Here Is An Interesting Fact Of Life

For me to touch them … they have to be touching me. 

Most people never notice this one.

For my life to be focused and centered in reality … and in reality is the key phrase here … I had to be real.  So it follows if I am to be real:

If I can come in contact with them … and conversely … they with me … I have to consider that I might not be destroyed by the contact with them.

My conundrum was that I was afraid … I was hiding … I was hiding in plain sight deep inside my own skin. The real me was far below the surface of my metaphorical pond … holding its breath. In the place that I hide in the depths of, while appearing to be somebody at the surface in plain sight … Now here is my problem, if I wanted to have the life I said I always wanted to have, I had to at least come to the surface where the skin meets the air and be present and accountable for a period of time.  

On Seeing Clearly

The Order of What’s Next

EXPERIENCE has taught us that we all have this place where we hide. It is a place that we need to move past if we are to heal and if we are to grow.  This healing and growth happen over time, and there does seem to be a universal recipe that needs to be followed in conjunction with a set of events, circumstances, and practices. 

First, we need to reach past our hiding place and ask for help.

Second, we need to find those other souls who have made the journey, at least in part, and join up with them.

Third, we need to listen to someone other than ourselves, and do life someone else’s way rather than only our way.

Fourth, we must be prepared to follow this new groove for the rest of our lives.  Why? Because falling back on the old ways as soon as we’re feeling better will simply undo all we have done.

Subtle Simple Truths

There was no need to be afraid of looking closely at my pain … after all; we are now only looking … the experience of it is long since passed.

That trust, truth, honesty and faith are places in our consciousness, not things that can be held onto … not something to be possessed.

None of us can change our past … it is simply what happened … and that is that.

The interesting twist on the past being our past is that God or our Higher Power was there when it all happened … whatever it was … and the past that I have is the only one I’ve got … its mine and I am stuck with owning it.

A good way for anyone to begin to heal his or her past in the present moment is simply to say:

My Past is simply: where I walked with my Higher Power … One With.

My Present is simply: Me walking with my Higher Power in the present moment … One With.

My Future is simply: where I will walk with my Higher Power … next … what a powerful concept … next … again as always … One With.

Remember, time and healing will always be the same … eternity is filled with only two things … my thoughts and time … Time as I chose to experience it … Time as I pass through it …

Know this that most of us have been arrogant when we assumed that God was mistaken in His plan for us, especially when things did not go our way. 

Everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be; the problem is most of it does not agree with me!

With true humility we become teachable, this is a truth; because we can see ourselves reflected in everyone else and in everyplace or situation we experience.  In the metaphor, of looking into the Loving Eye Of God we can now begin to consider that it is possible to do so … actually to look into the Loving Eye Of God and see we are loved and cherished … what a concept … being loved and cherished for no other reason than we are who we are … not for what we have done … no longer the forgotten one … the one I have believed I was for all my living memory.

Reflections on the Way of Things

Thanks Neil, I read that blog just a wee bit ago on facebook.  I was thinking of my own experience just last week and how today, I woke up with a feeling of creative energy bubbling under the surface.  I didn't have a chance to act on it because I had to run off to work.  Yet even on the way to work I could still feel it,in  the way the sun was shining and the leaves where floating in the air, it was magical, I just wanted to stop and feel it but I had to keep moving.  So off I went...chop wood, carry water... now after reading this I realize it's much more than seizing a moment, it's seizing each opportunity as it comes. Thank you for this...I look forward to the next opportunity...and the next and the next....ain't life grand! 
Love you!

CS

Forgiveness to me means: 

I recover the energy that I have invested to protect me from a world I thought would destroy me ... 

Then reinvesting that energy in my creativity ... I become a co creator with the Creator ... 

No longer at odds with the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Understanding The Way of Things

Understanding The Way of Things begins with the premise that all experiences are equally balanced, as in: you don't find protons without electrons. There can’t be a positive without an equal and opposite negative to balance it off. Whenever we experience an overwhelmingly painful event, there is always an equal amount of opportunity associated with it for growth, but only if we have the mind to find it. Then we need to seize the opportunity.

I have not yet found a case where this wasn't true.

Recognizing the lesson, gift or opportunity in the tragedy will neutralize the pain of the experience. This is especially true when one is a survivor of childhood trauma, abuse and abandonment or after the loss of a relationship whether by death, divorce or decision[1].  For me personally this lesson was brought home when my first wife passed.  It was 1976 and I was 29 and she was 26. She took her life... The pain was death defying ... my sense of future was non-existent ... but over time it passed and the opportunity for growth simply lay there before me. It took some time to notice it. But it was there. And today I am still on that path, traveling that journey that began for me in November 1976.

Some people choose, albeit subconsciously, to stay in their grief and pain because they find benefits there. It is a vain attempt for Needs Fulfilment. There are pay offs like: attention, support, freedom from responsibility, and a recognition by and from others of just how deeply life’s incidents hurt them or how much they have lost or how much the deceased person loved them. Helping an individual see what they may really want or what they are trying to get from holding onto their grief and pain can help them do it more responsibly without doing further damage to themselves.

There are also two great quotes I use in my grief work:

·        "To take the pain out of death, you'd have to take the love out of life."-- Richard Paul Evans 

·        "Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened."-- Dr. Seuss

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[1] The Demartini Method See the book, The Breakthrough Experience.