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Today's
Meditation:
The
myth of independence is one of the most difficult myths to
debunk in our society. We grow up thinking that
we're alone in life, that no one is affected by what we do
and that we can do everything on our own, all the
time. This leads many people to believe that nothing
that they do has any positive effect on others, yet the
simple truth of the matter is that most of what we do
affects others. And what we give to the world is
what comes back to us.
Part
of the problem is that we usually don't recognize what's
coming our way as a result of our own previous
actions. We don't see an immediate cause-and-effect
relationship, so we don't realize that one is there.
But my act of kindness today will come back to me as a
kindness eventually, and my act of anger or envy or
prejudice will come back to me as a similar act at some
time in the future.
We're
not alone on the planet, even though we may often feel
isolated and lonely. It's only when we're finally
able to give up this loneliness, though, that we can take
our place among the others in the world and recognize just
how closely intertwined our lives are, and just how
clearly our actions come back to us. When we give,
we are given to; when we take selfishly, things are taken
from us.
We
choose what we send into the lives of others. When
we choose things like love and compassion and
encouragement and positive teaching, guess what? We
find that our own lives are becoming richer as a result of
what we give to others. We may not see it
immediately and we may not recognize what comes our way as
results of our own actions, but we do see more positive
results in our lives when we strive to give positively to
others.
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