"Play it again, Sam!"

"Play it again, Sam!", I have heard myself sometimes say when my higher self  asks if I am finished with a particular lesson. This saying comes from the famous movie Casa Blanca when Humphrey Bogart asks his piano player to play his favorite song over and over again. I think most people who go through a painful experience in their lives don't wish to repeat the same process but for some reason I find with human nature we often step back into the same situation just to try it on for size in order to see if anything has changed. I agree and from the outside to any rational person this sounds ridiculous. Why keep repeating something that is painful?

How many of us wonder why people date the same kind of person in every relationship? Why a person chooses similar situations in their lives that create chaos or jobs that point them in a direction where disappointment is unavoidable. I could go on but you get the picture.  I believe the answer to that question for all of us is sometimes it is easier for us to follow a path that we already know on an unconscious level than to continually be present in taking the measures to change an old pattern when it comes back up in our lives.

I  like to use the example of dieting. Once we area able to make a conscious decision to change our diet we empower ourselves and feel good about our appearance. It is when we forget about our purpose that we go back into an old pattern that feels ever so familiar to us as we either gain or lose the extra pounds that we fought so hard to change. Again it is about the support we get in remembering to be mindful enough in that moment of what we are doing when the old pattern comes back up which makes our tasks into a rock or a mountain later on in the process.