Control

You don't need to control everything.

On the contrary, you need to let go of the need to control everything.

Take control of your thoughts, make a plan, and then take control of that which you CAN control.

Let God have the rest.
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Too Perfect: When Being in Control Gets Out of Control

Compelled to Control: Recovering Intimacy in Broken Relationships

Losing Control Finding Serenity: How the Need to Control Hurts Us And How to Let It Go

Mindfulness

"The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

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Great Titles by Thich Nhat Hanh

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See and Say

"If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind"
- Buddha

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I've been wrestling with my gossip muscle lately.  I want to stop talking about people, a feat easier said than done.  But I am doing my best, and I talk a little less every day.

This lesson is carrying over to my son.

He found himself in a situation at school the other day.  He watched a girl pull another girl's cell phone out of her coat pocket, stare at it in surprise, and then say, "This is *whats-her-name's* phone... (insert confused look) What should I do with it?"

My son and the other girl present both agreed that she should give it to their teacher, and she did.  She was spotted by the phone owner as she was walking toward the teacher, and the girl promptly threw a tremendous fit, jumping up and down and screaming that "So-and-So" had stolen her phone.

Later that day, at home, my son was telling the tale and said that the teacher told him he would likely have to speak with the principal tomorrow and relay what he'd witnessed.  He sat here telling me that So-and-So is a "mean girl" and likes to get in people's coat pockets and turn their phones on (there's a rule against having your phone on in school) and then secretly call them from HER phone so they get in trouble.

This also isn't the first time her phone has ended up in someone elses pocket having been "stolen."

Then he starts telling me how he's going to tell the principal all these nasty things.

We ended up having quite a lengthy conversation about how just because he has suspicions about something doesn't make it so... And how would you feel if you said all those things and it turned out that it wasn't her at all, but someone else trying to set her up?

"You're going to be asked what you saw," I said, "and what you SAW is what you tell... period.  If you don't see it with your eyes, then don't see it with your mouth."

He was a little upset by that concept because he's VERY uncomfortable with what appears to be happening, so I drove the idea home a little more by saying, "How would you feel if someone THOUGHT you did something, and got you in trouble?  Most people won't remember that you were innocent after investigation.  Most people will only remember the accusation.  Would you like to be labeled according to something bad that someone assumed about you once that wasn't even TRUE?"

Then we talked about kindness.

"When asked what you saw, you say what you saw.  That doesn't include what you think or feel about it.  Don't relay that you think she's mean or sneaky or underhanded.  Those are not facts, they're just unkind things to say.  You're not being asked your opinion of her actions or personality.  You're being asked what you SAW.  If you go and run off at the mouth about what a JERK someone is, that only states plainly that YOU are a jerk."

I think he got it.  At 11, it's a tough concept to grasp.  But over the past week, that sentence has REALLY taken root in our house...

If you don't see it with your eyes, don't see it with your mouth.

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Great Titles from Amazon.com

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A Piece of Peace

"Peace is not merely a distant goal we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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We cannot have peace tomorrow.  If we choose peace, it's a choice made now.  Right now.

Choosing a peaceful life is something you choose to embrace "now," and then all actions and thoughts from that moment forward are based in the preservation of that chosen peace.

We can't decide we want peace, but we want it right after we show these people who's boss, or right after we get our way.  We can't bring peace by force.

Peace, in my opinion, isn't something that IS, it's the lack of something.  When you take away the disagreement and hatred and violence and force, you are left with a calm, acceptance called peace.

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Great Titles by Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Influences

The future influences the present just as much as the past.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
 

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The past influences our present because its happenings cause us to take a perspective and form thoughts relating to it.  Those thoughts are the first step in our actions.  Our present actions.

The future influences our present because its happenings are in their first step stage, our thoughts.  Our present thoughts about our future actions.

If you know in your first step stage, thoughts of future, where you are heading, your present changes to support the creation of future.

If you know in your present only that which is past, your past is all you will create presently.

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Great Titles by Friedrich Nietzsche

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The Pain of Joy

Consciousness is the ability to release the old and embrace the
new with the awareness that all things end at the appropriate
time and that all things begin at the appropriate time.
– Carolyn Myss

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I have suffered, so completely, throughout my life in times of loss.

The loss of my first real, adult relationship rendered me a blubbering mess for weeks.  How could he leave me?  How could he just walk away like that?

The loss of my Gram when she died.  She was more a mother to me than my mother.  It left a hole in my soul when she moved on, leaving me behind.

When I was forced to move eleven hours away from the best friend I'd ever had up until that point.  The one person I felt understood me.  How did they expect me to just pick up and move on, all by myself?

And there's SO many more instances.  So much more loss and pain that I've felt through my short life.  It's easy for me to understand how people come to completely identify with that pain and loss they experience and become less.  How they can let that loss carve a hole into them that stands forever a gaping chasm in their lives.  I can understand.

I experienced a shift in my consciousness when I was about 21.  A shift that forever changed the way I perceived all loss from that day, forward.  It was the most deeply profound moment of my lifetime and I'll never forget the staggering reality that it left behind.

I knew I could have been saved so much pain had I had this realization years earlier, but I understood at that point that I had to reach a place of contentment first.  I had to be happy to be where I was before I could realize the beauty that was the pain I had suffered.

How can pain and loss be beautiful?  How can it be divine in its heart wrenching misery?

I realized, very suddenly, and with amazing clarity, that if I had not been through each of those losses and experienced each of those miseries, the path I was walking would have forked me off into another direction.

Each pain was a crossroad in my life where I gathered my faculties and made choices.  Where I changed and grew and became this wonderful woman that I was in the process of becoming.

Had I not become her... Had I not took those steps and felt those things and found the new, and unexpected path beneath my feet... I could not have ended up at this particular destination.  This beautiful, fulfilling, loving, accepting, warm, and wonderful destination.

I stopped looking back on my pain and using it as the definition of my shortcomings.  I stopped defining my lack by my loss.

I began to see that it was actually my happiness that was defined by my loss.  It was the indescribable joy I was living in that was the result of my loss, because I wasn't actually lacking anything.

We are spiritual beings, here on earth, having this human experience.  Loss is form.  Where there is form, there will inevitably be loss.  But our joy in this experience isn't based on our possession of form, for that only sets us up to experience loss.

Our joy is based upon the growth that we experience through loss.  Upon our seeing that all things, gain AND loss, have conspired and are always conspiring to bring us to the place of our ultimate joy.  Our ultimate realization that our own happiness IS the reason for the happening of all things.

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Great Titles by Carolyn Myss

Anatomy of the Spirit
The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

Defy Gravity
Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason

Archetype Cards

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A Dysfunctional Defense

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
– Rene Descartes

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It's funny how there's satisfaction in being offended.  It doesn't seem like there'd be anything to gain by being put down emotionally, and yet there is a whole world of self righteous indignation in it.

It gives us a chance to not only make ourselves "right," but also a chance to make someone else "wrong."

And what could feel better than making someone else out to be a total jerk?  I mean, look what they did to you!

But that's the thing.  They didn't ACTUALLY do ANYTHING to you.

Offense is a false construct of the ego.  The ego is endlessly obsessed with being better than others.  The ego is the part of us that sees us as separate from each other and from God.  Without that distinct acknowledgment of separation, the ego cannot exist.  And what could be scarier than not existing?

The truth is...

Everything and anything that anyone will ever or has ever done or said to you was 100% about THEM and THEIR ego and THEIR perception and thoughts.  It has nothing to do with you.  Not  One  Thing!

If I say I don't like Jane.  Jane is a bitch.  Does that make Jane a bitch?  Not hardly.  Actually, it sorta makes ME a bitch.

But what if Jane IS a bitch?  She's done mean things to me and said mean things to me and she IS a bitch!!

Let's assume Jane is my age, which makes her in her early 30s.  How many moments in time has Jane occupied?  How many deeds must she have preformed over her 30+ years.  How many things she must've said to so many countless people.

Yet here I sit, completely judging poor Jane based upon only a couple deeds or words that would amount to a drop of experience in a bucket full of life lived.

Should Jane take offense to my calling her a bitch?  No, of course not.  What I know of Jane, even if I've known her for her entire life, amounts to almost nothing.

But WILL she take offense?  Probably.

She would probably come clawing back at me with a loud, resounding denial of her bitchdom, and a distinct accusation of my own.  And then there we'd stand, in opposition to each other, fingers pointed, insisting that "You are BAD and I am GOOD!  You are WRONG and I am RIGHT!"

Does that make me good and right?  No.  Does that make HER good or right?  Nope.

Does it make us feel better about ourselves to throw around such accusations at each other?  You bet it does!

But why?  If thinking it and feeling it and saying it DOESN'T make it true in any way, then why does it feel so GOOD?!?!

Because we already believe those "bad" things about ourselves, and in the finger pointing, we are "proving" our righteousness to ourselves.  When we defend ourselves against the accusations of others, we're not thinking about any of the less than gracious things we've done and said.  We're only thinking about how GOOD we are and how BAD they are.

But if Jane knew who she REALLY is, she wouldn't give a hoot about the dysfunctional thoughts of ego and separation inside of my head.  She would understand that she is a divine child of God who is sublime in her creation and is untouchable by any words I may spit at her.

She would rise above my judgments knowing that I am only judging her based upon things I am terrified are real in ME.  And that by attempting to amplify those things in her, I assuage my own ego and assure it that the evil I see in her cannot be inside of me, fore I can clearly see it "out there" and in her.

The greatest gift you can ever give yourself is to know, beyond a doubt, who you REALLY are, and to understand that you are forever untouchable until you make the decision to be touched.  But you will never need to allow the accusations of others to touch you because in the knowing of who you really are, you relinquish the need to defend yourself against the dysfunctional thoughts of others.

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Great Titles by Rene Descartes 

Discourse on Method
Meditations on Philosophy

Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings

Descartes
A Biography

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Embracing Changes

There are forces at work in your psyche which you cannot control.
They belong to a deeper and wiser part of yourself.
Sometimes it is essential to change an aspect of your life.
This is often the case if you are in a situation which is wrong for you or stagnating. If you resist change, your unconscious wisdom may give you a push by causing a disturbance in your life.
The shock you experience may therefore be a way of forcing necessary change on you.
– Sarah Dening

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 Change is the only real constant in our lives.  Energy is always in motion.

When we resist change, all we do is create discomfort for ourselves. We are always growing, and our perception is always changing.  When we try to remain steadfast in out perceptions when they're urging us to see differently, it creates pain.

When we go with the flow, and roll with the changes, and make the best of each situation while looking for solutions and comfort, we create an empowered and happy life for ourselves.

When we sit tight, insisting that we know everything, and we've reached our end, life tends to get more and more choppy around us.  Choppy and uncomfortable until our situation forces us into action and change.

Then once we change, our world levels out, and we find that peace and happiness again.  Even if only temporarily.  But our happiness is only temporary in this life model because we base our happiness upon our situation and circumstances.

Embracing the fact that life IS change creates an everlasting happiness that isn't dependent upon circumstances.  Knowing that change is ever coming toward you enables you to see your options and choose, instead of digging your heels in and refusing to move.

Change is exciting.  It's exhilarating to have endless options and choices, and the power to pick and choose and create.

Embrace your power to choose and change.  You have a guidance system inside of you to guide.  Allow it to show you the way.  It will never steer you wrong.

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Great Titles by Sarah Dening

The Everyday I Ching

The Mythology of Sex
Am Illustrated Explorant

Healing Dreams
How to Interpret Your Dream and Change Your Life

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To Create, Not Change What's Wrong

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
– Simone Weil

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This reminds me of Mother Teresa who declined to join a march against war stating that if they organized a march FOR PEACE, she'd be there.

We cannot make "bad" things stop or go away.  We CAN, however, make "good" things start or come closer.

This is a Universe of inclusion.  That means that all things are included.  If you're focused upon it, it will expand.

So, don't go out your door determined to STOP WAR.  Go out your door intending to bring peace.

Don't try to STOP DISEASE.  Instead, bring health.

Our life here is about creation.  We are creators.  It's what we do.

Now, knowing this, I want you to try to create "stop," or "don't," or "no."  You can't do it.  You simply cannot create those things.  What you will create is whatever subject comes after those words.

You will never create "stop hurting me" but you CAN create "love me."

The next time you feel like something's just not going the way you want it to, stop and consider what you want to create.  Not what IS or what shouldn't be or what you wish wasn't.... What do you WANT.

And then, for me at least (because I'm ALL about the higher power working through you), I ask for help from God.

God, please help me bring ____ into my life for the highest good of All.  Help me be this change and create joy and peace with it.  Thank you for all the wonderful blessings in my life.  I am eternally grateful and in love with it all.  Amen.

Don't ever pray; God, please make this stop.  God please take this away.  God please change what's wrong.
God wants to know what's RIGHT and what's GOOD and where your GRATITUDE is.  Whatever you're praying is assumed to be all those things.

Don't tell God his creations are wrong or unworthy or hated.  Just pour your blessings upon what is RIGHT and WONDERFUL, even if you can't see it all right now.

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Great Titles by Simone Weil

Waiting for God

Simone Weil: An Anthology

Gravity and Grace

 

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The Stuff of Happiness

That happiness is to be attained through limitless acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known, but is preached by every American TV set.
– Robert Bellah

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Boy have we all recently received a generous dose of THIS lately!!

We will never find the happiness we seek by acquiring things.  But by finding the happiness already living inside of us, our world on the outside begins to shift in its reflection, and the things we had always wished to acquire become easily accessible because through our acceptance and realized happiness, we have deemed ourselves worthy of receiving.

We find the happiness already living inside of us by singing our song.  How do you know what your song is?  What is it that you can do for hours?  What is it that you could focus on forever if your attention wasn't always pulled elsewhere eventually?

That's your song.  Sing it.

Turn off the TV, let go of the "stuff" you think you're missing, don't allow society to compare you to others.  You are you.  You are special simply by the virtue that you are an original, one of a kind.  Not another being in the Universe looks, thinks, acts, laughs, wants, loves the same as you.  Not ONE!

You are IT baby!  Strut your stuff!  Show the rest of Creation who you ARE!

Sing your song!

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Great Titles by Robert Bellah

Habits of the Heart
Individualism and Commitment in American Life

The Robert Bellah Reader

Beyond Belief
Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World

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