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Bring your unique thoughts, emotions,
perceptions, and experience to the altar of life. There is no one on this
earth exactly like you, nor will there ever be again. Do you realize what a
marvelous gift you've been given? Stop hoarding it. It has been given to you to
give away to others. Share this unique gift that is you with the world.
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Climb your own personal
mountain. Overcome your fear of heights. Overcome your fear of being
different. You are different and are intended to be different.
Your unique differences are the very gifts you've been given to give to the
world. Overcome any feelings of alienation you may have because other people
don't think and feel the way you think and feel. Revel in the differences.
Respect the differences. Understand the differences. Learn and grow from the
differences. We are all on different paths to the same unifying consciousness.
Share the benefits and abundance of all these wonderful gifts. It takes courage
to stand alone with your own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, but you are
never truly alone if you choose to believe that the universe is supporting you
through all your ebbs and flows. The universe supports the tide's ebbs and
flows. Why shouldn't it support yours?
Polish all the facets of your
diamond personality. Every life contains a multitude of realities. Get to
know all of your own and nurture those you want to expand. Do you love your
gentleness, your devotion, your spontaneity? Gently polish them every day so
they may shine more brightly. Have you noticed your fears, your obsessions,
your treacheries? Forgive yourself and be compassionate toward yourself. Only
then can you forgive others and be compassionate toward them.
Play
your role in life to the hilt. William Shakespeare said, "All the world is
a stage, and the people the players thereon." Is there a real you or is
everything simply fantasy and illusion? Does it really matter? You have a
purpose for being on this earth. That purpose is to create. Take yourself and
your perceived purpose seriously, yet allow another part of you to sit outside
and laugh at your seriousness. Be the actor (the emotional self), the producer
(the rational self), and the audience (the passive self) of your own
play.
Make your play your life's work. What fascinates you? What
do you love to do? What activities can you immerse yourself in and lose track
of time? These are places where your creative spirit is already at work.
Enhance these and find a way of supporting yourself financially with these
activities.
Know yourself well. Keep learning and expanding.
Believe you know everything and know you know nothing. Act as if you know
exactly what you're doing, even when you haven't the foggiest idea. Believe in
your perceived purpose. Trust your inner nudges. Continually fine-tune the
rational and linguistic tools your left-brain loves to play with. Keep your
head and heart in the present moment and bring them back when you notice
they've strayed. Trust the universe and pray for guidance from a Higher Power
you don't know exists. Is this insanity? It's about as sane as any of us is
going to get. Laugh at yourself and laugh at the universe!
Transform
the energy of your anger into constructive action. Your anger is yours. It
emanates from your personal perception of what is happening around you. If you
feel anger, what choices can you make to change the situation? Can you stay
away from the people and places where you feel anger? Can you take a long,
brisk walk? Go to the gym and work out? Can you share what you are feeling and
why? Can you change your friends? Your job? Can you throw yourself fully into
creating a win/win resolution?
Focus on becoming more and more
functional. Detach from other peoples' dysfunctions. You can't force
dysfunctional people to be functional. You do have the power to work on your
own dysfunctions. One of those dysfunctions is trying to run other peoples'
lives. Another dysfunction is lack of personal centeredness and integrity. A
third dysfunction is getting sucked into other peoples' fights or dysfunctions.
Your first job on earth is to work out your own karma, not somebody else's.
Until you are fully functional and powerful yourself, you won't know how to
influence others to become more functional. Stay serene and detached when
others are upset and fighting. Visualize a white shield surrounding you and
protecting you from all that negative energy. Trust that others have the
intelligence to resolve their own issues and if they don't, they'll reap the
consequences. Surrender into the silence and allow the energy to manifest as it
will. Give help only when asked.
Allow yourself to feel your
anger. Sometimes anger is a stepping stone to action, increased
self-esteem, courage, and determination. Allow yourself to notice it so you can
move on. Your anger is bringing you a message that you need to hear and
decipher. If you allow yourself to feel your anger as soon as it arises, it
won't fester inside or explode in reaction. You'll avoid the feelings of
separation, self-alienation, and other-alienation. You'll avoid the I/you
dichotomy. Simply say to yourself, "Thank you, anger, for sharing. What message
are you bringing me? What do I need to do differently?" Anger and compassion
are simply different forms of the same energy. If you are not capable of anger,
you won't be capable of compassion.
Trust your personal perceptions.
Distrust other peoples' words (including mine). Do you remember the game
"Whisper Down the Lane"? The players would stand in a line. One player would
think of a phrase and whisper it to the next. The second player would then
whisper what s/he heard to the third. By the time the phrase traveled from
mouth to ear to mouth to ear, it was totally distorted. So it is with news
broadcasts and what your neighbor heard about John, not to mention
advertisements and press releases. All these words are nothing but
distillations of one person's perceptions, whispered down the lane until they
become totally distorted. Don't trust them. Do you become angry when you hear
news reports? Be wary. Did you personally see the story happen? If not, be
careful. The words you hear are a façade for something both much more
simple and much more complex. If your anger emanates from your personal
perceptions, what action did you take to change the situation? If you didn't
take action, why not? Fear? Then you've got something in yourself to work on.
If you did take action, that's enough. Forgive yourself for less than perfect
results and resolve to learn from the experience and do better the next time.
Focus your energy on things you can change.
Help yourself. Help
others. Every airline begins its flight with a message about oxygen masks.
"If oxygen becomes necessary, put your own mask on first, then help children or
others travelling with you who need help." The same message is true in every
area of life. Until you are functional yourself, you won't be able to help
others. Your first (and perhaps only) job is to put the focus where it belongs:
on you. Get clear about your own needs and wants and perceptions. Communicate
those needs and wants and perceptions to others. Listen to other peoples'
needs, wants and perceptions (which may be different from yours). Continue
dialoging until there is some kind of clarity and integration for both of you.
Continue dialoging until there is mutual understanding and
consciousness-expansion that satisfies both.
Keep an open mind.
This is a very self-serving mindset. You aren't doing this to be kind to
others. When you keep an open mind, you free yourself from the prison of rigid
ideologies. You continue to learn and grow. When you dialog with others, your
own consciousness will always expand.
Dance the dance of your own
consciousness. Free your body to use your life force in its own creative
way. Swing and sway. Who says you have to be consistent? Consistency is a
mindset of little people. Just be.
Weave the colors of your life
thread into the tapestry of human consciousness. Have you ever watched a
weaver create a beautiful cloth with multi-colored threads of different hues.
You don't know what the whole will look like when the weaver is done, yet each
thread is vital to the overall result. You, too, are vital to this world and
what it can become. Weave your colors brightly and in harmony with the other
threads.
Communicate clearly with the important people in your
life. In the Old Testament Book of Genesis, the people were growing
arrogant and decided to build a tower to reach God. When God saw what they were
doing, he confounded their speech. Our speech is still confused. Good
communication requires two people: a clear speaker and an attentive listener.
As a speaker, be specific. Give examples of what you mean. Instead of saying,
"That guy in the store was busy," say "John, the produce clerk in Albertson's
who was stocking the romaine shelf, moved faster than a cat chased by a dog."
As an attentive listener, ask questions when the speaker isn't clear. "Which
guy? Which store?" "What do you mean 'busy'?" If I'm talking about the "guy in
the store" and you're thinking about the young man in the jewelry store
selecting an engagement ring for his sweetheart, my statement won't make any
sense to you, and we won't be communicating.
Surround yourself with
creative friends. You can be creative by yourself, but you'll be
exponentially creative when you develop dynamic interactions with others. Pick
people of good will and intent. Pick people who have learned from the school of
experience. Pick people who also know how to live from the core of their being.
Pick open-minded people.
Learn and grow from your mistakes.
Everyone makes mistakes. We're all human. When you think about it, how could
you have done anything other than what you did, given your consciousness at the
time. The purpose of the ''old reality'' you created then was to teach you the
same age-old lessons about why you should do things differently next time. This
is called 'working through your karma'. We all do it. That's what life's about.
Moreover, you didn't create that bad karma all by yourself. You did it in
relationship with others. Do it differently the next time.
Form
mastermind groups. Meet regularly, either in person or by phone conference
calls, with like-minded people who can support you along your life path.
Provide information and contacts to one another. Praise one another. Thank one
another.
Forgive yourself. Forgive others. We're all in this
together. Please forgive yourself for the mistakes you've made. What good are
you doing by continuing to beat yourself up? Forgive those who have hurt you,
but don't forget what happened. Forgiveness has nothing to do with remembering
the hurt. You need to remember so you can protect yourself the next time. If
you don't remember, you didn't learn the lesson the experience was intended to
bring. Don't forgive to be nice to the person who hurt you. Do it for yourself
so you can move on in your life path.
You'll never know Reality, so
learn well the multitude of perspectives about reality and how they dance with
one another. Study the many facets of your own personality. When you've
lived from all the perspectives and facets, you'll know them well. When you
recognize them, you can do what you need to do to bring them into balance and
harmony. When you recognize them in yourself, you'll recognize them in others.
When you can be compassionate with yourself, you can be compassionate toward
others.
Liberate yourself. Liberate others. None of us gets
liberated until we all do. It is all very simple. You have only one
responsibility: to liberate yourself. When you free yourself from the shackles
of imprisoning word structures, you will be able to model freedom and abundance
to all. Do you think freedom is a goal that you reach and never lose? No,
freedom is a continual process of moment-by-moment choices. You are free now.
You will always have new challenges. You will always have new things to learn.
Stay aware and open so you can remain free.
Build an inclusive
community. Counter cultures simply create another we/them separation. Build
a culture or community with other conscious people that welcomes and respects
all who want to join. Exclusion or separation then occurs only because of the
limited thinking of those who choose to remain outside - those who are
alienated, for whatever reasons, from a community that welcomes their
participation.
Risk imperfect action. You'll learn from your
mistakes. Are you afraid you'll hurt others if you express your creative
spirit? There's always tension between fear and creativity. Release your fear
to the universe and create in the image of Your Maker.
Learn to
accept uncertainty. There are no perfect, left-brain answers. How do you
handle this? You live! You clarify and integrate your own thinking, purify your
intent, accept your human imperfections and weaknesses and those of others,
accept that others will perceive your words and actions thousands of different
ways, have the courage to put your words and actions out there anyway, learn
and grow from the resulting human dissonance, trust that there is somewhere,
somehow, an energy or power that your mind can never analyze that will support
you, comfort you, and direct your steps through all our human uncertainty and
turmoil.
Be awe-full and awesome. 'Awe' is a marvelous word for
the Mystery of life. If you live in awe of this marvelous miracle, your life
will be awesome.
Sculpt the malleable clay of your life into a
beautiful piece of art. Given your current experience and perceptions of
that experience, what can you do with it? How can you structure it? How can you
think about it? What action/non-action is appropriate? What messages are your
emotions giving you? What needs to be done? This approach will allow you to
choose compassion when compassion is appropriate, passive resistance when
passive resistance is appropriate, tough love, when tough love is appropriate,
and boundary-setting when boundary-setting is appropriate. What you act on is
malleable, but you, too, are malleable. Just as the clay you act on has its own
limitations and requirements, so, you, too, have limitations and requirements.
Learn what they are and respect them. You never sculpt alone. The malleable
clay which is you interacts with the malleable clay you are sculpting. The
result of the interaction is both meaningful and integrating.
Immerse yourself in the immediate. There is only one point from
which you can act. That point is now. Time is an illusion or a convenient
creation of our minds. The past is history. The future is mystery. You can
create them in your mind, but the only time you can act is this moment.
Believe in yourself and believe in your God. Belief is both
wordless and capable of infinite words. It is certainty coupled with
questioning. It is dynamic stillness. It is both separation and unity. It is
love, compassion, commitment, and courage.
Cross-check your emotions
and impulses with reason. Cross-check your mind with your feelings. When my
ex-husband chose to sacrifice our marriage, home, and family on the altar of
his mistress, I was so enraged, my first impulse was to murder them both. I
could have acted on that impulse, but my mind intervened. Do you really want to
deprive your children of a father? Do you really want to go through a murder
trial and get yourself killed or spend the rest of your life in prison? No, I
didn't. The energy of the rage immediately began changing as I allowed my mind
to participate in what was happening. My rage at my ex-husband and his paramour
turned to anger at myself for having chosen the wrong man to marry - a man who
didn't deal well with differences of opinion, who expected me to support
everything he wanted, and who cracked jokes every time I brought up an issue
that bothered me. My anger with myself then transformed into intense pain over
my inability to provide for myself financially after throwing all my energy
into caring for this man and our children for twenty years. That anger then
turned into directing all my energy into plowing through law school. Mind is
not the whole thing. Emotions are not the whole thing. Use both, but do a
cross-check before flying. When everything is in harmony, the action is right.
K.I.S.S. Keep it stunningly simple. You are like a ship sitting
quietly on the surface of still water. That is your core being. That is the
simplicity of it all. There are no waves, no turbulence, no storms - just peace
and harmony. Creativity happens as you move away from the ship and begin
exploring all the unlimited and uncharted depths beneath the ship. There you
find the complexities of light and dark, life and death. Others may have been
there before you and left their own charts and maps for you to follow. Use them
as the guides they were meant to be, not as what is really true. Play with what
you discover, shape it, and be shaped by it. When monsters arise from the
depths, you can always return to the safety of your own still ship on the calm
ocean.
Remember that it's all about you. You, as observer, make
all the difference. You can see others as jerks, teachers, fellow human beings,
or aspects of yourself. If you see others as jerks, you'll react with anger,
blame, self-righteousness, and attempts to control. You'll see yourself as
superior and become an arrogant judge. If you see others as teachers, you'll
listen with respect and ask yourself what you have to learn, even if the lesson
is painful. If you see a fellow human being as an aspect of yourself, you'll
feel compassion and view yourself and the other person as equals, regardless of
wealth, jobs, possessions, background, or education. What do you want to see
and what do you want to become?
Keep your focus on yourself.
When you are driving and someone tries to cut you off, what are your choices?
You can see him as a jerk and become angry and frustrated. But why give your
power away to a jerk by directing your focus toward him? Shift the focus back
to yourself and watch your anger and frustration disappear. Are you driving
leisurely or do you have a commitment to keep that requires you to be on time?
Are you positioned so that you can hold your course and assert your rights? How
far are you willing to go to avoid a collision? If it's really important to you
to prevent him from cutting you off, put all your energy into that and watch
him back down. If you're not in a hurry, let him in. It simply doesn't matter.
If he can cut you off regardless of what you do, let it go this time and vow to
position yourself better next time. You're doing whatever you need to do,
you're releasing your anger and frustration, and that is enough.
Stop "shoulding" on yourself. There are no "shoulds" or
externally-imposed commands. There are only needs - yours and mine. The more of
them we can satisfy, the more harmoniously we will live together.
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About Janet... |
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