06 Sep , 23:29 | Admin   12 Mar 2007   11:32:06 am The Power of Gratitude The Reverend Michael Beckwith said in a recent interview with Larry King that the difference between ordinary people and enlightened people is that enlightened people are grateful for the things that ordinary people take for granted. In the New York Times best-selling book “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne gratitude is the foundational step in having what you want in life. When things aren’t going so great, it’s easy to forgot how much we have to be grateful for. Sometimes even being grateful that we got through an experience in one piece seems too much to ask. Life has been a bit bumpy lately. In the midst of so many things that are going great, I got bogged down with the ones that weren’t. After a few days of this I got tired of feeling bad and decided to do something about it. I asked myself why I let it go on this long. The answer in part is habit, and in part that I was spending some time really looking at the source of my unhappiness to find out what it was really about. It did turn out to be something deeper than it appeared on the surface and finding that out got me going in the right direction, but not before I took another day to really feel the pain of what was bothering me. Alright, so I wallowed a little bit, but there is value in really feeling something and then moving through it. The important thing is to give it an end date. I’m going to let myself swim around in this hurt for 15 more minutes or until tomorrow at noon and then I’m going on to something that will be more constructive. I conveniently forgot about that while I was wallowing. As part of my effort to feel better I spent some time thinking about what wasn’t working so great and how I would want it to look if I had my ideal. Then I found the aspects of each person or situation that I was truly grateful for and let it really sink in. That alone had me feeling better and more in control of my life, but then I put the icing on the cake. I started visualizing and feeling what my ideal was like, not as I want it to be in the future but as if it were here right now and I was experiencing it today. This is an amazing funk-buster! The power is more in the feeling than the thinking. Thinking positive thoughts is great, but really feeling the love, fulfillment and gratitude makes all the difference. It gets you reconnected to what is important to you and that for me is a powerful mood elevator. Another thing that got me feeling balanced again was listening to a song by Peter Mayer called “Holy Now.” I heard it at a workshop I attended in the Fall, immediately designated it as my favorite song and bought it on iTunes. Recognizing the inherent holiness of all existence may be a little metaphysical, but it’s a beautiful song and hearing it makes me feel good. What do you do to get yourself out of bad mood? Category : General | By : great12 | Comments [89] | Trackbacks [0] 04 Mar 2007   05:16:31 pm Being Present Being present is one of the main goals of many spiritual practices, particularly those originating in the East. Being present means not only living in the moment, but also not spending time rehashing the past or worrying about the future. It is a way to get the most out of life because when you are not present you miss out on what is happening. You waste time focusing on things you have no control over, namely the past and the future and relinquish control over what you can affect - the present. Being present is something I have been working on improving for several years. I used to be a junkie for the past. I lugged it around and poured over it every chance I got. If only I had done, or not done that. If only that had been different. If only...... I was wasting my life. Having a child severely curtails the amount of time you have to sit around and moon over the past. There is so much to do in the now, and so much of it is so new and amazing that there isn’t time for much else. When my son was six months old, we moved to a new city where we didn’t know anyone. We made a few new friends, but basically we were starting from scratch with our social/support system. Harrison and I spent a lot of time together, just the two of us. At times it was lonely, but I began to see a quality in him that I admired, even though I didn’t know what to call it then. He was very present and he was nearly always happy. What ever he was doing took up his whole focus. He wasn’t thinking about when he fell down that morning or when I barked at him the day before. He was just in the moment. He didn’t know enough to worry about tomorrow. I started to see things in a new way when I looked at the world through his eyes. Geese flying across the sky, calling out to each other as they flew was a miracle. Meeting the neighbors new dog was an important event. A new box of crayons was cause for celebration. Experiencing life that way was pure and whenever I could let go of my old habits and just be present with him, it was almost holy. As he’s gotten older he hasn’t lost that capacity to be present. His developmental delays have given him an unexpected gift. He hasn’t learned from the adults around him how to fret about tomorrow or dwell on the past. He just “is” in a way that many people spend years trying to learn how to be. If he gets mad at me, it doesn’t last. As soon as he is done, that feeling is really gone. He doesn’t harbor it for the rest of the day or remember next week how I wouldn’t let him have what he wanted. The picture he is drawing or the food he is eating are what makes up his world. He has the capacity to remember yesterday and is starting to learn to anticipate tomorrow, but I hope that he never learns to not be fully present. He inspires me, and I’ve got a lot of years of bad habits to break. Category : General | By : great12 | Comments [106] | Trackbacks [0] 24 Feb 2007   01:06:26 pm Saying Goodbye We had to put our old kitty, Toonces, to sleep. She ate her thyroid medicine for a while - it was a chicken flavored treat, and we thought that she might be getting better, but she eventually stopped eating anything at all. Toonces was dropping weight and had started crying out from discomfort. We took her to the vet not knowing that was what we would have to do, but we loved her too much to let her suffer more. I know that she lived a long and happy life, but letting her go isn’t easy. I thought I was feeling less sad last night, but came upstairs to go to bed and went to tell her goodnight expecting her to be in her usual spot in the den. It was a shock to know that she won’t be in her spot any more. We buried her in the garden on a clear, sunny day. I don’t think we ever get used to loss, whether it’s a beloved pet or a beloved family member. My mother recently told me that when I was about 4, my father asked me what happens after we die. I must have lost a fish or a gerbil for the subject to have come up. I told him, “I’ll just go back where I came from.” Although I still believe that whole heartedly, and it is a comfort to know that those we love are no longer in pain or distress, it is awfully hard to give them up. We want them here where we can talk to them and hug them and enjoy the solace of their company. To know that we will be rejoined with them when it is our turn to leave this earth seems only a small consolation right now. What are we to do in the meantime? We hold them in our hearts and our minds, but that is not the same as having them here. I think it is one of the most difficult ways that our spirits are tested and stretched in this life. Even though my head knows that death is a completion of the circle of life, it doesn’t make it easy. I recently heard an analogy that I really liked in which each life is a unique knot in a rope. The rope is the fabric of everything in which we are linked - call it God, Spirit, the Universe. When we die, the knot unties and we return to what we always were. I believe this and it does comfort me. But I also know that for now I need to grieve and miss the companionship of my animal friend whom I have loved for 17 years. She is not my first loved one who has passed on and she will not be the last, but right now she is the one that matters. Category : General | By : great12 | Comments [107] | Trackbacks [0]   Prev 1 2 3 ...9 10 11