Hello,
and welcome to the newest day--and newest week--of
our lives!
We sincerely hope that you're able to make this day
and this week
extremely special times of your life!
The
longer you live the more you realize that
forgiveness, consideration, and
kindness
are three of the great secrets of life. -
unattributed
The
best index to people's character is
(a) how they treat people
who can't
do him or her any good, and
(b) how they treat people who can't fight back. -
Abigail
Van Buren
Sometimes
things which at the moment may be perceived as obstacles--and actually be obstacles, difficulties, or drawbacks--can
in the long run result in some good end which would not have occurred if it
had not been for the obstacle. -
Steve
Allen
Before
you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and
delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. . . .You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal.Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.
-
Kathleen Norris
To
relax, to feel the love in your heart and keep to that as
your focus in every situation--that's the meaning of
spiritual surrender. It changes us. We become
deeper, more attractive people.
In
Zen Buddhism, there's a concept called "zen
mind," or "beginner's mind." They say
that the mind should be like an empty rice bowl. If
it's already full, then the universe can't fill it.
If it's empty, it has room to receive. This means
that when we think we have things already figured out,
we're not teachable. Genuine insight can't dawn on a
mind that's not open to receive it. Surrender is a
process of emptying the mind.
In
the Christic tradition, this is the meaning of
"becoming as a little child." Little
children don't think they know what things mean. In
fact, they know they don't know. They ask someone
older and wiser to explain things to them. We're
like children who don't know, but think we do.
The
wise person doesn't pretend to know what it's impossible
to know. "I don't know" can be an
empowering statement. When we go into a situation
not knowing, there is something inside us which does.
With our conscious mind, we step back in order that a
higher power within us can step forward and lead the way.
We
need less posturing and more genuine charisma.
Charisma was originally a religious term, meaning "of
the spirit," or "inspired." It's
about letting God's light shine through us.
It's
about a sparkle in people that money can't buy. It's
an invisible energy with visible effects. To let go,
to just love, is not to fade into the wallpaper.
Quite the contrary, it's when we truly become
bright. We're letting our own light shine.
We
are meant to be this way. We are meant to
shine. Look at small children. They're all so
unique before they start trying to be, because they
demonstrate the power of genuine humility. This is
also the explanation of "beginner's luck."
When we go into a situation not knowing the rules, we
don't pretend to know how to figure anything out, and we
don't know yet what there is to be afraid of. This
releases the mind to create from its own higher
power. Situations shift gear and lights go on simply
because our minds have opened up to receive love. We
have gotten out of our own way.
Love
is a win-mode, a successful and attractive
vibration. We think that success is difficult, and
so, for us it is. Success in life doesn't have to
involve negative tension. We don't have to be
struggling all the time. If you think about it,
"taking the bull by the horns" would be a very
dangerous thing to do. In fact, ambitious tension
actually limits our ability to succeed because it keeps us
in a state of contraction, emotionally and
physically. It seems to give us energy but doesn't
really, like the white sugar of mental health; there's a
short high, followed by a crash. The cultivation of
mental rest, or surrender, is like eating healthy
food. It doesn't give us an immediate rush, but over
time it provides a lot more energy.
This
doesn't require sitting in a lotus position all day.
We still get excited, but more gently. Many people
associate a spiritual life with a grade B movie, but God
doesn't get rid of all the drama in our lives. He
just gets rid of the cheap drama. There is no
higher drama than true personal growth. Nothing
could be more genuinely dramatic than boys becoming real
men and girls becoming real women.
Something
amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We
melt into another world, a realm of power already within
us. The world changes when we change. The
world softens when we soften. The world loves us
when we choose to love the world.
Surrender
means the decision to stop fighting the world, and to
start loving it instead. It is a gentle liberation
from pain. But liberation isn't about breaking out
of anything; it's a gentle melting into who we really
are. We let down our armor, and discover the
strength of our selves. A Course in Miracles
tells us that although we think that without the ego, all
would be chaos, the opposite is true. Without the
ego, all would be love.
We
are simply asked to shift focus and to take on a more
gentle perception. That's all God needs. Just
one sincere surrendered moment, when love matters more
than anything, and we know that nothing else really
matters at all. What he gives us in return for our
openness to him, is an outpouring of his power from deep
within us. We are given his power to share with the
world, to heal all wounds, to awaken all hearts.
I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking
Loving might be a mistake, but it's worth making
Don't let some hell-bent heart leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out, reconsider
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
Time is a wheel in constant motion, always rolling us along
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder
Where those years have gone?
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There is no
difficulty you cannot overcome. A wise and
philosophical man once said to me, when asked how he
overcame his difficulties, "How do I get through a
trouble? Well, first I try to go around it, and if I
can't go around it, I try to get under it, and if I can't
get under it, I try to go over it, and if I can't get over
it, I just plow right through it." Then he added,
"God and I plow right through it."
An
effective method for making your mind positive in character
is to eliminate certain expressions of thought and speech
which we may call the "little negatives."
These negatives clutter up the average person's
conversation, and while each one is seemingly unimportant in
itself, the total effect is to condition the mind
negatively. When this thought of "little
negatives" first occurred to me, I began to analyze my
own conversational habits and was shocked by what I
found. I was making such statements as, "I'm
afraid I'll be late," or "I wonder if I'll have a
flat tire," or "I don't think I can do that."
These are
"little negatives" to be sure, and a big thought
is of course more powerful than a little one. But it
must never be forgotten that "mighty oaks from little
acorns grow," and if many "little negatives"
clutter up your conversation, they are bound to seep into
your mind. It is surprising how they accumulate in
force, and before you know it, they will grow into "big
negatives." So I determined to root those
"little negatives" out of my conversation. I
found that the best way to eliminate them was deliberately
to say a positive word about everything. When you keep
asserting that things are going to work out well, good
results do occur.
On a
roadside billboard I saw an advertisement of a certain brand
of motor oil. The slogan read, "A clean engine
always delivers power." So will a mind free of
negatives. Therefore flush out your thoughts, give
yourself a clean mental engine, remembering that a clean
mind, even as a clean engine, always delivers power.
So to
overcome your obstacles and live the "I don't believe
in defeat" philosophy, cultivate a positive-idea
pattern. What we do with obstacles is directly
determined by our mental attitude. Most of our
obstacles are mental in character.
"Ah,"
you may object, "mine are not mental, mine are
real."
Perhaps so,
but your attitude toward them is mental. What you
think about your obstacles largely determines what you do
about them. Form the mental attitude that you cannot
remove an obstacle and you will not remove it. But
when your mind becomes convinced that you can do something
about difficulties, astonishing results will begin to
happen. All of a sudden you discover that you have the
power you would never acknowledge.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
I shall open my eyes and ears.
Once every day I shall simply stare
at a tree, a flower, a
cloud, or a person.I
shall not then be
concerned at all to ask what they
are but
simply be glad that they
are.I shall joyfully allow them
their "divine,
magical, and
ecstatic" existence.
Clyde
S. Kilby
I
Can't Do It All
One
of the more common aspects of the Adult Child of an
Alcoholic syndrome is the ways that the
child-turned-adult handles responsibility.
From what I've read, children in such families
usually turn out to be either ultra-responsible or
extremely irresponsible, and there's little room in
the middle. Personally, I fell into the former
group, and I grew up with a heightened sense of
responsibility that did not serve me well at
all. I grew up thinking that everything was my
fault, for one, and thus it was my responsibility to
fix everything--even if I didn't do it.
It's a difficult trait to grow up with. When
you take on responsibility for everything that's
going on around you, life becomes little more than
daunting task after daunting task, for you're
constantly on the alert for things going wrong that
have to be fixed. And when you do try to fix
everything, you're under added stress because you
know you need to fix them well or face the
disapproval of others. So over the course of
much of my life, I've been burdened not just with
the problems and issues that come up in my own life,
but also with the problems and issues that other
people create in their own lives.
But it's been quite liberating to realize finally
that I can't do it all--and that I'm not even
obligated to do so. All those years that I
felt that I had to do everything are now gone by,
and now I look at the world around me with different
eyes, and I see what's going on around me
differently.
"Well, that person just did something stupid
that's going to cause problems. But I know
that getting through problems is one of the most
important learning experiences in life, so I'm going
to let that person work their way through the
problems."
"This park has a lot of trash all over the
place, but I don't have the time right now to clean
anything, so I'll leave it to the people who are
paid to clean it." (Though if I did have
time, I'd throw away whatever I was able to!)
"This school that I'm working at doesn't have
any sort of curriculum for my classes. But I'm
so caught up trying to get by day to day that I
don't have time to work on curricula."
"They really do need someone to do that job
this evening, but the commitments I have really
can't be changed. I hope they're able to find
someone else to do it."
Another trap of the ultra-responsible person is the
unwillingness--or inability--to hire someone else to
do some jobs that we just can't do. Why spend
the money, after all, when we can do the job
ourselves and save a few dollars? Sometimes,
though, the money we save ends up being a very small
amount, indeed, when we compare it to the amount of
extra time we've needed to do the work. I
can't tell you how many do-it-myself projects have
turned into marathon events rather than the quick
and easy jobs I thought they'd be. I still do
most of my own jobs, but I try to find a balance
that makes sense rather than always choosing not to
hire someone else who could do a job faster and more
cheaply than I can.
Finding the peace of mind to simply step back and
tell myself that this isn't something I need to do
has been one of the most important things I've ever
learned, and my life has become much easier and much
more fulfilling since I've learned this
lesson. Sometimes I feel that nagging sense
that I "need" to do this task, or I need
to help this person, but I know that I'm not meant
to do it all in life--sometimes the best thing I can
do is to allow someone else to deal with their own
issues, or to hire someone else to deal with things
I'm not able--or even qualified--to deal with.
I still do a lot of work--much more than most people
I know--but that's just part of my personality, and
not the result of an unhealthy need that I
have. And recognizing the difference between
the two is one of the most important things that
I've learned in my life.
There is one thing we
can do, and the happiest
people are those who do
it to the limit of their
ability.We can be completely
present.We can be all here.
We can give all our attention
to the opportunity before us.
Mark van Doren
If we think of
this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it
appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of
their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they
walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security.
And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which
drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of
their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable
terror of their abode.
We, however,
are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and
there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are
set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond,
and over and above this we have through thousands of years of
accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we
are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from
all that surrounds us.
We have no
reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has
it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses
belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.
And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which
counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that
which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we
most trust and find most faithful.
How should we
be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of
all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn
into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are
princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and
brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being
something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must
not be frightened, Dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before
you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like
light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you
do. You must think that something is happening with you,
that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it
will not let you fall.
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but
do not let them master you.
Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.When we do the best we can,
we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of
another.
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.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
