A scorpion asked a frog to carry him across the river.
“I won’t sting you,” he promised. “That would doom us both.”
Midway across, the scorpion stung the frog.
As they sank, the frog asked, “Why?”
The scorpion replied, “It’s my nature.”
Kindness without discernment is not wisdom.
Understanding Relationships – Monthly Reflection
I often notice that relationships do not unravel because of one dramatic moment.
They unravel quietly.
Through what we ignore.
What we tolerate.
What we explain away in the name of being good.
This month’s conversation on relationships was not about fixing anyone.
It was about noticing where we keep leaving ourselves.
We spoke about boundaries, but not in the usual way.
Because most people do not struggle with boundaries due to a lack of effort.
They struggle because their emotional memory was trained long before their discernment matured.
Many of us learned very early that staying connected required adjusting, softening, or enduring.
And so goodness became survival.
What emerged clearly in the room was this truth:
Goodness without discernment eventually becomes self-betrayal.
And discernment without goodness becomes rigidity.
The work is not choosing one over the other.
It is learning how to hold both.
As stories were shared, it became evident that passive aggression, people-pleasing, and communication breakdowns are rarely about the other person.
They are expressions of stored emotion, unprocessed memory, and unconscious beliefs about loss, rejection, or safety.
We are often not responding to the person in front of us.
We are responding to the past living quietly inside the body.
And interestingly, boundaries are not meant to control others.
They are acts of self-understanding.
When you truly understand your limits, your nature, and the nature of the other, boundaries become less about enforcement and more about clarity.
Like training wheels, they are necessary until balance is learned.
Freedom, is not created by withdrawal or confrontation.
It is created by awareness.
-To balance emotion with skill.
-Compassion with discernment.
-And personal healing with an understanding of human nature.
When this balance is cultivated, relationships stop being places where we disappear.
They become places where we can finally arrive.
With presence,
Manna🙏
If this conversation touched something in you
If you recognised patterns you are tired of repeating
If you sensed that boundaries alone are not the answer
The Inner Circle and ongoing practices are where insight becomes lived understanding.
This is not about doing more.
It is about seeing more clearly.
And clarity always begins within.