‘calmer’ and able to respond to the situation rather than go into from a knee-jerk reaction.
It is great if we can not get involved in situations, just stay observing, for all concerned.
That’s such a great learning and even more amazing is that those around you did not go into reaction which is usually the case in that situation. It does make a huge difference to our bodies when we do not jump into reaction but can stay in the observation of life and our surroundings. Life becomes very chilled and spacious.
Matts certainly gave people a great opportunity to practice staying in observation, not going into reaction, especially if they were in the process of preparing a meal.
If we are choosing a quality of love can there ever be any mistakes? Sometimes we can be so caught up by getting things ‘right’ in the temporal world, we forget life is truly about the love we allow ourselves to be and bring to the world.
The only mistake is when we don’t learn from our mistakes.
When there is no judgement nor reaction towards what we are doing there is simply space to feel and see what is really going on.
Being able to see and appreciate life as learning makes everything so simple, and frees us from all the ideals and beliefs that ask us to be perfect and inform us mistakes are bad therefore to be avoided, which practically stops us from simply observing and learning.
I loved reading this blog again and falling more in love with The Way of the Livingness and the people who are part of this and have this understanding. Even if a person was agitated by this, we would see this as a healing for them, just like you had the feeling it wasn’t ‘right’ for you.
Everything happens for a reason and everything is a form of healing or a harming. So then everything is harming or healing for another, its how we respond or react to the situation is the key to living life.
Yes, we can learn from every situation; we are always offered the opportunity to heal or harm in how we respond or react to a situation.
There are so many things in this experience that I love. The first is that we make ‘mistakes’ and we learn, our bodies know the next time a similar situation comes round that the last time we tried one thing and it didn’t work out so well so it might be worth trying a different approach. Yet for some reason, there are some experiences we don’t learn from and we repeat the dysfunctional behaviour till we get used to it and then it doesn’t feel like a mistake any more. An example might be drinking so much that you get a hangover, only to repeat it the following weekend!
The space you were offered – the holding of the other person in absolute love and honoring, and perhaps seeing them as far more glorious than they can in the moment – which left you free to experience, reflect on and learn from your mistakes is the greatest support we can offer one another.
We just have to get used to the understanding that life is all about learning of who we already are, or better said to undo that what holds us unaware of the wisdom we already carry within.
‘it sure was a glorious moment for me to be given the space to make my little “mistake” and to learn from it, which I did’ – I love that the ‘mistake’ was seen for more than it was and to bring understanding between all. What an offering for all to observe and what’s in it for the whole situation then being caught in the mistake itself.
I love the analogy of the meatball story, we all have something to share too. I agree our friends of The Way of The Livingness perceive problems /issues differently to my other friends or family. There is always a learning from any life situation, if we are willing to see it, that is the question.
In this instance, there would have been more than one person saying to themselves ‘what is this showing me?’ Thanks for the sharing Matts.
It is always great in any situation to ask that question, ‘what is this showing me?’.
To allow space to observe frees all of us up, both the observer and the observee and that’s when the magic happens.
Being able to laugh about my silly mistakes brings me the space to understand that I am not perfect and never will be. And this way of being in life magically opens me up to be more of me every time I make a mistake. I am now so thankful for not being perfect because the negation of this fact only kept me in a confined space and never allowed me to be more than what I told myself to be.
Was the mistake in part the setting of the oven as you knew that you did not have cooking facilities, so was there a degree of disregard there, to guests who had paid for this service, so was the learning in part to honour what you had chosen and paid for, and so not disregard other guests?
That is so key in life as a whole, to observe, to not get involved in situations, and simply allow space and observe.
I have discovered that life is always offering us little, or sometimes very large, lessons and the way they are presented are very varied. Your lesson this day was not just from a very overcooked batch of meatballs but from the untroubled response from those around you. I have also discovered that if I stay steady like they did, and don’t over react to a situation, it usually has a very gentle way of coming to a completion, where no one’s blood pressure is raised in the process and a lesson is easily learned.
Yes it is always interesting to observe how we react or respond when the heat gets turned up hee hee 🙂
I love how you keep your expression simple, and still bring in the humour.
It is beautiful when people can observe us without any judgment when we make mistakes, it takes the ‘right/wrong’ energy out of the picture and allows us the space to evolve in our own time.
Even better when we don’t judge ourselves 🙂
We can spend so much of our lives agonising over “mistakes” instead of as you say, observing and learning and making our connection to ourselves and others about what’s important. To me it’s learning to be in unconditional love, to be loving and caring of ourselves and others no matter what is going on.
That is so beautiful Melinda, being love no matter what, ‘To me it’s learning to be in unconditional love, to be loving and caring of ourselves and others no matter what is going on.’
Giving each other space to learn and grow is such a gift, to be able to make a mistake and then not be judged by it is huge. The question is are they really mistakes or they a precisely what we need to be learning at the moment to offer us the next level of unfolding?
Indeed it feels much more loving to confirm what is right about the quality of our living and allow and correct when we wander from that.
The word mistake does not apply to this example. There was no mistake. There were other things obviously and there was learning. What did you learn?
Very true Eduardo this example was not a mistake – there was a lesson here to learn and take responsibility for.
Absolutely Eduardo, great to call out this situation for what it was; and yes be open to the learning and taking more responsibility.
The Way of The Livingness has presented me with so much common sense and so many simple but powerful tools for life. It “presents a very healthy way of approaching life where you don’t feel that you have to get all sucked into whatever is happening around you.”, and that for me has been so life-changing as I was forever being sucked into things that I didn’t need in my life and the dramas that ensued were exhausting. I certainly prefer this new and very simple and drama free way of living.
It feels great to see mistakes as just a way to learn, not something to beat ourselves up for or be ashamed of as we know we are getting nowhere with these feelings or even worse trying to hide we were the one who made the mistake ‘(that would not have been easy in your case, meatballs, which one do you mean, oh those in the oven, no I did not make them’ that would have caused the fire alarm to go off for you to come to the truth) I must say I tried all these solutions but none of these are the answer. Mistakes are definitely a beautiful opportunity to learn.
When we do something that does not feel right to us we blurger our body.
When love is the focus of the way we live, we do live in space and do not have ourselves driven by outcomes, expectations or attachments, as such we are able to respond with what is in truth needed in honor of the love we know we all are.
We get life’s lessons in the most interesting of ways; I love that. Nothing changes when we loose it it only adds to the challenging situation.
So true. You really have to learn to love the lessons that come our way, as they offer a greater depth of love and universality for us to claim and live.
The thing about mistakes, which I have found difficult at times to accept, is how very public they can be. As a naturally private person I do not especially like having my errors displayed in social settings – preferring instead to keep them hidden and controlled. But with the support of Universal Medicine I have been learning the incredible value of being open, honest and publicly vulnerable. Because not only does this allow for true support to be offered by others, but also, it gives the greatest opportunity to actually learn from the mistakes.
I’m so learning this right now.To be open and willing to be seen as someone that doesn’t have everything under control.
I reckon part of the cringe we can go into with the mistakes in public view comes from the education system and it’s push for right over wrong, instead of the constant learning that life has on offer for us.
Yes I so agree, this is what delays our learning. We have a public life and we have a private life and all the things we do in private are often things we try to hide because we know we are not at ease with the fact they are done. Living with more transparency is a freedom the body yearns for.