11 November 2024         

   

Another beautiful day is here with us on this planet, and we're thankful that you're
here with us to share it!  Today we share some thoughts with you from people who
have tried to share with us their insights into life, and we hope that you're able to
find something here that's relevant to your life and interesting to you.

   
   

   

Eliminate Expectations and Concentrate on
What Is at Task      Michael Goddart

The Tiny Black Dot
Jeff Keller

Awe and Wonder
tom walsh

   
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Simple and Profound Thoughts
(from Simple and Profound)

The true joy of humankind is in doing that which is most proper to our nature; and the first property of people is to be kindly affected towards them that are of one kind with ourselves.     -Marcus Aurelius

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think,  all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.  The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world.  I hardly know which feeling leads, wonderment or admiration.     -John Burroughs

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and the angels know of us.    -Thomas Paine

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day.   -Elwyn Brooks White

   

  
Eliminate Expectations and Concentrate on What Is at Task
Michael Goddart

For all we know, we could wait at a red light and it might never change.  That's happened before.  Or, it could start flashing amber.  Or, it could change to blue.  Or, stranger things could happen.  When we have set ideas about how things should manifest, of how things will happen to us, we're limiting the possibilities of luck, chance connections, grace, and miracles.  When we're set on something, and it has to happen that way, we're closing the door to wonderful surprises.  When a hand keeps grasping after something, it's not open, waiting to receive.

We have expectations about everything in life.  We expect that something will come in the mail, that we're going to have a fantastic vacation, that a stock will rise 40 percent by January, that the new people in our lives are going to do wonderful things for us, that our children will succeed in life.  By projecting these expectations, we're attempting to order reality.  Not only are we proclaiming how reality should be but we're also deciding that we know what is best for us.

This is the height of egotism.  Ego or I-ness cuts us off from our Source and separates us from our Higher Power.  The force of ego is about making its own mountain for all the world to see, and standing tall at its summit.

The force of love is about serving our Higher Power, glorifying that divine connection, and letting our ego slip away while we flow freely in the stream of life, striving to realize the heart-felt goals that express our highest, best Self.

As our spirituality develops and we live more in higher consciousness, we exist more fully in the present.  Existing in present time, we're less aware of ourselves and time, flowing in that higher consciousness, so that time begins to feel almost elastic and almost nonexistent.  That elasticity is the beginning of eternity.  Beginning to enter into eternity is not possible unless the ego is surrendered.  When we're attached to our expectations--in effect, demanding that events unfold according to our will--we are energizing our ego and telling our Higher Power that we know best.

Relinquishing expectations is not being passive.  It's the opposite; it's freeing ourselves to concentrate on the task at hand and to flow with what is truly so.  What is so is the reality occurring now, which we need to recognize and respond to.

Eliminating expectations does not at all mean that you stop your good intentions.  You can form the intention and let go of it, letting your Higher Power work out the details in your best interest.  That is humility.  A humble person can have potent intention but relinquish nitty-gritty expectations about the how and when.  In humility, you surrender to your Higher Power and want your attention free to be with that Higher Love.  The greater the immersion in that Higher Love, the less strident the ego's demands.

Eliminating expectations is but one small feature of inculcating humility.  Reams could be written about humility, the most beautiful of virtues and the most difficult ultimately to receive.  For ultimately, humility is not grabbed, as if you are a corporate raider intent on amassing the most virtuous spiritual portfolio.  It's a very slow, natural process.

more thoughts and ideas on now

   


   
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The Tiny Black Dot
Jeff Keller

During some of my presentations, I take an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of white paper and make a little black dot in the middle.  Then I show the sheet to people in the audience and ask them what they see.  The majority will say that they see a black dot.  Very few, if any, will tell me that they see a white sheet of paper with a tiny black dot.

We tend to look at our lives in very much the same way.  We have our health, enough food to eat, a job that pays the bills and allows us some leisure activities, but we don't focus on that.  We don't appreciate that.

Instead, we concentrate on the tiny black dot - the 10% in our lives that we don't like. . . or the things we wish we could change.  By concentrating on the 10% that represents our problems or things we don't like, we develop a negative attitude and feel lousy.  Plus, there's a universal principle that comes into play: we attract what we think about most.

By focusing on what is lacking in our lives, we create more experiences of scarcity.

Think about your life.  Are you paying too much attention to the 10% that isn't what you want it to be, as opposed to the 90% that's going well?  I'm not saying we should ignore our challenges or things we'd like to change.  But if we paid a lot more attention to the 90% that IS working, we'd have a better attitude and we'd get better results.

When it comes to your job, do you concentrate on all the positive aspects of your position, or do you gripe about your salary and your co-workers, or the fact that someone else got the promotion you wanted?

What about the basic necessities of life?  Do you feel gratitude every day for the food you eat, the clothing you have, the roof above your head, or do you take all of these things for granted?  Worse yet, do you complain that you don't have more?

And let's not forget your body and your health.  How much time do you spend thinking about what IS working?  Your body is a miracle, make no mistake about that.  There's nothing "ho-hum" about your body and its day to day operation.

Albert Einstein once said that there are two ways to live your life:  one way is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle.

Most of us walk around with a ho-hum attitude about the miracle of our bodies. We treat this amazing creation as if it's no big deal.

Consider this:  your heart is only the size of a fist and yet it pumps blood through your body.  Every day, the heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood and beats about 100,000 times.  That's just in one day.

In one year, that amounts to 36,500,000 beats.  And in most cases, the heart just keeps on beating 36,500,000 times a year for many decades.  Stop for a moment and recognize the enormity of this miracle.

And, of course, you don't have to change any body parts or beat your chest manually to keep your heart going.  It automatically beats and sends the blood through your body with no effort on your part.

Now, let's consider your brain.  The brain and spinal cord are made up of many cells, which include neurons.  There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain.  100 billion!  Neurons are nerve cells that transmit nerve signals to and from the brain at up to 200 miles per hour.  Isn't this amazing?

Of course, your ears. . . your eyes. . . well, I could go on all day about the miracle of your body and how we take it for granted.  Just one final example to drive the point home.

When you get a cold and have difficulty breathing for a few days, I bet you'll often tell everyone that you are congested and don't feel well.  When the cold clears up in a week and your breathing returns to normal, you probably don't say:  "My breathing is perfect today! I'm able to get all the oxygen I need!"  Why does it make sense to complain about your breathing for the one week it is impaired. . . while failing to acknowledge the other 51 weeks when your breathing is full and healthy?

Stop taking this incredible body for granted.  Appreciate all the things that ARE working!  You're a walking miracle, and part of an extraordinary universe.

Some of you may feel that ignoring the black dot is not the answer--and that you need to focus on the  black dot to improve certain conditions in your life.  Well, if you choose this route, here are three strategies you could use:

1.  Worry about the black dot.
2.  Complain about the black dot.
3.  Take some proactive steps to eliminate or reduce the black dot.

The only strategy that makes sense is #3.  Yet many people select strategies #1 and #2, which only makes them more miserable.

Be brutally honest with yourself.  Are there any areas of your life where you're ignoring the large white sheet and seeing only the tiny black dot?  Do you see the faults of those at work or at home, and seldom affirm people for their positive contributions to your life?  If you're like most of us, you have an abundance of blessings, yet you're often blind to them.

If you've been staring at some tiny black dots recently, take responsibility for that.  And recognize that nobody is forcing you to keep your eyes on the black dot.  You've developed the habit of focusing on the negative and your life (and the lives of those around you) will be greatly enriched if you start to shift your vision toward the white sheet.

You have a choice.  You can keep staring at the black dot and telling others about all the things that are wrong in your life, or you can begin to appreciate your many blessings.  Sounds like a pretty easy choice to make, doesn't it?
  

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Most people are searching for happiness.  They're looking for it.
They're trying to find it in someone or something outside of themselves.
That's a fundamental mistake.  Happiness is something that you are,
and it comes from the way you think.

Wayne Dyer

   

 
Awe and Wonder

I sincerely hope that I never lose the sense of awe and wonder that I've been able to carry with me so far in my life.  I want never to lose the perspective that makes me stop and gaze in wonder at the beauty of a sunrise or a sunset, that makes me smile when I see the amazing face of a very young child, or that makes me choke up when I stand before a mountain range or a Grand Canyon or a seemingly endless ocean.  This sense of wonder helps me to appreciate the depth and breadth of this amazing planet upon which we pass these lives, and it allows me to recognize the unbelievable vastness of the universe in which this planet continues to spin and fly its circular path day after day, year after year.  And that vastness helps me to stay humble and to keep a realistic sense of perspective on life.

When we're children, awe and wonder are such a natural part of who we are that they are effortless elements of our lives.  Almost everything that we see is new and wonderful and exciting to us, and we want to see more of it, to get to know it better.  Our sense of wonder causes us to explore and  to enjoy our explorations, no matter what we find out.  But as we grow older, more and more things become things that we already know, so they aren't new any more; there's no need to explore them and try to get to know more about them.  We don't wonder anymore about most of the elements of our lives, because we start to learn about routine, and about doing the same things and seeing the same things each day.

Think of how amazing our computers were when we first got them, and how wonderless they are now.  They're now tools that we use to take care of tasks and to fulfill obligations, and it didn't take long to lose the sense of wonder that they inspired in us.  And this has happened even though the computers now have amazing processing speeds, huge hard drives that we couldn't even imagine twenty years ago, and display screens that even on the cheapest computers give us a better picture than any of the affordable television sets that even existed just thirty years ago.  They truly are amazing machines in very small packages, and the cell phones that we have now are even more amazing--but they've become simply something else that we take for granted and fail to wonder at.
   

I was struck by the fact that I hadn't been awed in a while.
Did that mean awesome things had disappeared from my life?
No.  What it did mean was that I'd gotten too caught up in
distractions and mind mucking to recognize anything as
awe-inspiring. . . . I hadn't been paying attention
to the beauty around me.


Sue Patton Thoele

   
This lack of wonder and awe, though, is not a natural part of life--it's something that we choose to adopt as we grow older and supposedly wiser.  Sometimes we even choose not to feel wonder or to pretend that we don't simply to impress others with our worldliness.  "That's a nice rainbow, but I've seen so many that are nicer."  "That's a nice rainbow, but I really do have to text my sister right now."  "That's a nice rainbow, but I don't have the time to stop and stare at the sky right now."

We choose not to allow ourselves to feel awe, and thus we lose a very important part of who we are as human beings--the ability to appreciate the magic and wonder that surrounds us all day, every day.

But are the things that we do focus on really worth the loss?  Have we sacrificed something truly important for something truly trivial?  My hunch is that we have, and I also believe that we have paid an extremely high price because of this sacrifice.  As Sue says above, awesome things hadn't disappeared from her life, but she had gotten "caught up in distractions and mind mucking," so an important part of her life simply wasn't available to her, even though it was still there all the time.  In this way, our sense of awe is directly connected to our awareness and to our mindfulness, and a loss of wonder is a direct result of our loss or our lack of use of our mindfulness.  And we have to ask ourselves:  Is not being mindful and aware of wonder any way to go through life?  And if it's not, why do so many of us go through life thus?
    

I am mentally preparing myself for the five-year-old mind.
I want to come down to their physical limitations
and up to their sense of wonder and awe.


Shinichi Suzuki

    
The good news is that our connection with awesome and wonderful things is easy to reestablish, because they really never did go away.  They always are a part of the world, and they're just waiting for us to notice them and allow the natural feelings that arise within us to be accepted and actually felt.  As I look from where I sit now, I see a clock that keeps the time faithfully, and has for many years--it's amazing to think of the mechanisms that continue to function properly so long after it was made.  And it works because of a battery, a small object that actually holds an electrical charge, and continues to provide that charge to the clock's mechanisms for more than a year!  How do they make these things?  How do these things work for so long?  It truly does amaze me.  And let's not even start with the television set that gives us a beautiful image that's provided many miles away and comes to us via a cable or--even more amazing--via satellite or via a plastic disc with an aluminum coating that holds a series of 1's and 0's that the computer decodes and transmits as a series of pictures and sounds.  It truly is wonderful, yet it's so easy to take no notice of it at all until the battery goes out in the remote or it somehow stops working.

If you stop right now and look around yourself, you'll see plenty of things that can truly inspire a sense of awe and wonder.  They're around you right now, waiting patiently for you to pay a bit of attention to them and to allow yourself to feel the natural feelings of awe that are within us all, also waiting patiently for us to allow ourselves to feel them.

They're also going to be around you all day, wherever you go, and allowing yourself to be awed by them is going to be a very important part of your day.  I want to stay able to be awed by a rain- or snowstorm; I want to feel wonder when I see the sunrise and sunset; I still want to be awed by skyscrapers and jets and ships and cars and books pieces of furniture that were made half a world away, yet found their way to our home.
   

True and lasting wonder needs to be renewed regularly, even daily.  Otherwise,
life's inevitable formula will be:  Wonderful is followed by wonder-half-full,
which is followed by wonder-quarter-full, which quickly becomes wonder-less. 
If you want to make your capacity for awe as wide as the sky, you must take
preventative action.  Otherwise, you'll end up as a wonderless wanderer
and life will cease to be a joyful adventure.

Edward Hays

   
Feeling awe and wonder may be something that we put aside as we aged, but it doesn't have to be something that we continue to neglect and ignore.  And when we do feel that sense of wonder again, each time it's feels like a completely new feeling, one that helps us to recognize and appreciate our place in this world and the marvelous complexity of the world itself.  I hope to continue to be awed until the day I die, for if I ever lose that ability, then things around me will seem normal and bland, and I'm sure that I'll take them for granted.  And I have no right to take things for granted that truly do deserve my love, appreciation, and wonder.

   
More on awe
- More on wonder

   
   

   

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You can understand and relate to most people if you look at them--no matter how old or impressive they may be--as if they are children.  For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much--we simply grow taller.  Oh, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.


Leo Rosten

  
Wherever You Are, Be There
Jim Rohn

One of the major reasons why we fail to find happiness or to create a unique lifestyle is because we have not yet mastered the art of being.

While we are home our thoughts are still absorbed with solving the challenges we face at the office. And when we are at the office we find ourselves worrying about problems at home.

We go through the day without really listening to what others are saying to us. We may be hearing the words, but we aren't absorbing the message.

As we go through the day we find ourselves focusing on past experiences or future possibilities. We are so involved in yesterday and tomorrow that we never even notice that today is slipping by.

We go through the day rather than getting something from the day. We are everywhere at any given moment in time except living in that moment in time.

Lifestyle is learning to be wherever you are. It is developing a unique focus on the current moment, and drawing from it all of the substance and wealth of experience and emotions that it has to offer. Lifestyle is taking time to watch a sunset. Lifestyle is listening to silence. Lifestyle is capturing each moment so that it becomes a new part of what we are and of what we are in the process of becoming. Lifestyle is not something we do; it is something we experience. And until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well.
   

  

Sometimes it rains on the just.  I believe that.
Sometimes it rains on the unjust.  I believe that, too.
But I also believe that sometimes it just rains.
Neither God nor Justice nor belief has anything to do with it.

unattributed

    

  

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.

   
    

   

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