Month: May 2013

The Song Still In Them

/ James Browning

Gratitude11“Make believe and fantasy only find truth
in an imaginative heart and an open mind.”

Often I save scraps of unfinished thoughts for future inspiration. Frequently they end up forgotten taking up space on my hard drive. While looking through a file of remnants this morning I came across the fifteen words above. What seemed incomplete when saved appears now a surprisingly finished and meaningful thought. Maybe time was needed to forget the original context the concept came from so I could forget enough to see the notion’s broader meaning.

A discovery of the last couple of years is how important daydreaming is. The habit to intellectually sneer at thoughts conjured within fantasizing is not gone. Such rational disbelief is taught and engrained in us all. We’re told “be realistic”, “you’re dreaming”, “get in the real world” and such. Today it is my open acceptance that anything beyond who I presently am, what I know and have already accomplished resides in the dominion of wishing and dreaming. Those realms are not found in the “real world” so often we’re reminded to live within.

For “make believe and fantasy” to find any rational meaning and have a chance of coming true they must come to an “imaginative heart and an open mind”. That’s the way many great insights or discoveries came to be. From trying an approach someone was almost completely convinced could not work was a break through made.

There is no doubt the world has millions of ‘dreams’ kept secret or given only lip service. Making aspirations, grand or more humble, come true takes effort and toil that only imagination can make bearable. There lives the blindness to logic that is so often the robber of our “castles in the sky”.

One of my mentors in absence has been Henry David Thoreau who wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” That shall not be me! The longer I live the more prolific my hopes and dreams become and the more committed I am to pursuing them. No longer do I fear failure that much, for it matters very little.

My most meaningful reward is not accomplishment, but within pursuit of my fantasies and daydreams. To know I tried; to know I went for it will have me more apt on my deathbed to say “I had a good life. I lived well” instead of being filled with regret and “shoulda, coulda”. What an amazing piece of wisdom to have resonating with me. From whatever source it came, I am humbly grateful.

If there were ever a time to dare,
To make a difference
To embark on something worth doing
It is now.
Not for any grand cause, necessarily –
But for something that tugs at your heart
Something that is worth your aspiration
Something that is your dream.
You owe it to yourself
To make your days count.
There is only one you
And you will pass this way but once.
From the poem “Dream Big” – Author Unknown

Today is Your Day!

/ James Browning

Dr Suess 2

” Life” by Susan Polis Schutz

dreams can come true
if you take the time to
think about what you want in life

get to know yourself
find out who you are
choose your goals carefully

be honest with yourself
always believe in yourself

find many interests and pursue them
find out what is important to you
find out what you are good at

don`t be afraid to make mistakes
work hard to achieve successes
when things are not going right
don`t give up – just try harder
give yourself freedom to try out new things
laugh and have a good time

open yourself up to love
take part in the beauty of nature
be appreciative of all that you have
help those less fortunate than you
work towards peace in the world

live life to the fullest
create your own dreams and
follow them until they are a reality

Grateful for life is how I woke up this morning. I am thankful for this day and especially that it’s Friday. The weekend will be filled with lots of time with people I care about. Being healthy, having a life rich in possibility, appreciation, loved ones, peace of mind and direction, I am indeed a very wealthy man.

Congratulations!
Today is your day!
You’re off to great places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
oh the places you will go
Dr. Seuss

Where Peace and Gratitude Multiply

/ James Browning

reaching-hand1When I step back a bit and take a broadened view I can see stirred into my thinking is not only what I consider completely rational. “Perception of future lack”, “conspicuous consumption” and even “low level greed” is mixed in as well. Ouch, that hurts!

Since writing those words here yesterday they’ve echoed in my thoughts consistently. When that occurs it’s obvious a lesson is being taught; a teaching sent is being chewed slowly by my psyche to get the most emotional nutrients possible.

“Want” and I are well acquainted. We’re old friends and long-standing enemies. It’s the split-apart nature of “wanting” that has been my problem. It’s like being tied between two wild horses pulling in opposite directions.

Connecting the points has been a help: accepting it is healthy to want and harmful to let uncontrolled want take control. Life is lived between the two much like standing on top of a small, narrow mountain. All is well if I keep my footing sure, but lose it and I go tumbling down. Deeply rooted in my ego, want and desire are always present and constantly pulling. Awareness helps me keep them under control.

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing. Eric Hoffer

That’s how it is with want. As long as you lack something you yearn for it without cease. if only I could have that one thing, you tell yourself, all my problems would be solved. But once you get it, once the object of your desires is thrust into your hands, it begins to lose its charm. Other wants assert themselves, other desires make themselves felt, and bit by bit you discover that you’re right back where you started. Paul Auster

Want is my ally. Want is my adversary. Doing my best to live a life balanced between the two is where peace and gratitude multiply.

Be not wishing and pining,
but thankfully content.
For it is a short bridge
between wanting and regret.
Richelle E. Goodrich

Legacy Of Lack

/ James Browning

treasureI don’t want whatever I want.
Nobody does. Not really.
What kind of fun would it be
if I just got everything
I ever wanted just like that,
and it didn’t mean anything?
What then?
Neil Gaiman

Lack – Deficiency or absence; to be without; to be short or have need of something.

Once upon a time, with roots that go back to medieval marketplaces featuring stalls that functioned as stores, shopping offered a way to connect socially. But over the last decade, retailing came to be about one thing: unbridled acquisition, epitomized by big-box stores where the mantra was “stack ’em high and let ’em fly” and online transactions that required no social interaction at all — you didn’t even have to leave your home.  Stephanie Rosenbloom http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In childhood I learned a legacy of lack. My family was poor in many ways: financially, morally and spiritually. Such an environment shapes one of two types of people: 1) another just like the others with photo-copied habits and beliefs or 2) someone who does their best to be the opposite of what they saw and experienced. It has long been my desire to be one of the latter. I have consistently applied myself to being so, although in ways not nearly as successfully as I wish.

Four  ‘extra’ pair of unworn jeans, three new ‘backup’ cases for my iPhone, four ‘replacement’ Timex “Indiglo” watches, eight or ten new pair of drug store reading glasses ‘for when I need them’ and so on. All of those things are in my possession now. If thinking about them did not convince me I had a “little problem”, writing them down certainly did.

Always I have told myself I buy ‘extras’ because I like something very much and want to have ‘replacements’ on hand when what I am using wears out. “They stop making what I like” has often been reasoning I add to my pile of logic. When I step back a bit and take a broadened view I can see stirred into my thinking is not only what I consider completely rational. “Perception of future lack”, “conspicuous consumption” and even “low level greed” is mixed in as well. Ouch, that hurts!

My plans do not include suddenly giving my “backups” away to charity, although I will continue what has been my past practice: give to friends when they are in need. What I have now is front of mind awareness of my tendency to “buy stuff”. With awareness can come understanding. With understanding can come change. Further, it is important to be thankful I have the ability in the first place to purchase the majority of my wants. What matters is what I do with it!

As I open more to learning and practicing wise and prudent ways of being, lessons in the classroom of wisdom continue to arrive in an ever-increasing quantity. I am indeed truly and deeply blessed. I have no clear spiritual understanding or profound concept of God and the Universe to be overtly causing my growth. But deep down I suspect all are at work though my porthole of gratitude. Only when the student is ready can he be taught.

…what you need
and what you want
aren’t the same things…
Cherise Sinclair

Back In Love With Life

/ James Browning

his quest

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
He to whom the emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe,
is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.
To know what is impenetrable to us really exists,
manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
which our dull faculties can comprehend
only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge,
this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
Albert Einstein

the_MYSTERIES_OF_LIFE copy

Mystery appears new again to me. My list of future possibilities grows ever larger much like how a very small child perceives life. I have rediscovered awe, wonderment and a sense of miracles. Through a slow awakening I have fallen back in love with life much like when I was very young, but better and now seemingly more possible.

For a long time my adult life consisted of a continually shorter and shorter list of potential and promise. In reality that was only my perception, not what was really truth. And there in lies the key and one of my more profound realizations about being alive: my quality of living has mostly to do with my perceptions about it. Simple, but magnificent in its magnitude. I am grateful for the weighty insight eluded me until I was ready for it.

What is given to you is what is needed;
what you want, requires giving up what you don’t need.
George Alexiou

All Of You Are Right

/ James Browning

SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERA“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world” wrote German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. It’s so easy to think my take on things is the clearest view of reality when everyone has their own perspective that is just as valid for them. I learn nothing by regurgitating what I believe to be true, but can have my perception widened by listening to others with an open mind.

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

“Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.

“Oh, no! it is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.

“Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

“It is like a big hand fan” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

“It is like a solid pipe,” Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, “All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched a different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features that you all said.”

“Oh!” everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

There is much wisdom to gained in allowing room for other viewpoints. Frequently accepting a different point of view does not invalidate mine. It adds to and expands it instead. When I am able to replace my opinion with someone else’s notion of things I mature in knowledge, open-mindedness and my ability for further growth is broadened. I am grateful my beliefs are often shown to me to be true, but just as thankful to find and accept frequently they are not!

Always keep in mind that no single person, place,
or thing can force you to believe or disbelieve anything.
Perhaps this was true when you were a child, but not now.
Now you have the independence to choose what you believe.
Your knowing is yours.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Constant Process Of Discovery

/ James Browning

path-of-the-soul1One of my favorite catch phrases is “you find what you go looking for”. When I get a confused or disbelieving look I further explain “expect good and you’ll get it. Expect bad and it will rain crap on you every day of your life.” At that point listeners either continue to look confused, seem to get it or pretend to understand.

“You get what you go looking for” isn’t hippie “speak”, magical lingua franca or New Age vernacular. It’s a proven concept but not particularly about things like wishing for a winning lottery ticket (although it might help!). Rather it concerns the generalized quality of a person’s life.

If feel your life “sucks” it is so because you believe it does! One who clouds his or her head with worries and fear then imagines difficulty headed their way, will surely get it. Someone whose thoughts are frequently about gratefulness, contentment and the expectation of both, will find them in larger quantity.

There is a lie that acts like a virus within the mind of humanity. And that lie is, ‘There’s not enough good to go around. There’s lack and there’s limitation and there’s just not enough.’

The truth is that there’s more than enough good to go around. There is more than enough creative ideas. There is more than enough power. There is more than enough love. There’s more than enough joy. All of this begins to come through a mind that is aware of its own infinite nature.

There is enough for everyone. If you believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That’s the truth.” Michael Beckwith

A heightened awareness of good will bring more good. Having consistent thoughts of gratitude brings more to be thankful for. Being more glad for ‘what is’ than sad about ‘what is not’ allowed my first ever true happiness to find me!

Improving one’s quality of living is simple, yet not easy, but worth every effort. My life (and your life) is a product of thought more than anything else. By growing awareness, my experience of living has markedly changed for the better. I’m not happy and content every moment, but more often than not I am!

At this moment my gratefulness is being expressed through a welling up within of great hope that you find this truth for yourself and practice it.

Drama does not just walk into your life.
You either create it, invite it,
or you associate with people
who love to bring it into your life.
Unknown

Life is a Course in Life

/ James Browning

forgivenessForgiveness is a powerful and affirmative part of our humanity. It should be differentiated from its close cousin, acceptance, which while important, is essentially, passive. For many, the healing power of forgiveness allows us to truly move on. A life lived without forgiveness is a life of real pain.

We are all wounded. You will be surprised to hear of all the wounds that normal people carry with them. It may be hard to believe, but many of these wounds can determine how people feel about themselves for an entire lifetime. And everyone’s been hurt in one way or another.

Forgiveness, like grieving, has its stages. It is well known that grieving has its stages. You loved someone, or you lost something dear to you. You go through denial, bargaining, anger, depression and finally you come to acceptance. Forgiveness is a lot like grieving. The important things that we need to forgive don’t come easily.

First, you have to acknowledge that you have to forgive. It is important to your psychological health. Carrying old wounds is simply a burden that steals the pleasure from the life that you have now. We are not on this earth forever, and sitting in victimhood can be such a loss.

Acknowledging a wound that needs healing is only a first step. You also have to deal with real feelings of anger and at times, betrayal. I often think that the word – FAIR – is a four letter word that should sit unhappily with its other, less decent, brothers. Too many people can’t get over just how unfair life is. Such pain, for what? Life is unfair, but it is also filled with potential for beauty, love and grace. The anger over things having been unfair is a product of our immature minds needing to have a balance in nature. Yes, there may be a balance, supervised by God or by nature, but it often has little to do with the narrative that we want to write!

Forgiveness is ultimately a gift you give yourself. It allows the wounds to heal. Asking for forgiveness is a noble act. It is an acknowledgement that you hurt someone and it makes it easier for the forgiver to forgive. It takes a burden away, but this is only the first step. If you really want to be forgiven by the person that you hurt, just apologizing is not enough. You have to try to right the wrong. This is not a perfect science, but a little effort can go a long way. While nothing can undo an unfortunate experience, making amends counts.

Life is a course in life. We are taught by our experiences and no textbook can really do it for us. Learn what each chapter has to teach you. Forgiveness is part and parcel of the emotional work of learning these lessons well. From “The Intelligent Divorce” by Mark Banschick, M.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201110/can-you-forgive

So grateful am I for the lessons in recent years about forgiveness. Today I am many times more capable of letting go; of forgiving others and myself. It’s amazing how much better life is!

True forgiveness is when you can say,
“Thank you for that experience.”
Oprah Winfrey

Dew On the Flower of Life

/ James Browning

ku-xlargeLeo Tolstoy wrote, “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness”. Experience has taught me the truth of his words. I have loved some women mainly for what was on the outside, while ignoring, for a time, what emanated from within. Of course, every time I got my heart broken. Looking from the vantage point of today it is simple to see why.

Soul, heart and mind are on the “inside” of a person. They’re not worn where its easy to see their qualities and character. The “inside of a book” takes time to know. The bewildering part has been the more beautiful the woman I loved, to a person, the more self-conscious and down on herself she was.

In particular, people tend to have a distorted appreciation of how they look. There are a few people who look in the mirror and think they look terrific all the time; but they are few. Many more look in the mirror and see an acne scar which they think dominates their appearance—or a prominent nose, or a weak chin, or a receding hairline, or gray hair (even when, sometimes, they have no visible gray hair), or eyebrows that are too thin or two thick, and so on.

The mirror lies. As people tend to see everything in life as they expect it to be, they see, especially, in the mirror, what they expect to see. Elderly people looking in the mirror do not recognize that they have grown older, until, suddenly, they find themselves in front of a different mirror and their face is lit up more brightly, or just differently. It is usually a disconcerting and uncomfortable experience. Some people give up looking at their reflection. They purposely turn away when they walk by a mirror. Sometimes they unexpectedly walk by a full length mirror at night and do not see their accustomed reflection. Rather, they see a parent reflected back at them. All of this seems new to them because they have unexpectedly observed themselves from a different perspective. Fredric Neuman, M.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear/201212/mirrors-lie-the-fallibility-perception-and-memory

Admittedly, I am not completely comfortable ‘seeing’ myself in a mirror. When I go past just acknowledging my reflection and really look at myself, it appears the years showing exceed the number I have lived. I’m told I look younger than I am, but my reflection appears the reverse to me. My hair has thinned more than I really want to notice and I have a “belly”. My skin is changing texture and growing rougher. I see small veins showing on my ankles. Lines and creases are chiseled into my face.. It’s all okay though, or at least moving in that direction. With making myself see what is from a different perspective awareness is growing. And awareness is were accurate, and thereby, confidence begins.

My perception of my image in a mirror is slowly changing. By paying more attention and really seeing what is there, I am becoming able to look past what I regret and see what I have to be grateful about. Over and over its been proven to me what I find gratitude for becomes improved. And so it is with my sense about my appearance. Gratefulness is dew on a flower of life that makes it shine and sparkle.

Above all, don’t lie to yourself.
The man who lies to himself
and listens to his own lie
comes to a point that he cannot
distinguish the truth within him,
around him, and so loses
all respect for himself and for others.
And having no respect he ceases to love.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Newly Refocused to Clarity

/ James Browning

fa892c9ecFailing to meet your true destiny is a tragic act of free will.

Those dozen words from Anthon St. Maarten have been swimming around in my head since encountering them for the first time yesterday. I have since expanded the short statement into a generalized meaning that helps me to hang on to my interpretation of Maarten’s words:  when my life situation is no longer blamed on other people, circumstances and fate, my perception is peeled back to show it is my choices and actions that most shape my life. Intellectuality I already knew that. But having that wisdom newly refocused to clarity is a sure path to an improved use of my free will and in turn a conduit to a continually improving life experience.

I made sure to pay attention to everything I was doing. To be fully in the moment. Because that’s all life is, really, a string of moments that you knot together and carry with you. Hopefully most of those moments are wonderful, but of course they won’t all be. The trick is to recognize an important one when it happens. Even if you share the moment with someone else, it is still yours. Your string is different from anyone else’s. It is something no one can ever take away from you. It will protect you and guide you, because it IS you.

Until recently, I thought it was death that gave meaning to life–that having an endpoint is what spurred us on to embrace life while we had it. But I was wrong. It isn’t death that gives meaning to life. Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question.

What matters is holding tight to that string, and not letting anyone tell us our goals aren’t big enough or our interests are silly. But the voices of others aren’t the only ones we need to worry about. We tend to be our own worst critics. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: ‘Most of the shadows in this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.’ … Wisdom is found in the least expected places. Always keep your eyes open. Don’t block your own sunshine. Be filled with wonder. From “Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life” by Wendy Mass

The meaning of life is not some cosmic, out-of-reach and mysterious explanation. That’s difficult to see most of the time because us humans have the innate ability to over complicate things and obscure our ability to accurately see, know and perceive. Only by living rooted in the present as much as possible is “the meaning of it all” to be found. It is not “outside of me”. I was born with it, but have been conditioned to believe I was incomplete and the meaning of my life was outside of me. IT ISN’T!

Even without being exposed to the clarity of St. Maarten’s statement before, I’ve been living with that sort of self-direction now for several years. Gratefully, with those dozen words as a newly focused reminder I can do it even more.

There are essentially two questions in life –
a spiritual question and a material question.
The spiritual question is ‘Who am I?’
The material question is
‘What am I to do with my life?’
One leads to the other.
Rasheed Ogunlaru