Good
day! We all have a new week in our lives,
all ready for us to do with it
as we will--what kinds of positive and uplifting
things can you do with
your week to make it among the best you've ever lived
through?
To
pursue joy is to lose it. The only way to get it is
to
follow steadily the path of duty, without thinking of joy,
and then it comes most surely, unsought. -
Alexander
Maclaren
Nothing
more completely baffles one who
is full of tricks and
duplicity than straight-forward and simple integrity in
another. -
Charles
Caleb Colton
I want to make people
laugh--so they
will
begin
to see things seriously. -
William Zinser
I think, what has this day brought me,
and what
have I given it? -
Henry Moore
Living
in balance is vital to our well-being. Without
balance, much of the beauty and grandeur of our existence
is lost. But a balanced life doesn't just
happen. It is a state of grace we create by staying
connected with our thoughts and feelings and consciously
measuring what we do. Just as feeling fit and
flexible demands physical exercise, just as expanding your
mind requires intellectual effort, so bringing you life
into balance and maintaining your spiritual equilibrium
require focused awareness and daily retreat from the
stresses of the world.
The wisdom and strength you seek await you in the silence
within. Awakening to our deepest desires, to our
needs and to our truth requires reflection and inner
listening. We must create the space in our lives
where our physical self and our spiritual being can
meet. The more we nourish our internal world, the
more powerful we grow in the external world.
Retreating doesn't free us from the concerns of the
external world, but it delivers us from the pain of living
in it.
Look to the light within you. It's awaiting your
attention, longing for your return. You may have
lost sight of your inner radiance as you turned to look
outside yourself for validation and meaning. You may
have forgotten it as you gave authority not to your inner
voice, but to the dictates and opinions of others.
Yet
no matter how far you wander or how long you stay away,
the divine light never flickers or dims. You are
host to the eternal flame. It glows in the silence
of your being to illumine your life and light your
way. The tempests of the world can never eclipse or
snuff it out--just as you don't diminish the light of the
sun by pulling down the shades. The radiance within
us is always shining, and solitude opens wide the way.
We would probably be more zealous about retreating
from the world if it were a complicated task, requiring
great effort. But, in fact, the task could not be
simpler, because there is nowhere to go, nothing to
do. To retreat, you need only be.
How? By giving yourself to yourself before you give
yourself away. It's amazing how a simple fifteen
minutes or more of quiet inner listening each day creates
such abundant peace and joy. My life works
beautifully when I start each day in communion, when I
draw a warm bath, lace the water with fragrant
oils--frankincense, jasmine, lavender, or patchouli--light
a single candle and retreat. During this precious
time, the tiny bathroom in my small Manhattan apartment
becomes a grand and healing space for me.
Choose your place. Any place that's quiet and where
you feel completely comfortable--your bed, an easy chair,
a mat on the floor--will do. Stretch fully for a few
seconds from head to toe before you settle in.
Sitting or lying down, close your eyes gently. Allow
yourself to breathe slowly, deeply, exhaling longer than
you inhale. As you exhale, feel yourself letting
go. Consciously relax each part of your body
separately, starting with your feet. Tense and
tighten them as you inhale. Release and relax them
as you exhale. Continue to breathe deeply and fully
as you tense and tighten your calves, thighs, and
buttocks, then your torso, your arms, your shoulders and
face. Is there any tightness in the areas where
stress normally takes hold--your upper back and shoulders,
your neck and jaw? Breathe deeply into each of these
areas as you tighten and release those muscles
again. Let go completely.
Stay with your breath, breathing slowly, deeply and
rhythmically, consciously inhaling joy and peace and
exhaling stress and strain. Feel yourself descending
deeper and deeper into your breath. You are
completely at ease, your body limp and relaxed.
Listen to the rhythm of your breath whispering in the
stillness. This is the Holy Spirit, the breath of
life in you. You are now in touch with your inner
light. Feel the love, the peace at the center of
your being. Feel its healing light caressing you,
filling you, renewing you. Feel its glow enveloping
you and radiating from you. This is your own
loving-kindness, embracing and restoring you to wholeness.
Now is the time for asking questions of yourself--and for
listening for your deepest, most intuitive
response. You need only attune your ear.
There is no problem too trivial or concern too great to
bring to the spirit within. God resides within you
for this very purpose. In this place you can lay
your burdens down. So surrender your worries and
fears, releasing them into the care of your own inner
wisdom.
Continually questioning ourselves is essential to making
wise and conscious choices throughout the many stages of
our life's journey. We should periodically pause in
silence to ask: What is my purpose here? We
must answer this to stay true to our path. And there
are other questions: Who am I? Do I feel
happy, healthy, and whole? How can I expand the
promise of my life? Have I erected defenses and
barriers that are limiting my vision? Am I making
choices that encourage my growth? Am I kind to
myself? Am I loving to myself? Am I living my
truth? Some of the answers to your questions and
challenges will come swiftly; others are revealed over
time. But God will never fail to inspire and guide
you. Have faith and don't try to hurry spirit.
The answers always come at the right time.
When you are ready, open your eyes. Remain still for
a moment and experience how at peace you feel. You
may feel a smile from your very center. Try to hold
on to the tranquil point of light glowing within you as
you move through the day.
A favorite
song (I'm not so fond of the "butterflies" in
the video, but the song is great!):
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The truth is that the Universe has been
answering you all of your life, but you cannot
receive the answers unless you are aware.
Be aware of everything around you, because you
are receiving the answers to your questions in
every moment of the day. The channels
those answers can come through are unlimited.
They could be delivered in the form of a
newspaper headline that attracts your attention,
or overhearing someone speaking, or a song on
the radio, or signage on a truck passing by, or
receiving a sudden inspiration. Remember
to remember, and become aware!
I have found on my own life and in others' lives
that we do not think well of ourselves or love
ourselves completely. To not love
ourselves can keep what we want from
us. When we don't love ourselves, we are
literally pushing things away from us.
Everything we want, whatever it may be, is
motivated by love. It is to experience the
feelings of love in having those
things--youth, money, the perfect person, job,
body, or health. To attract the things we
love we must transmit love, and those things
will appear immediately.
The catch is, to transmit the highest frequency
of love, you must love yourself, and that can be
difficult for many. If you focus on the
outside and what you see now, you may trip
yourself up, because what you see and feel about
you now is the result of what you used to
think. If you don't love you, the person
you see now is likely to be full of faults that
you have found in yourself.
To love yourself fully, you must focus on a new
dimension of You. You must focus on the presence
inside of You. Take a moment and sit
still. Focus on feeling the life
presence inside you. As you focus on
the presence within, it will begin to
reveal itself to You. It is a feeling of
pure love and bliss, and it is perfection.
That presence is the perfection of
You. That presence is the real
You. As you focus on that presence, as you
feel, love, and praise that presence, you will
love yourself fully, quite possibly for the
first time in your life.
Any time you look at yourself with critical
eyes, switch your focus immediately to the presence
within, and its perfection will reveal itself to
You. As you do this, all imperfections
that have manifested in your life will dissolve,
because imperfections cannot exist in the light
of this presence. Whether you want to
regain perfect eyesight, dissolve disease and
restore well-being, turn poverty into abundance,
reverse aging and degeneration, or eradicate any
negativity, focus on and love the presence
within you and perfection will manifest.
The
absolute truth is that the "I" is
perfect and complete;
the real "I" is spiritual and can
therefore never be less than
perfect; it can never have any lack, limitation,
or disease.
Charles Haanel
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.
Autumn. . . makes a double
demand. It asks that we prepare
for the future--that we be wise
in the ways of garnering and keeping.
But it also asks that we
learn to let go--to acknowledge
the beauty of sparseness.
One
of the major tenets of Taoism that most attracts me
is that of accepting the world as it is rather than
spending tons of time and energy trying to make the
world what we think it should be. I don't want
to be a person who's constantly trying to make
others do or be what I conceive of them doing or
being; rather, I want them to be the people they
are, and I'd like to get to know them as they
are. There are certain things that I don't
like in life, but when I'm able to accept those
things as they are, my dislike of them really
doesn't matter any more. They simply are what
they are, whether I like them or not.
Acceptance can take a lot of stress from our
lives. How many parents have spent years
trying to make their children conform to their
desires, only to have to finally accept them as they
are at some point, or lose them? Accepting
those children earlier could have led to years of
much less stress and much more strengthening of a
relationship, and the end result would have been the
same. How much time have we spent angry at
someone for acting in a certain way that we didn't
approve of? If we can observe objectively,
though, we can see that the person is simply acting
in a very authentic way, and allow them to be who
they are without our judgment running interference.
I try to accept my students for exactly who they
are. I try. I'm not always good at it,
especially with those who constantly show
challenging behaviors. They get very
frustrating, and it's very difficult not to wish
that they could change. But for the most part,
I find that when I accept them as they are without
trying to mandate certain behaviors, I have far
fewer behavioral issues than other teachers have.
If there's a storm tonight and a tree falls into our
house and causes severe damage, complaining about it
or getting angry about it will accomplish nothing at
all. Only when I accept the damage can I take
action to get the damage fixed, and getting it
repaired is the most important thing I can do.
As hard as it sounds, it's important to accept some
of the terrible things in life, too, based on the
same principle: you can't do anything to
change any situation until you learn what the
situation is and accept it for exactly what it is.
And it's hard sometimes.
Accepting something doesn't mean that you approve of
it. Nor does it mean that you want it to
continue as it is. The more-or-less opposite
of acceptance is denial, and when we deny a
situation, we simply don't acknowledge that things
are as they are, and when we take that approach, we
can do absolutely nothing to improve anything.
When we accept people, especially, we're able to
deal with them on a completely different level and
learn things about them that we wouldn't learn
otherwise, for we'd probably be so intent on
changing them that we would miss many of the
beautiful, special things that they offer. If
I don't accept someone's sexuality, for example, my
relationship with that somebody would always be
strained and difficult. If I don't accept my
child's political views, our relationship will
always be tainted by my unwillingness to allow that
child to have his or her own views.
My wife drives differently than I do, in many
ways. When I'm with her in the car when she's
driving, my mind should not be on giving her advice
on how to drive more like I do. My mind should
simply be on being with her and enjoying her
company.
There are, of course, certain things that seem to be
unacceptable. Rape, sexual abuse, murder,
political agendas that harm people, dishonesty,
fraud--the list goes on and on. But here's the
deal: we have to accept that this person is a
murderer, and then deal with them on that
level. I can reject another person based on
behavior and never have anything to do with that
person--but only after I accept the fact that the
person's behavior is harmful.
Acceptance is one of the absolute keys to living
life fully. Accepting other people regardless
of race, religion, or political views can help us to
have stronger relationships and more fulfilling
lives in general. It can also help us to lower
our stress levels when we realize that we can't
change other people, and it makes no sense to
try. I want to be accepting in a positive way,
and I want to give to other people and to the world
in general, but sometimes it really is
difficult. Difficult, though, does not mean
impossible.
Here is the secret of
inspiration: Tell yourself
that
thousands
and tens of thousands of
people,
not very
intelligent
and
certainly
no more
intelligent than the
rest of us, have mastered
problems
as difficult as
those that now baffle you.
William Feather
But not for
another twenty years would I understand that the vibration in my
grandparents' house was love. That is a conceptual
understanding that had to be guided by an intuition, which then
was nourished by a lot of reading and reflection. My
grandparents were in love. They loved each other. They
loved their children and grandchildren, and were loved in return,
though probably not quite as much. Their children loved one
another, the way sisters and brothers do. My grandfather and
grandmother loved God, each in his or her own special and
sometimes peculiar ways; and their love for God was reciprocated,
in some graceful proportion.
It was not
my grandparents' love for each other, or for their children, or
for me, that made the air hum in the twilight. No particular
expression or impression of love caused that vibration, but love
itself, ever so briefly made perceptible. Love sounded a
chord now and again, this chord of intense pleasure tinged with
melancholy, to remind me that all of the component notes had been
ringing there for generations. In visual terms, it was like
noticing all at once that the rainbow of colors flowing from a
prism is derived from a ray of pure sunlight.
Daniel Mark
Epstein
Any
decent society must generate a feeling of community.
Community offsets
loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of
belonging. Yet today
the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in
all the
techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of
loneliness.
Alvin Toffler
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).
™
