Words of wisdom

Spiritual practices can be so simple and yet many people, myself included at times, insist on complicating them. What are we really called to do other than have a grateful heart and show compassion and forgiveness to our fellow humans? Not much. After that, everything else is just details.

I am a collector of wisdom. One of the ways I do it is by collecting quotes. Quotes from great literature, philosophy, history, religion, art and science. Collecting bits of wisdom left to us by amazing enlightened thinkers is one of the most solid spiritual practices I have ever done. Because every time I read someone’s gentle thoughts on love, forgiveness, kindness, compassion or gratitude, I am reminded of my purpose and strengthened in my resolve to realize it.

Connecting with someone through their words is connecting with their mind. And when we connect with the mind of another, we connect with the One Mind.

It’s amazing when you think about it. Time and space dissolve when we truly understand someone’s words (thoughts).

The quote that started me thinking about all of this:

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.” ~Meister Eckhart

That’s why it’s important to express ourselves. No matter how uncomfortable it might feel to make yourself vulnerable, you can never predict who might be helped or inspired by what you have to say.

I hope more people start posting blogs.

Life is really beautiful.

Infinite possibilites

My life lessons usually come to me through mindful, non-judgmental observations of myself and others. When I finally started paying attention I discovered that everyday life holds a gold mine of wisdom for those who seek it.

There is a guy at my job who rubs me the wrong way, so to speak. His energy is overpowering and dark. He is an unhappy man. My heart has compassion for him because although I do not know all of what he deals with, I sense that he is carrying heavy burdens in his heart. Some are really obvious. When you truly listen to people with active awareness you hear what they are really saying and sometimes you hear it in the things that are left unsaid.

I sense that this person is really disappointed with where he is in life. The job is not the type of thing most people would  aspire to. It’s a way to make a living…and that’s really all.

For me it’s a bit more than that. I have this opportunity to talk to the 50 or so people I talk to in a given day and with that opportunity comes the opportunity to treat people respectfully with awareness. The people I have talked to since I started this job have been overwhelmingly affirming and grateful for the help I give them. It’s been nice.

With every relationship we participate in, whether it is a 3-minute phone conversation or a 50-year friendship or marriage, we have the opportunity to bless and lift up our fellow humans. And when we are able to take a step back and look at the big picture, it’s apparent that blessing each other is how we are going to change the world for the better and facilitate the positive shift in consciousness that is currently underway.

Going back to the person from work, he seems to believe he’s fallen short of some ideal and comes across as the guy who settled for mediocrity, never gets the breaks, doesn’t get the girl, etc.

This got me thinking about how we are conditioned by our families in childhood to follow the example that is set for us. To do otherwise is to reject the tribe. It seems to me that in the best case scenario, a child is allowed to grow up and be whomever he/she is without being judged by parents as having betrayed the family.

My family has a dysfunctional pattern. There are silent directives about work, money, love and relationships. In my family, we are all called to be martyrs to the family ideals, ideals that are really messed up. One standard is to stay unhappily married for long, long periods of time, sacrificing health and happiness to the comfort of predictability and keeping up appearances. There are strong messages about what is an acceptable profession and amount of money to make and about [false] humility. What my family defines as humble is not humble at all. It’s amazingly arrogant. In every martyr/victim is a person who feels morally superior in some way. It’s a small reward for carrying such a heavy burden through life.

A couple of days ago a coworker remarked that it must be frustrating [for me] to have all that education and not be able to use it. At the time I agreed, but later I thought about it and wondered why I agreed with that. Yes, society expects me to feel badly that I have a law degree and I am making a modest living doing a job that barely requires a high school level education. I suppose I could feel upset about that if I wanted to. But there is another way of looking at it. For one, I use my education every day. My skills in reasoning and observation serve me well every day. It’s just that this employer is getting a bargain for my time. That’s okay. I’m helping people and making a positive difference in many people’s lives…5 minutes at a time. What more could I hope for?

I am finding my way through life on my terms. I may stumble and have hard times, but I am living this life, making my mistakes and learning from them. I’m paying attention. And I have decided there are certain patterns from childhood that are going to stop with me. I am challenging the things I have believed unconsciously most of my life. It’s uncomfortable and I don’t always like what I see, but the rewards are huge. I am watching myself become a more gentle compassionate person as I understand my role in the universal human drama.

Today I was thinking about how between liberation and true freedom lies a desolate place in the soul where we wander as the Jewish people did before reaching the promised land.

After you tear it down it takes a while to build it again, but the rebuilding begins immediately, which is great.

I’m sort of in that place, wandering, thinking, learning…alone. I almost want to think of the word alone as all one. Because really, that’s what’s going on, the steady realization that there is only one of us here. Every day I feel the connection grow stronger.

Bless all the people at my new job. Bless the people who call my phone. Bless everyone I pass walking to my office. Bless everyone I know. Bless everyone reading these words. Bless us all, everyone.

The world is full of possibilities and choices. We are never without choice, no matter how badly things appear to be going. If you’re still breathing, you still have the power of choice.

That is a glorious thought.

Learning the lessons

Now that I seem to be leaving this dark period of intense stress and uncertainty, I have this void in my life where all the worry was taking up space in my heart.  I think the way to fill that void is by figuring out what some of the lessons are.

It’s amazing to have lived as many years as I have lived and have only been learning the big lessons for about 6 years.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in the past few years is to love as unconditionally as possible and strive to give everyone the benefit of every doubt.  It’s really nothing more than the golden rule.  I treat people as I want to be treated.  I love them, forgive them when they make mistakes, give them space and privacy if they want it and try not to interfere with anyone’s free will.

Part of learning how to love has involved hard lessons in expressing love.  I think sometimes people don’t know what to do with me and all my affirmations and quotes and going on about love all the time.  It’s not that easy to explain to those who haven’t been through what I have been through.  Part of it is just me, I’ve always had a sense of urgency about life that makes me come across as intense, which I am.  But the other part is that I have many years of non-expression to make up for.  Not because I think I was doing anything wrong all those years, I was certainly doing the best I could with what I had to work with, but as one who now understands the power of love, I want to put as much of it into the world as I can before I move on to the next assignment.

Because I grew up in a world of criticism and detachment, I didn’t really learn how to connect with people on a heart level.  It has caused all manner of difficulty in my relationships.  Once I realized that negative criticism is not a proper way to communicate with anyone, all my relationships improved.  I’m not here to judge anyone.  I’m here to affirm all the goodness I see and accept the rest as part of the deal.  Not judge it as negative, just accept it for what it is, something that doesn’t feel good to me.  Right and wrong are not clear distinctions.  There is so much unknown at any given time that the best we can do is know that we don’t know what anyone is dealing with and give them the compassion we would want for ourselves when we are carrying invisible burdens in our hearts.

One of the things I have learned to do is tell people how I feel about them.  Because I feel really happy about most people most of the time.  I think people are beautiful and complicated.  And I want them to know I appreciate them.  There is no way to describe the joy this has brought to my life.  From waiting in line at the post office to nearly every phone conversation I have.  When you look for the beauty in people, you will find it.

I think most people are longing to be seen.  I think everyone has beauty they keep hidden because this is a harsh world and not everyone can be trusted with our hearts.  When we encounter someone unconditionally accepting and loving, the natural inclination is to open like a flower.  One of the greatest privileges of my life is to watch people blossom before my eyes because they know that I see what is true in them.  I think I have always had this gift but I have only been able to appreciate it since learning to be present and aware.

There have been people in my life, especially in the past 5 or 6 years, who have no idea how wonderful they are.  When I show them they are amazed.  Some of them couldn’t handle it.  One in particular I can think of decided some things about himself that are not the truth of who he is and what I saw didn’t match how he saw himself.   So instead of bringing comfort, it brought him confusion and misery.  Sometimes being in the gaze of loving eyes is uncomfortable.  I get that.  I’ve experienced it myself and it can be overwhelming.

It gives me joy when people awaken to their own beauty and greatness because of something I have said to them.  And I am humbled when people express amazement at my ability to do that.  That is a question I have been asked so many times in the past few years.  How I see the good through all of the other stuff.  It takes practice, but it’s so worth it.

The most profound lesson I learned in the art of transformative thinking was from Thich Nhat Hanh.  I was fresh out of 20 years of Christianity and things were in chaos all around me.  My marriage was over, I was in the middle of law school and pretty sure I should have gotten a PhD in history instead, and for the first time in my life I was spending enough time alone to see myself clearly.  There was a lot of garbage in there.  I read in one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books that everything is in a constant state of transformation.  Today’s garbage is tomorrow’s flower.  We take the garbage, make compost of it, and grow a beautiful flower.  That idea touched me so profoundly that it changed my life and I became determined to make beauty out of everything that life presents.  Between that and learning the most simple meditation on earth, also from Thich Nhat Hanh, my life has been transformed into one of eternal hope rather than despair.

I think the recent lessons have been to remember that if I stay true to love, the only force in the world that is real, nothing can ever really hurt me again.  If love is the motivation for all my actions, I will be at peace.  If I am not at peace then I know that I need to  adjust my perspective and find the love.  That’s all there is.  Life is not nearly as complicated as we try to make it.

“Like a lotus flower that grows out of the mud and blossoms above the muddy water surface, we can rise above our defilements and sufferings of life.”

Impermanence is a beautiful thing.

Meaning amidst chaos

I haven’t been writing much lately.  It’s always curious to me that the more I have on my mind, the less able I am to write.  It’s almost like the opposite of writer’s block.  Sometimes I have so many thoughts in my mind I can’t hold on to one long enough to write about it.

And then there is my hesitation around sharing things that sound negative, even though I know they are not.  Even when I reflect on things that are sad or unfortunate, I do so with a heart full of hope.  I am always looking for the good and I find it in places that don’t always make sense to others.

Recently I read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.  It was one of the best decisions I have made in a while.  It made me feel less alone and less weird for my determination to see the beauty of this human experience regardless of what is going on around me.  I’d like to share one of the many passages that had me sobbing from it’s simple eloquence.  While trudging through ice and snow, starving, trying not to fall, Frankl, thinking of his wife, has this incredible insight:

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers.  The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.  Then I grasped the meaning  of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart.  The salvation of man is through love and in love.  I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.  In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way–an honorable way–in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.  For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

One of the things I love about this book is that Frankl seems to understand that human suffering is relative.  He doesn’t declare that what he went through was worse than someone who suffers in some other way, although most of us know that we haven’t experienced anything close to what the holocaust victims endured.  I find it fascinating that no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, our degree of suffering is largely self-determined.  It’s possible to be in more despair over something superficial and arguably unimportant than something life threatening; it’s all about perspective.

So I was thinking about love and how it helps us to endure just about anything.  If it weren’t for my kids I don’t know how I would have made it through some of my recent darker moments.

In ways that most people take for granted, real love has eluded me my entire life.  When I was growing up there were two things that never happened at all in my recollection that most people just assume are a normal part of growing up.  Neither one of my parents ever said the words I love you to me or my siblings and we were never hugged, ever.  In fact, my parents thought that saying those words made a person weak and ridiculous.  The only physical contact I can remember was being hit, kicked, slapped, beaten or otherwise touched inappropriately.  Verbally, we were either criticized or accused.  Aside from that we were ignored.  I have to admit, one advantage to being the youngest child in that family was I was ignored more than my siblings.  I wasn’t of any real use to anyone, so I was just left alone most of the time.

What’s the point of sharing this?  Not really sure other than I know writing about these things recently has been therapeutic for me.  However, one of the things I want to share is how even though the circumstances of my childhood were bleak and truly difficult for me, I was a happy kid.  I sorta had to be.  The family relied on me to be the tension breaker, the cute one who acted silly and made everyone laugh.  To this day I find it very difficult to be near a situation of conflict between two people without trying to make it better.  I think that’s why I focused on mediation in law school.  It’s probably also why I worked as an ombudsman early in my career, before law.

So parental love was not part of my experience growing up.  As much as I have been able, through counseling and tons of introspection, I have dealt with it and tried to make the best of all of it.  What I went through as a kid created the compassionate and empathetic heart I have today.  And truthfully, those are the things I like best about myself.  I am capable of great depths of kindness and compassion because of the things I have experienced in my life.  It is very difficult for me to see someone suffering.  I would rather suffer myself than see another creature in pain, whether physically or emotionally.

I think this bumpy start I got in life spilled over into the area of romantic love and made things bumpy there as well.  I’m alone and I would prefer not to be, but find myself no longer willing to compromise and accept a person who criticizes me constantly, cheats on me, lies to me and takes advantage of me.  I’ve had way too much of that in my long-term relationships.  I’m not sure what it will take for me to find someone to fall in love with, but I just know he’s out there and he’s looking for someone exactly like me.

I have one thing going for me in this romantic love issue–the way people are magnetically drawn to me.  And as I become the more healthy me, I am going to attract other healthy people.

There have been some big changes in my perspective the past few years, but I have never been more confident about why I am here and what my purpose is on this earth.  I am here to show love, compassion and forgiveness to everyone and let go of all negativity and hard feelings that have been a part of any relationship I have had.  I am choosing to look at every person as a teacher who carries a lesson that I will learn through my interactions with them.

Most of my life I felt like when I die my tombstone should read: I’m Sorry.  You name it, I’m sorry for it.  Because I have spent a good deal of my life sort of apologizing to the entire world just for being here.  I think I have apologized enough.  I’ve done the penance, I get to be happy now because I know myself and I know that I am a good person wanting only to do good in the world.  Mistakes are made, lessons are learned.  I am not my mistakes and I am done judging and punishing myself for the events of my life.  I know how sad my life story sounds, but I believe I have been called to bear that burden as graciously as possible and not to let the experiences go to waste.  If anyone at all can be helped by the telling of my story, even me, then it needs to be told.

All I ever wanted as a kid was for someone to be gentle with me, care about me unconditionally and let me know I was okay.  That didn’t happen.  But I have now figured out that it’s okay because I can have those things for myself by being that for others. There is such beauty and hope in that thought.

These are some of the lessons I have learned, painfully, in the past couple of years.  My search for meaning…and finding it.

Be Here Now

Yesterday a friend of mine reminded me of the night my spiritual awakening suddenly sped up about a year and a half ago.  The night I almost gave up.  It’s been a while since I have thought about it.  That’s probably a good thing.

An amazing transformation happens when a person gets a taste of ultimate despair.

Having that experience changed me profoundly.  I had been depressed and heartbroken before in life, but had never seriously considered giving up altogether until that night.  And it was my birthday.  That’s pretty sad to remember.  Every single one of my illusions about everything shattered that night.  Ultimately that is a good thing, but when it happens all at once, it’s a very frightening experience.  By the end of that night, I didn’t have any beliefs anymore.  There was not a single thing I could say I believed as a certainty.  There still isn’t very much.  I believe in love.  And that’s really all.

I’m a better person now.  I don’t think I’m special or fundamentally different from anyone.  At the end of the day we’re all here for the same reason and all want the same things, to be happy, to avoid suffering and to give and receive love.  That’s all there is and every action is born of one of those.

My existence is dedicated to the force many of us call God or the Universe or the Source.  I use all of those terms and more.  My life is my gift to my fellow humans and to God as a show of gratitude for all the blessings I have received.  All that I have I offer to others.  I don’t have many material possessions, but I do have a unique perspective and a modest talent for writing which allows me to share the things that have made a huge difference in my development.  Those I offer freely to anyone who can benefit from them.

The night I wanted to give up was a night of ultimate awareness.  My eyes were opened and I saw straight into the mysteries of the universe.  Suddenly everything made sense.  It was still really painful, but I understood.  That’s why I seem generally positive to people.  I’m just glad to be here, because I know there was a time I didn’t want to be and wasn’t sure if I would be.  Everything after that is icing.  As difficult as my life is for me at times, I am living it and I am right here, present and aware most of the time.

In times of suffering as well as times of joy, being in the present moment is the only time we are ever truly living our lives.  Whenever our minds are in the past or the future we are missing out on life, it is passing us by.  The great thing about staying present during the suffering is that any mistakes I make from here on out will never be made again in my life.  Patterns of behavior are busted when we are paying attention and willing to change.  To the extent that I am able to pay attention to my life, I never have to repeat mistakes or painful, habitual patterns anymore.  The choice is mine, habits do not rule me.  That alone is worth the effort it takes to be present in the now.

After so many years of being disconnected from my feelings out of shame for having them, really feeling things is glorious.  It adds such depth to life.

As much as I feel like I unload in this blog, at a fundamental level, I am happy.  There are blessings on their way that will bring even more joy into my life, but I’m still happy now, even with all the uncertainty and angst.  Because I’m here, now, in the present moment where everything is always fine.

Sometimes I wonder

Today I was thinking:

I wonder how many people are  living a life that is so painful that the idea of taking responsibility for it feels like the thing that will put them over the edge.

I wonder how many people live each day wondering if they can endure any more disappointment or hardship.

I wonder how many people feel like they might give up if one more thing goes wrong.

I wonder how many people know that dwelling on misfortune only brings more misfortune and truly want to think better thoughts, but struggle because the reality of life is constantly intruding on their efforts to think positively.

I wonder how many people feel worthless and isolated because they are unable to meet society’s expectations, not of success, but of minimum standards.

I wonder how many people feel the weight of the world on their shoulders and simultaneously marvel at how homeless people keep going and yet envy them for having only to concern themselves with their own physical survival.

I wonder how many people feel like the world would be better off without them, but know that would only add another burden on the people they love.

I wonder how many people there are who think they must be cursed or so fatally flawed that they will die alone and destitute.

I wonder how many people feel like nobody has ever loved them and nobody ever will and that somehow they deserve that.

I wonder how many people look around them and see people caring about their own material success, not their fellow humans, until a disaster happens and it is suddenly cool and trendy to appear to care for the briefest of moments before returning to pursuit of material things.

I wonder how many people wake up exhausted at the idea of another day in this world.

To these people I wish to say:

Hang on.  Don’t give up.  You are not alone.  We are all in this together and we only need to find one other person who understands and cares.  It might not be the people you think it will be because sometimes at our darkest moments, everyone we thought would care disappears.  It’s okay.  Keep looking.  Because as bad as life sometimes feels, YOU may be the light that gives someone else the strength to get through another day.  And it may be as simple as an understanding and heartfelt smile.

Today you might smile and open a door for a person who is at the end of their rope and in so doing, open the door to hope and the will to survive.

Let us be gentle with one another.  This is a tough planet to live on sometimes.  We all need all the love and compassion we can find.

Metta Sutta:

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

Hopeful

I hope people understand why I write the way I do.  Having never been told otherwise, writing a blog feels like having a conversation with the whole world.  Most of my writing comes from that place inside that wants to let people know that I understand and I feel compassion for us all.  That’s the biggest reason I share things that to me feel very personal.

Things have been happening that are not comfortable.  But I realized today that I am facing my fears head on and once I work through this period of my life, I’m going to emerge a lighter, happier person.  The one thing I will say about experiencing misfortune is that once you let go of the things that you thought were stable and necessary, including belief systems, life becomes very simple, very quickly.  And for myself I can say that most of the time I feel peaceful.  I share some of my angst here, but I am largely calm and happy.

The way I stay peaceful is by daily reflecting on the blessings in my life.  There is so much good and so much beauty around for people who are able to stay present.  I would like to see mindfulness taught to school children.  The world would be a much better place.

I like to make lists.  But for some reason during times of stress, I forget to do it.  I decided tonight that I am going to make a list of the things I like best about myself and at least one other person.  There have been some really wonderful people in my life.  And even though things feel a little lonely at times, I know these people are a phone call away and there are a lot of them.  I need to remember that when I start feeling isolated.

I wish for all people to be gentle and compassionate toward themselves.  Start there and it will radiate outward.

I’m feeling hopeful tonight.

Accountable

Things continue to be challenging in my world.  I’m making it through, but I have to be honest with myself and acknowledge that accepting full responsibility for my life takes a lot of effort sometimes.

People sometimes tell me I’m too hard on myself.  I don’t really see it that way.  I am holding myself accountable for my experience in this lifetime, that’s all.  That is why I am so careful about how I interact with others.  My beliefs and ideals tell me it is right for me to do everything in my power to make sure that my interactions with others are always a benefit to them and never a detriment.

To the best of my ability I only want to bless people and wish good for them.  The times I am able to do that with little effort are the happiest times of my life. That is when life is going smoothly and I have lots of energy and everything is lovely.

Recently things really haven’t gone smoothly and I have been weary mentally, physically and spiritually.  At these times it becomes the most challenging thing in my life to practice self-responsibility.  Having someone to blame can be way more comfortable than analyzing one’s own responsibility in a situation.

Self-accountability is not taking 100% of the responsibility for everything that happens.  We constantly interact with people and things that we can’t control. Taking responsibility for myself is just looking at my part in things.  It is not my business what issues someone else may need to address about themselves; it’s not my place to point things out.  Even if I think you’re 90% wrong about something, my job is to take responsibility for my 10% and figure out what I need to learn.  That’s all.

I don’t feel like it’s my job to point out flaws in others.  If I can see it in someone else, I need to look for it in myself.  And if it’s something very bothersome, I have to figure out how to change it.

Earlier I was feeling sad because of some of the things going on right now.  I was sort of considering my life and how things have been recently.  And I was having a hard time with the question I was asking myself: Did I really create all of this? If everything that feels right in my belief system is correct, then everything going on in my life is the result of my choices.  So I am the only one to blame or to credit for how my experience unfolds.

Taking responsibility is a whole lot easier and more fun when things are going great.  Like when everything is going my way, money is coming from all directions and I feel like I am really fulfilling my purpose on earth.  Actually, most people don’t mind taking credit at those times.  This is not one of those times.

When times are challenging, it helps to allow myself to feel badly for a short period of time, maybe an evening, and during that time become my own best friend.  I allow myself to feel whatever I feel, regardless of how positive or negative.  I mentally tell myself it’s okay to be sad about things.  The trick is not to wallow in it and allow it to paralyze me.  My greatest super power may be my ability to keep moving forward.  One of the ways I accomplish this is by being gentle with myself whenever possible.

When I feel sad, I keep things peaceful and quiet in my space, light candles and incense and eat good, healthy food.  And drink lots of water.  Being well hydrated makes life so much easier.  I’m not sure everyone understands the correlation between dehydration and feeling crappy.

I need to stay strong for the rest of this journey. I still have stuff to do.  I need to take care of myself because ultimately, I’m all I have.

Here’s to finding the peace that transcends all understanding.

Cheryl

Does everything happen for a reason?

Today’s post inspiration brought to you by WordPress. Thank you, WordPress.

Asking if everything happens for a reason is one of the most fundamental questions of humankind, in my opinion.  It’s right up there with Why are we here?

What is the alternative to everything happening for a reason?  Is it even possible that things happen for no reason? Could the universe withstand it?

My opinion is everything happens for a reason, but the reasons things happen are largely determined by the individuals to which they appear to be happening.  Or rather, the individual determines what lessons are learned from the things that happen.  Learning lessons helps us move forward on the path to enlightenment, which to me is the ultimate reason.  So, the decision of whether things happen for a reason is up to the individual, who is in complete control over his/her experience in this lifetime.

That is what I believe anyway.

I have a much more personal reason for thinking everything happens for a reason.  One that applies the above statements to my real life.

As I have referred to previously in this blog, my life thus far has consisted of a lot of challenging circumstances.  I have survived child abuse, lost loved ones and good friends, suffered major financial setbacks and been in utter despair over what I perceived to be my failure at life.  But I’m still here and I’m still trying to be a good person.  I haven’t given up hope.

The most difficult rough patch of my adult life has been the past 2 years.  And yet, I am absolutely certain that all is well and that I am succeeding.  I’ve read a lot of quotes that say the measure of a person is how they respond in times of difficulty and challenge, not how they behave when times are easy. I take that to mean that it’s easy to be positive when things are going well, but it is actually work when things are falling apart all around you.

Choosing to live a life of forgiveness, peace and unconditional love is a huge commitment I made to my fellow humans.  I think my life and how I live it is my gift to the Universe or God or whatever you want to call it.  I also consider it my gift to the lovely people I encounter during my time on earth.

But for the events of my life, I would not be the person I am today.  I would not know how strong and resilient I am.  I would not know how capable I am to not only endure my circumstances, but also transcend them and find the beauty in this human experience.  Had my faith not been severely tested in some extremely stressful situations, I would not have the spiritual muscle to bless those who hurt me or who wish me harm.

So, I absolutely believe things happen for a reason.  There can be no question after seeing the things I’ve seen in my lifetime.  To believe otherwise is to choose to believe I am the victim of a force that is capricious and chaotic at best and at worst, evil.

Ultimately, it’s pretty basic.  Believing things happen for a reason brings me comfort, which makes me feel good.  Believing random negative and catastrophic events happen does not bring me comfort, which does not make me feel good.

Don’t even get me started on self-responsibility.

Here’s a syllogism to sum it up: Thinking happy thoughts feels good.  Thinking unhappy thoughts feels bad.  I like to feel good.  Therefore, I must choose the happiest thought I am capable of in any given circumstance.

So I do.

Blessings.

Cheryl

As above, so below

 

This feels like a blog I can post if I can just stay with it long enough to get this thought out of my head and onto this page.

Starting a new blog is work.  Being obsessive about one’s writing makes it even more work.  Admittedly, I also have some personal characteristics that make focusing a challenge at times.  Still, I want this blog to be a positive experience, so I feel like I need to be a bit more specific about its purpose.

I want my writing to be based in spirituality and be about how to make the world healthier, happier and more kind.  What I’m finding is that I like writing about mundane details of day-to-day living.  But as I realized just this morning, therein lies my spirituality.  My whole existence is based on desire and intent to be fully present and have as much control over my mind as possible so, to the best of my ability, I will be able to bring only good to my experiences.  And what I have figured out so far is, it is not always clear on the surface how to do that.

How do we bring only good to life?  If it is even possible, is it too lofty a goal for a regular person just wishing to live a peaceful existence?  Questions like these make my life seem like some sort of cosmic social scientific experiment.

Which brings me to my blog’s purpose, as I understand it today.  This blog needs to be about seeing the spiritual big picture in the most mundane moments of life.  Because it’s always there.  To see it is a skill that develops with practice and is the source of the ability to think positively…or faith as it is also called.  While there is always opportunity for improvement, I see continuous progress in my life and I often feel a strong, spiritual force with me that helps me see things from many perspectives.

The idea to make this blog about the spiritual questions I encounter daily arises from some things that are happening in my world that make me have to think through, refine and clarify my beliefs.  Not in a dark, heavy way, but more of a quick run through my spiritual filter to check for inconsistencies.  I will write about those as they come up, so there should never be a shortage of topics.

I believe life is a series of questions for each of us to answer, with the composite of those answers being the foundation of our individual belief systems.  The questions do not always seem big on the surface, but that is one of the ways we are deceived by appearances.  Because things as small as asking yourself why it matters what kinds of household cleansers to use can seem unimportant, but when a billion people fail to ask that question, the earth suffers.

Peace and balance are what I seek for myself.  Remaining open to as many ways of seeing things as possible and staying ever present and aware are the tools I use to maintain equanimity.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts as life sends me the questions.

Cheryl

“Life is a mathematical equation…work it out on paper…keep a journal.” ~Me