My World

We don’t ever truly know what is going on with another person’s journey. It is just that simple. Whether it is a physical journey or a spiritual journey, we just cannot know what is really going on. Actually, a physical journey is also a spiritual journey because you can’t have the physical without an element of the spiritual.

This is a short story from my life from close to 50 years ago. The lesson, benefit of the doubt, has stayed with me, and served me well, for all these years. It is a lesson that my brother, Phil, taught me.

I had loaned him my car with his promise that he would have it back by a certain time. He was going out exploring in the desert for the afternoon with a friend. The time came and went for him to be back. I was just a little put out that he had broken his promise. It was many, many hours later, into the middle of the night that I got a call from my dad.

Phil and his buddy were throwing rocks down a hole they came across in the desert. The hole exploded. It was an old, uncovered mine of some kind and methane gas had collected in the bottom of the well. This was my brother’s first major head injury. It turned his life upside down and set him on a downhill path.

Never once, in all the hours did I even consider that something had happened to him. I thought he was just being ugly with a “she won’t really mind” attitude about it. In other words, I never once gave him the benefit of the doubt.

So, through all the years since, when someone doesn’t do what they had planned to, or said what they intended to, this lesson comes to my heart and my mind first. Because there is no way on this beautiful earth that I could possibly know what they are thinking, or feeling, or really doing.

Do you feel that someone has “done you wrong”? Get out of your own way and raise your vibration by offering the benefit of the doubt. By doing so, you will be opening the door to understanding, and more importantly, the door to peace. Offer the benefit of the doubt and welcome a higher vibration into your heart. Truly amazing things will happen.