Some of you have some really awful people in your lives. They are divine beings, but they’re just awful. They are awful in the respect that you are asking them for something that they don’t have the capacity to give you. That external rejection becomes your own internal rejection.
We don’t need to make what other people think and feel about us relevant.
Every day we are attacked by a multitude of pains, so frequent and so familiar we don't even question them. In fact, we accept them as friends, as something to occupy us. These pains can range from petty irritations to the anxiety we feel every time we write a check and see our bank balance decrease, to concerns about our health. One of the major sources of pain involves other people and our relationships with them.
How often do you feel filled with inner peace, joy, and love – apparently for no reason? There is a reason, but it's not about anything external that's happening. For me, I have this wonderful experience when I am very connected with spirit and in deep surrender to my guidance. This wonderful, blissful energy of love, inner peace, and joy fills my being to overflowing. At these times, I can't stop smiling. Love pours out unendingly, and everything makes me giggle. Things that are not particularly funny to others strike me as hysterical and I laugh until my stomach aches. It is the very best feeling in the world! Sometimes I’m laughing and I have no idea what I am laughing at! I feel so blissful, joyful, and peaceful at these times!
This is causeless love, causeless joy, causeless inner peace – causeless bliss.
MUTTS © Patrick McDonnell, Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
You never know where you’re going to find your soul’s wisdom. Sometimes it can even show up on the comics page! That’s where I discovered mine recently when I read Mutts. www.mutts.com
If you’re familiar with this wonderful comic strip, you’ll know why it’s one of my favorites. It’s a hilarious and often heartwarming commentary on life and the goings on in the world through the voice of many endearing characters led by: Earl—the sweetest mutt with a big heart, and Mooch—a very canny and intuitive cat.
The time has come to have brave new ideas about time itself. If you want to make a breakthrough in human lifespan or prove the existence of higher consciousness or reach the mysterious region beyond the physical universe, all these possibilities require our concept of time to be reshaped in a new way.
Everyone knows the old ides, which have sufficed reasonably well until now. Time puts events in order by cause and effect. Time measures the distance from birth to death, for people and the universe as well. Time emerged at the Big Bang, and it has ticked away ever since, for 13.8 billion years.
If you’re going to be successful in creating the life of your dreams, you must have self-confidence and believe that you’re capable of transforming your goals into reality.
But cultivating this kind of unshakeable self-confidence can be challenging – especially if you’ve ever suffered from low self-esteem. It can be easy to listen to your own negative self-talk and believe that you don’t have what it takes to make your dreams come true.
That said, if you are able to visualize yourself achieving a goal, you have the capacity to do so. This is something I deeply believe. The universe will not give you a dream that you don’t have the capacity to fulfill! And the only obstacle making it difficult for you to overcome self-doubt and unlock your full capacity is your own mind!
What’s to like?
The Practice:
See what’s likable.
Why?
Liking feels good, plus it encourages us to approach and engage the world rather than withdraw from it.
Your brain continually tracks whether something is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. In essence, is it a carrot, a stick, or safely ignored? Naturally, we like – we enjoy – what’s pleasant, dislike what’s unpleasant, and with what’s neutral would get pleasant pronto.
Most of us are familiar with the saying “Is the glass half full or half empty?”, which points out how perspective affects our experience of life. In other words, do you count your blessings or tally up your grievances? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you feel life is a gift or a burden, joy or tragedy? On any given day, you may feel one of these extremes and then extrapolate to a world view that sets you up for future experiences. You may keep an inner tally sheet of the “good” and “bad.” It seems to be a human tendency to divide up life events in this way. Yet life is made up of many emotions, many experiences. None of them permanent. What if the greater wisdom is to be inclusive of it all?
Who you are, is an amazing expression of the Divine. That means you actually live in infinite possibility.
Perhaps, because of our conditioning, it doesn’t always appear that way. Yet, we all live in the both/and, which is the place of infinite possibility.
No matter our circumstances, we are the Essential Self and have the ability to shed love on anything. We are always at choice to choose love.
Every sacred teaching throughout time has taught, and now science is proving, that love is the key. Not anger, but love. Not accusations and judgment projected onto others, but love. Not fear, but love.
Spirituality and business might seem pretty disconnected at first glance. However, if you dig a little deeper, it’s possible to find threads that connect these two realms. Business success relies on hard work, determination, ambition, and motivation. On the other hand, spirituality is about believing in higher powers and utilizing them to get the desired outcome. Here are some ways that will show you how to use spirituality and become successful in business.
No one can avoid the gray malaise that hangs over everyday life right now. The constant flow of 24–7 media thrives on anger, anxiety, and angst in a time of never-ending Covid-19 surges, climate change worries, mass shootings, and Russia’s insane invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, politics churns along in an angry and divisive rut, and the isolating effects of pandemic lockdowns have added to higher rates of depression, domestic violence, and suicide, especially among teenagers.
What I like about my life is that I get to utilize my time in the most productive way. Once you figure out the purpose of an instrument or a tool that you own, it makes it way more efficient to use that tool; to optimize the use of it.
Life is simply meant to be experienced. The end.
If life is just an experience we are having, then we, as human beings, are a part of that experience. The question is who is having it? What is it that is in me, observing through my eyes, that is experiencing through my being and is here on this journey of experiencing? Not learning lessons or solving riddles, but what is it that is in me that is hearing, feeling, seeing? What part of me came back here to have this fully immersive experience?
How do you describe emptiness? How do I wrap words around the peaceful space I have been opening to since being diagnosed with breast cancer last August? Language seems inadequate to translate something so vast and limitless. My experience has been one of emptying out, sometimes called “dying unto yourself” in spiritual traditions. The dissolving of past identities, opinions, questions, expectations, fears, hopes, disappointments. All the parts of our selves that we accumulate over a lifetime and don’t even realize we carry around with us. Gradually, day by day, week by week, pieces fell away. No grief was involved; it was a lifting off, a lightening. Space opened up within me. I felt increasingly empty, but with no sense of loss or regret. In many ways, it was like opening the door to my soul, which was a room without walls filled with nothing but light. I observed all this without any particular emotional response. It was just happening, peacefully.
Faith is an act of ultimate concern.
—Paul Tillich
By faith, I don’t mean obedience to any principle or doctrine or person, but more, a faith in life. Faith is our covenant with life no matter what befalls us. It is our belief that we are part of something larger than us. It is our commitment to let all that is larger than us be our teacher. What light is for plants and flowers, faith is for human souls. It is that which causes us to grow and that toward which we grow. Imagine a seed growing underground toward a light it can’t yet see. In just this way, love and suffering cause us to break ground and flower.
In my work with couples, I am often asked, "Shouldn't I communicate with my partner about this? Shouldn't we talk this over?"
For example, Ginger told me that when her husband, Ron, became demanding sexually or started to complain about not having enough sex, she was sexually turned off. She would become defensive, explaining her feelings to Ron repeatedly, in hopes of getting him to stop. She hoped that if she explained herself enough, he would understand that his demanding and complaining turned her off. Sometimes Ginger thought there was something wrong with her sexually when she was not turned on, and other times she thought that if only Ron would stop demanding and complaining, everything would be okay. Yet nothing changed. No amount of talking or explaining helped.
I was just sitting down to read a recent edition of my quarterly newsletter from the New Hampshire SPCA and who do I see featured on the back cover? It’s Koda and me!
As you know, I’ve been a supporter of this wonderful organization and its loving staff for over a decade, and also established The Koda Fund with them to help offer lifesaving medical treatment for animals in need.
I’m not kidding here. This latest article they wrote brought me to tears. In it, NHSPCA’s amazing special events and sponsorship manager Julie Halama wrote about the Zoom gathering I hosted earlier this year.
Today I thought we would talk about feelings … your feelings. Ooh, not a popular subject for many people.
Who wants to feel their feelings?
Do you struggle with allowing yourself to feel your feelings?
Do you know that you’ve got a compartment sitting over there full of feelings that you don’t let come through?
So, let’s talk about that. When you think about feeling your feelings, what comes up for you? What do you recognize? What button gets pushed? What trigger shows up when you think about feeling your feelings?