Beyond the obvious

That Shadow Was Me

/ James Browning

www.sortedpixels.comI have spent most of my adult life looking for it. Over time I tried this way and that way; this woman and that woman; that friend and others. Time and time again I found it temporarily only to discover it was only a self-created mirage that faded away once in the midst of it. Love was baffling and elusive.

The lack of feeling loved kept me searching to fill the emptiness. Success did not work. Money didn’t help much either. Beautiful and loving partners didn’t fill the hole for long. Hobbies and interests pursued and accomplished were temporary fixes at best. Moving from a town where I did not find love to another where I thought it could be did not sate the yearning either.

The mystery I could not solve for so long was the riddle of myself.

The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.

What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it’s your responsibility to be that person you want to be with.

I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who’s not full of hate, who’s able to smile and be carefree. So that’s who I have to be. C.JoybellC.

There’s an old country song titled “Searching for Love In All The Wrong Places” which describes well my long search for love. Barbara De Angelis wrote, If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.

And there you have it. What I was missing was loving myself. Only in recent years when I have begun to love the human being I have become has my heart become gratefully capable of loving others. Always before there was an obstruction throwing a shadow over anyone I loved. That shadow was me.

If you don’t receive love
from the ones who are meant to love you,
you will never stop looking for it.
Robert Goolrick

Let the Gratefulness Overflow

/ James Browning

Happiness revealed Brother DavidYou think this is just another day in your life. It’s not just another day. It’s the one day that is given to you. To-day. It’s given to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now and the only appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is. If you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well.

Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can open. That incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us for our pure enjoyment. Look at the sky. We so rarely look at the sky. We so rarely note how different it is from moment to moment with clouds coming and going. We just think of the weather and even the weather we don’t think of all the many nuisances of weather. We just think of good weather and bad weather. This day, right now, is unique weather. Maybe a kind that will never exactly in that form come again. That formation of clouds in the sky will never be same that is right now.

Open your eyes. Look at that. Look at the faces of people whom you meet. Each one has an incredible story behind their face, a story that you could never fully fathom. Not only their own story but the story of their ancestors. We all go back so far and in this present moment on this day all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here like a life-giving water if you only open your heart and drink.

Open your heart to that incredible gift that civilization gives to us. You flip a switch and there is electric light. You turn a faucet and there is warm water and cold water… and drinkable water. It’s a gift that millions and millions in the world will never experience.

These are just a few of an enormous number of gifts to which we can open your heart. and so I wish that you will open your heart to all these blessings and let them flow through you… that everyone you will meet at this day will be blessed by you.

Just by your own eyes, by your smile, by your touch, just by your presence. Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you. Then it will really be a good day.

Take from a piece of the film “Happiness Revealed” was originally shown at the http://www.TED.com conference on November 16, 2010 by notable film maker Louis Schwartzberg. What’s just above are comments included in that film segment spoken by Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast. Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ

Having seen this film segment previously about two years ago in no way lessened the positive impact it had on me last night as I watched again. Transcribing Brother David’s comments kept me misty eyed all the way through. I am grateful for the warm and meaningfulness his words bring to my soul and am glad I still feel them this morning.

Beauty and seduction, I believe,
is nature’s tool for survival,
because we will protect
what we fall in love with.
Louie Schwartzberg

I would be grateful if you’d forward to a few friends
an installment of G.M.G. you find meaningful and help set a record
for readership for GoodMorningGratitude.com’s second birthday on April 25, 2013.
Thank you.

 

Path To Gratitude

/ James Browning

There are many pathways to being more grateful, to be happier and to improve one’s outlook on life. Here are a few from the ongoing dialogue I have with myself.

GMG image for 4 22 2013 copy

Growing gratitude has been a game changer. Gratefulness fosters the growth of additional thankfulness; makes me stronger and more resilient; more patient and understanding; helps me love with an open heart; brings added belief in myself and enhances every step I make on the path of my life, even the painful and difficult. Making gratitude a way of life does not change things quickly, but over time the difference has been remarkable.

The way you treat yourself
sets the standard for others.
Sonya Friedman

I would be grateful if you’d forward to a few friends
an installment of G.M.G. you find meaningful and help set a record
for readership for GoodMorningGratitude.com’s second birthday on April 25, 2013.
Thank you.

Scrubbed Clean

/ James Browning

ancient_forest_by_robinhalioua-d5qhc26The sort of morning that appeared last Thursday was one where the air had been scrubbed clean by the rain of the day before. The sky was more blue; the light of the sun more crystal-like. The distant horizon seemed father away than usual because of the clarity everything appeared with. It was a morning where Nature demanded Her beauty be noticed and I willingly acquiesced to Her desire. I felt gratitude for the gift of the morning and an uncommon humility created by noticing what I saw.

Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have.” I swear its true. My sense of things the first fifteen minutes after I rise is a relatively accurate predictor of how I will feel through my day. Beginning with a sense of gratitude has multiplied my joy of living at least ten-fold. From “The Blank Book” by Lemony Snicket

It was my mantra that “I was not a morning person” for most of my life. My preference was to be a creature of the night staying up as late as I could and yet still function decently well the following day. Now it’s easy to see I spent most of my days sleep deprived and the effect of it was not a positive thing. And more so, it’s clear now I was never a “night person” and rather only a creature of habit.

Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day. Vera Nazarian

There are fewer people paying attention to a day’s beginning than any other part of the time the sun is up. The number of folks who notice and even celebrate sunsets are numerous. Those paying attention to sunrise are far less in numbers. In that line of thought I realize early morning is more personally mine that any other part of daylight.

Since reading “Walden” as a kid I have held Henry David Thoreau close in heart and mind as a personal hero. First, because he chose to dance to the beat of his own drummer and follow his heart, no matter what others thought. Second, because he became close friends with some of the deepest underpinnings of life. He saw things most of us hardly notice although at this point in my life I am awakening, even if just a little, to the small machinery of life all around me that Thoreau came to know so well.

Morning brings back the heroic ages. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Henry David Thoreau

As something of a “grownup” I have lived long enough to notice, many only at mid-morning, some 17,000 new days. Fate willing, I should have at least another 7,000 left to enjoy. With great gratitude and thankfulness, I assure you that each one will mean a little more than the day before.

When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive;
to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Marcus Aurelius

Because I Will Make It So

/ James Browning

488273_471885792884874_632342651_nThere is a vitality,
a life force,
a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique,
and if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium;
and be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is,
not how it compares with other expression.
is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction,
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others.
Martha Graham

Another new day; another gift I will not take for granted. Whatever there is for me to paint and sculpt out of this little piece of the hard rock of life, I will be grateful for it all. Every breath will have a silver lining of joy. Why? Because I will make it so.

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.
C.S. Lewis

My Imperfect Seeking

/ James Browning

shellResponse to the post here yesterday, “Stuck In the Labyrinth“, was much stronger than usual. Thank you for reading and for your re-posts! I suppose it is a commonality we all have: too much time spent thinking about the past and future when being well footed in the present would be a far better use of our energy. Just about all of us know that, but at least for me, practicing it is, at best, a highly inconsistent endeavor.  But earnest trying improves my life experience a lot.

Mostly as a reminder to myself to keep the “now” in as clear of a focus as I can, below are some leftovers from yesterday’s research.

We are living in a culture
entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time,
in which the so-called present moment
is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline
between an all-powerfully causative past
and an absorbingly important future.
We have no present.
Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied
with memory and expectation.
We do not realize that there never was,
is, nor will be any other experience than present experience.
We are therefore out of touch with reality.
We confuse the world as talked about,
described, and measured
with the world which actually is.
We are sick with a fascination
for the useful tools of names and numbers,
of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.
Alan Watts

When you understand… that what you’re telling is just a story… It isn’t happening anymore. When you realize the story you’re telling is just words, when you can just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan… then we’ll figure out who you’re going to be. From “Invisible Monsters” Chuck Palahniuk

And, so I go into my day reminded again of the important of being firmly rooted in the “now”. To a level of 100% that is an impossible aspiration, yet it is my imperfect seeking that gives me more and more of the present to live in and be grateful for.

Gratitude looks to the Past
and love to the Present;
fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.
C.S. Lewis

 

Greet Yourself Arriving

/ James Browning

see myself arrivingLived in thirteen states and a foreign country.
Two marriages and numerous failed relationships.
Lots of jobs. Work, work, work.
Learned to fly. Bought an airplane.
Became a professional photographer.
Success and money.
Accomplishment created more emptiness
Often learned little from failure.
Going and going not getting anywhere.
Never satisfied. Always wanting more.
… et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

When first looking at that list of ten things it does not seem like such a short inventory should take up as much space as they have during the last thirty years. Of course there was more, but in majority those ten things are where I spent most of my time. Searching and searching but not knowing exactly what I was searching for.. Then a few years ago my focus began to be clearer. Slowly, so painfully slow, a form took shape. I was surprised  when I finally saw what I had been searching for. It was me…. I had been looking outside myself for what was inside all along

“Love After Love”

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott

Uncomplicated and plainly said; today I am grateful for “me”.

Whether I fail or succeed
shall be no man’s doing but my own.
I am the force.
Elaine Maxwell

Just Do It!

/ James Browning

elephantThere are nineteen weeks remaining until I retire from a profession I have been engaged in for forty years. There is certainty I will be busier then than now, but with what I specifically want to do. For example, there’s extended travel, a book to finish and publish, far away friends to visit, work to do on my home, several hundred books to read and so much more. It has been my tendency to be busier in my personal life than while working and expect that to accelerate. The excitement that soon my time will be all mine makes me smile every time I think of it.

If you can do it, should do it, and want to do it, what are you waiting for? Many things in life that we excuse or misplace blame for are not created by what we do but by what we fail to do. Maybe we just procrastinate and just don’t get around to action. Or maybe it’s just a thought, something that we think would be nice to do, but we just aren’t serious about it.

Some possible answers come from my own experience. One excuse is that we just can’t seem to find the time. That won’t wash. Whatever we do in life, we have found or made time for. Final choices are matters of priority, and sometimes we don’t prioritize well.

Fear is an obvious cause of inaction.
Fear of failure.
Fear of being different or out-of-step.
Fear of rejection.
Even fear of success.
Fear of failure arises from self-doubt. We may think we don’t know enough, don’t have enough time or energy, or lack ability, resources, and help. The cure for such fear is to learn what is needed, make the time, pump ourselves up emotionally so we will have the energy, hone our relevant skill set, and hustle for resources and help. These things can be demanding. It is no wonder there are so many things we can, should, and want to do but don’t do.

All our life, beginning with school, we are conditioned to consider failure as a bad thing. But failure is often a good, even necessary, thing. The ratio between failures and successes for any given person is rather stable. Thus, if you want more successes, you need to make more failures. Even the corporate world recognizes this principle, and the most innovative companies practice it. Jeff Dyer, in his book The Innovator’s DNA, says the key to business success is to “fail often, fail fast, fail cheap.” It’s O.K.. to fail, as long as you learn from it. Our mantra should be: “Keep tweaking until it works.” This is exactly how Edison invented the light bulb. Most other inventors and creative people in general have operated with the same mantra. Taken from the article “Just Do It” by Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, William Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D.  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/memory-medic/201303/just-do-it-0

“Just do it” is the course I have set for myself knowing regrets for most people are not what they did with their life, but what they did not do. It’s time to reach high. My most exciting, enriching and creative period has already begun. I am grateful for my life!

Far better it is to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight
that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Tiny Little Prank

/ James Browning

growning olderAs age ticks off with an increasing number, ever faster and faster, I find my sense of humor about growing older increases. Middle age and older presents a myriad of opportunities to practice the phrase “learn to smile at yourself and you’ll always be amused”.

My Rememberer

My forgetter’s getting better
But my rememberer is broke
To you that may seem funny
But, to me, that is no joke.
For when I’m ‘here’ I’m wondering
If I really should be ‘there’
And, when I try to think it through,
I haven’t got a prayer!
Often times I walk into a room,
Say “what am I here for?”
I rack my brain, but all in vain
A zero, is my score.
At times I put something away
Where it is safe, but, Gee!
The person it is safest from
Is, generally, me!
When shopping I may see someone,
Say “Hi” and have a chat,
Then, when the person walks away
I ask myself, “who was that?”
Yes, my forgetter’s getting better
While my rememberer is broke,
And it’s driving me plumb crazy
And that isn’t any joke.
Denny Davis

So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.
From “Nature” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Some years back I adopted the practice of announcing the age I would be on my next birthday several months early. It was my way of sneaking up on another notch on my birthday stick. So it has begun again this year here now four months before the anniversary of my birth. I am certain a psychologist would have a field day sorting out why I get satisfaction from telling people I am a certain age knowing all the while I remain a year younger. I am grateful for the joy it brings me to play this tiny little prank on the world!

At age 20 we worry about what others think of us;
At age 40 we don’t care what they think of us;
At age 60 we realize that they haven’t been thinking of us at all.
Denny Davis

Why Does Criticism Bother Us?

/ James Browning

!!~~!! morning-fogBenjamin Disraeli once wrote, “How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.” That thought was illustrated clearly to me a few days ago. Someone I know, but not particularly well, jokingly said something like “you drive me crazy with all your stuff about optimism, gratitude and hope for the future. I think you make a lot of it up.”

He saw the look on my face and think that’s why he followed up “Don’t worry about it. I’m just kidding.” It had never occurred to me that it was even possible to fake happiness successfully and I was a bit put off by the comment. My reply was along the lines “think whatever you want. Its your loss if you don’t believe in such things”.

The comment continued to take up more space in my thoughts than it should have for a couple of days. I found myself randomly quizzing my psyche asking if I was pretending or imagining the lightness of being that I feel most of the time. The response has been the same each time the questioning surfaced. What echoed back was, “you know it’s all true. You feel it too strongly deep down for it not to be the real.”

It’s idiotic how a random casual comment by another person can sporadically occupy a lot of room in a another person’s internal space. Now being past giving any credence to the comment, still I find a curiosity about why it bothered me at all.

On her website ( http://www.namastepublishing.com ) Constance Kellough shared her perspective.

Why does criticism bother us? And, the flip side of the coin—and possibly the most important question of all—why do we let what others say bother us to the point that we in turn criticize them? Have you ever considered that the two might actually be proportional? In other words, we are upset by criticism to the degree we ourselves are critical of ourselves, and often in turn of others.

Some years ago an Ohio State University study found that those who make disparaging comments about others often are tarred with the same brush. It’s the old adage that when we point the finger, there are three fingers pointing back at us. What this means is that a person who accuses another of being controlling is either controlling in themselves or, which is often the case, lacks self-control.

It’s our insecurity that causes us to resent others, criticize them, put them down. Sarah Grand put her finger on what criticism is all about: Our opinion of people depends less on what we see in them than on what they make us see in ourselves. When someone can criticize us and we can “let it in,” we are finally becoming mature. If the criticism is baseless, we can hear it, feel its intent, and evaluate it as nothing to do with us. There’s no emotional wash from it.

What do we mean by “no emotional wash?” Well, for a start it doesn’t make us feel attacked. We don’t become defensive, compelled to argue against what’s being said. We have no inclination to respond in any kind of protective way, just to appreciate the person and their concern.

Ms. Kellough’s comments ring true to me. What echoes in my thoughts is 1) what others say is frequently much more of a reflection of their state of being than the person they are criticizing and 2) Past pain and self-doubt can make a person more susceptible to swallowing anothers criticism.

Reflecting on what was said to me I concluded: the speaker lacks what they accused me of having too much of (optimism, gratitude and hope) and my old hurts, while healed, remain sensitive to being criticized. While the latter is much improved, I am grateful for the reminder. In spite of how much I have grown, I am still vulnerable and can give in to other’s false thinking about me, even if only for a short while.

Don’t criticize
what you can’t understand.
Bob Dylan

http://www.namastepublishing.com/blog/compassionate-eye/why-does-criticism-bother-us-so-much