It’s not you; it’s me!  How many times have you heard that dreaded phrase?  It’s usually spoken at the beginning of the end of a romantic relationship, and you’re the one in this tango about to suffer the broken foot, ah I mean heart. We think this is a platitude–kind of like when our parents were going to punish us and we heard “this is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you”.  Yea, right!

Things are not always as they seem to us.  We each perceive things through our own filters.  This is a classic illustration I’m sure most of us have seen.

Which do you see? The young woman or the hag?  Usually we see one or the other and it takes real work to change our perspective.  It’s a change in awareness which allows us to see the other.  And you know what, once we see what we couldn’t, it’s very hard to go back!

credit for photo
I would suggest our world is like this illustration.  Most of us can see the hag, but we can’t see the beautiful young woman.  We have to change the way we perceive the world.  No one else can do that for us, that’s an inside job! It’s Not You; It’s Me, takes on new meaning when we begin to accept that perception is everything. Nothing ever belongs to another; we must each own our own caca!

I can choose to see rain on a day I planned a picnic as The world is against me. Or, I can choose to go anyway; knowing that we will have an experience we couldn’t have had otherwise. Blaming the Universe, the weatherman or Mother Nature is not going to make the sun shine.  Changing our perspective about the rain is about the only thing that will salvage the day. :)

We are each responsible for how we see things.  A change in perspective usually doesn’t happen just because we want it to.   We’ve been seeing the world in a very small way for a very long time and expansion of awareness is a journey.  We will need willingness and tools for the journey.  Tools like meditation open us up and create space to allow those shifts in our perspective.  We begin to perceive ourselves as a beautiful (and required) piece of this symphony called creation. And…we begin to make responsible choices in each moment as we create our own individual piece of this music.

OH, and if you want a cute way to see the hag/young lady perception problem, link to this youtube short film…hilarious!