Living in the Present

This Wonderful Cosmic Ride

/ James Browning

beautiful

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss gets into you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When… a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And, so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
“To Bless the Space Between Us”
by John O’Donohue

My life is good beyond what I could have ever imagined it might be. It’s not easy. Challenges often come. What is different now than earlier in my life is I don’t expect a trouble-free existence. Difficulty is just part of this wonderful cosmic ride called living. I am grateful to realize that… so very grateful.

My philosophy is:
Life is hard, but God is good.
Try not to confuse the two.
Anne F. Beiler

Whatever Life Throws At You

/ James Browning

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This is what you don’t do.
Don’t let this world make you bitter.
Don’t let the actions of other people turn you cold on the inside.
Certain things happen that hurt us, people come that leave us,
and most of all there are moments when you’re bound to fall.
Don’t let those things make you unkind.
It’s okay to cry.
It’s okay to be sad.
But it’s never okay to do other people wrong
just because you were done wrong.
We’re human.
We break.
We make mistakes.
But don’t let pain and sadness run your lives.
Wake up in the morning and do what you think is right.
There are moments in your life where you feel like giving up
and you can’t take it anymore.
It’s okay.
Breathe.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I know you’re weak.
But the things that show your weak side
are also the same ones that make you stronger in the long run.
It’s all about taking whatever life throws at you and learning from it.
https://www.facebook.com/joyofmom

Today is just an ordinary day; a good day. I am feeling a little melancholy because my son who came to visit for several days went home yesterday. The woman I love and live with is at work, so it’s just me and Fred, the dog, at home. I rested well last night and got more sleep that usual (helped me catch up from going all weekend). But I was dragging a little.

There is much serendipity in life if one’s aware enough to notice. I needed a little pick-me-up… just a small one and found it in the joyofmom post above this morning. Thanks “Mom” I needed that.

Be soft.
Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.
Take pride that even though the rest of the world
may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pleasefindthis

May Wounds Become Wisdom

/ James Browning

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Through yesterday, goodmorninggratitude.com contains one thousand and three individual posts in Eighty-four categories; some inspired, others filling space and lots in between. One hundred eighty-six thousand thirty-six unique individuals have visited since late April of 2011.

I thought I was tired of writing GMG or had simply run out of material. In recent months I have been guilty the majority of mornings or either avoiding posting or filling space with something borrowed. I lost my way.

After having held back for a while, I realize how much is missing from my daily existence when I don’t share. Certainly there are days when the best thing I can do is wait till the next morning or the one after to share, but to go much longer is not a healthy thing for me.

Since my healing from codependence, childhood trauma and compulsion began in earnest in 2006 (thankfully addiction never spun into my issues), a big part of my recovery has been a Codependence Anonymous twelve step group. There my open sharing of what I had never spoken about before and being accepted without judgment was more than half of mending. And likewise, so has this blog been part of my cure.

Now I see just how important emptying my heart, mind and soul are, not just at my regular CoDA meeting, but here as well. What is shared, is made more bearable. What is shown to the light of day loses most of its force as a monster. It is the bearing of my deepest self that has healed me and keeps me healing.

And so, it is with knowledge that rejuvenation of this blog is not a “can’t not do” I recommit myself. That’s how recovery works: get a little lost sometimes, re-find the way and begin again. Or my CoDA friend Carl likes to say, “Fall down, get up and try again”.

For whatever bit of good my sharing might do I am thankful. But much more of my gratefulness is for other’s acceptance of me as the imperfect being I am.

May Light always surround you;
Hope kindle and rebound you.
May your Hurts turn to Healing;
Your Heart embrace Feeling.
May Wounds become Wisdom;
Every Kindness a Prism.
May Laughter infect you;
Your Passion resurrect you.
May Goodness inspire
your Deepest Desires.
Through all that you Reach For,
May your arms Never Tire.
D. Simone

Life Is Not A Race

/ James Browning

-Landscapes-Nature-Yellow-Fields-Fresh-New-Hd-Wallpaper--Life is something you can not fake
you live and learn from each mistake
Sunny days or cloudy skies
Happy Greetings or Sad Goodbyes
So don’t sit by and let time pass
Live each day like your last.
This is something that you must do
if you expect to grow and stick it through
All the sadness all the pain wash
it away like the rain.
Fast or slow whatever your pace
take your time life is not a race.
Time Will Pass by Janelle

I’m grateful for Monday and a new week. Time to do some ‘good livin’!

Live Forever

/ James Browning

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A simple, but profound thought for a Sunday morning….

Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things,

just sit still and let the world exist in front of you,

sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes

and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second.

And if you somehow found a way to live

in that second, then you would live forever.
Lauren Oliver

When such captivating moments grasps me, the wonder of life swirls all around and I am overwhelmed with gratefulness.

The purpose of life is to live it,
to taste experience to the utmost,
to reach out eagerly
and without fear
for newer and richer experience.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Feel ‘Em and Let ‘Em Go

/ James Browning

emotions2

Laughter entices and draws others near.
Crying repels all but those who love us dear.
Feasting brings the hungry to left hand and right.
Hunger brings teeth a’ gnashing to hand a bite.
Love looks of peace and sets others at ease,
Heartbreak appears disbelieving, lost and displeased.
Joy is the soft morning light bathing every thing,
Sadness is late night with its sad songs to sing.
Happy, Sad,
Joyful, Mad,
Uncomfortable, Pleased,
Jubilant, Ill-at-ease.
Excited, Let down
Glad, Wearing a frown.
The faces of my face,
As I run the human race.
James Browning

Things change and friends leave. And life doesn’t stop for anybody. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.

You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things. I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to be who I really am. And I’m going to figure out what that is. Stephen Chbosky

Today I wish for you and me to feel all that is given to us to emote. May the full breadth of your emotions be within you. Take happiness from the good and lessons from the bad. I am grateful that day by day the full spectrum of emotions is mine simply by not fearing nor grasping any of my feelings. I feel ’em and let ’em go.

Even if we don’t have the power
to choose where we come from
we can still choose
where we go from there.
Stephen Chbosky

An Illumination of Words

/ James Browning

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There’s a young author whose work I have come to enjoy and admire. C. Joybell C. may be youthful in years but on a spiritual level she strikes me as a “wise old soul’. Her writing covers a myriad of topics, but centers on life and love more than anything else.

The two paragraphs just below were selected because I have a heart that has been broken many times. Some times a woman hurt me. At others I did things that ended up hurting me. A broken heart feels the same no matter who the villain is.

I have met so many heartbroken men. It’s a catastrophe. Women are easily overcome by the process that happens when a boy falls in love and becomes a man. Men’s hearts are so often broken. Still, you have to leave your broken heart in a place where… when the woman who knows how to see what a gift is, sees it… your broken heart can be picked up again. I think that it takes a very strong woman (inner strength) to be able to handle a man falling in love with her, without morphing into a monster (the process is a very potent process, it can poison a woman, really).

A woman thinks she wants a man to fall in love with her for all the perks that come with it; but when a real love really does happen, when a real man shows his manhood; it’s often too powerful a thing to endure without being poisoned. Hence, all the heartbroken men. But, I do believe that there are strong women in the world today. A few. But there are. You could say, that the mark of a real woman, is a woman who can handle a man… a man falling in love with her. A woman who can recognize that, and keep it with her. C. Joybell C.

Too much life energy gets spent on trying to sort out where I’m headed. More and more I am learning to just sit back and enjoy the flight.

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you. C. Joybell C.

“All Things Lit Like Fireflies: An Illumination of Words” is C. Joybell C.’s new book and I am looking forward to getting a copy soon. She has a special way of expressing feelings that speaks strongly to me. Thanks ‘My Lady’… I am grateful for you and your work! http://cjoybellc.com/

I think that we are like stars.
Something happens to burst us open;
but when we burst open and think we are dying;
we’re actually turning into a supernova. A
nd then when we look at ourselves again,
we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful
than we ever were before!
C. JoyBell C.

Slow Down… Stop… See…

/ James Browning

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Everything has beauty,  but not everyone sees it.
Confucius

Beauty can be found everywhere. In a plant, a smile or quite differently.. in someone’s tears. Yet we tend to look away from it, for most of the time it does not represent our current state of mind. Beauty is not something which you can lay your hands on, so for our mostly materialistically orientated minds it is easier to dismiss than to investigate beauty. It is something intangible to our mind, yet it is very tangible to our heart and being. If we allow ourselves to look beyond our mind, we can see that there is so much more to explore. It is like eternity is knocking at the door, but you are always refusing to open the door. And yet we always know when we are touched by beauty. Funny to notice that everyone has this feeling and thus everyone knows what is meant by beauty.

But it takes courage to open yourself up to beauty completely, because it means you have to be vulnerable. You need to open yourself completely; there can be no defense mechanism left in place – only a true and open state of mind and body will allow you to open yourself to beauty. It is like meditating. No longer paying attention to your thoughts the way you normally do – you respond or react to them in any of infinite ways – you begin to feel the person behind the thoughts. You can now see yourself behind your thoughts and emotion and make the conscious realization that you are not your thoughts. You are aware of the thoughts, so this means you can not be your thoughts.

If we can realize this on any level, it will bring considerable change to your life, because you are conscious of a bigger part of you. …we as human beings are by our very nature very vulnerable which allows us to be very curious, sensitive and conscious when it comes to using our senses in the best way. Beauty can guide us along the way to a better understanding of our true selves. Since beauty is an essential building block for life, it holds deeper meaning to what it means to be a human being. Animals can not feel or respond to beauty the way we do, for they are not aware of the concept of beauty – they only embody it. As a human you have the possibility to touch and feel the beauty in your own being. When you start learning new things at first it will seem overwhelming and unbearable to cope with, but eventually you will pick up with the pace and learn to integrate this new way of being into your daily life.

With beauty come various other features of being, such as compassion and love. Each aspect has something to offer, every aspect contains a valuable lesson on how to be more authentic and learn to live life in the simplest of ways yet discovering a way of being beyond our wildest imagination. It is there waiting for us, if we can just let go of our old way of living, in which we are controlled by our past and are never really capable of living in the present moment. Beauty can only be found in the present moment, for it needs us to be active as aware observers. It wants to play with us and enjoy life in the simple way of doing. From “What is Beauty?” by Peter Navis  http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/04/15/what-is-beauty/#_

Living in a society that reveres man-made beauty, even fakes, can make it difficult to see natural splendor. Most of the time we’re near blind about the present where all things real exist. We’re just so darn busy running away from one thing and racing toward another; rarely centered in the ‘now’. While I am no exception, willful intention has helped me, at least at times, to see bits of true beauty around me. Sometimes it is so obvious that anyone looking could observe it. At others, it is far more subtle and at a deeper level that magnificence shows itself. “The real story is inside a book on its pages and not to be found on its cover.’

Beauty is a feeling, not an image. When I look, it is not so much what I see that moves me but instead what emotions the sight awakens. Being able to look past first impressions and initial glances with increasing frequency has added much to my life to be grateful for. All I have to do is slow down… stop… see.

People often say that
“beauty is in the eye of the beholder,”
and I say that the most liberating thing
about beauty is realizing that you
are the beholder. This empowers us
to find beauty in places where
others have not dared to look
including inside ourselves.
Slama Hayek

Walk Through Destiny

/ James Browning

2521-sun-through-the-trees-1920x1200-nature-wallpaperOften a brevity of well-focused words breaks through to be more meaningful than thoughts expressed in a pile of language. So for the sake of time (which I am short of this morning) here are Seven Rules of Life by an anonymous writer that breach my habitual thinking.

1) Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

2) What others think of you is none of your business.

3) Time heals almost everything, give it time.

4) Don’t compare your life to others and don’t judge them. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

5) Stop thinking too much, it’s alright not to know the answers. They will come to you when you least expect it.

6) No one is in charge of your happiness, except you.

7) Smile. You don’t own all the problems in the world.

I know not a single new thought exists on that list. Yet, keeping the ‘rules’ more present in mind will improve my walk through destiny. I am grateful for the reminders!

Life is short,
break the rules,
forgive quickly,
kiss slowly,
love truly,
laugh uncontrollably,
and never regret anything
that made you smile.
Twenty years from now
you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn’t do
than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore.
Dream.
Discover.
Mark Twain

A Day for a Daydream

/ James Browning

2586027821_d30d0ccc79What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin’ boy
And I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin ‘bout my bundle of joy.

And even if time ain’t really on my side
It’s one of those days for takin’ a walk outside
I’m blowin’ the day to take a walk in the sun
And fall on my face on somebody’s new mowed lawn.

I’ve been havin’ a sweet dream
I been dreamin’ since I woke up today
It’s starrin’ me and my sweet dream
Cause she’s the one that makes me feel this way.

And even if time has passed me by a lot
I couldn’t care less about the dues you say I got
Tomorrow I’ll pay the dues for droppin’ my load
A pie in the face for bein’ asleep before dawn.

And you can be sure that if you’re feelin’ right
A daydream will last along into the night
Tomorrow at breakfast you may pick up your ears
Or you may be daydreamin for a thousand years.

What a day for a daydream
Custom made for a daydreamin’ boy
And now I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin ‘bout my bundle of joy.
John Sebastian

While those lyrics are about being in love with someone in particular, I related to this old Lovin’ Spoonful tune more generally to loving life and appreciating a new day. After storms for days, seeing the sun this morning and the green bursting forth after the rain caused this melody to start playing in my head.

I am grateful for the dreams I had last night, this new day, the smells of the morning and sun beams dancing through my office window at this moment. Label me corny or even delusional, but an inability to share in a bit of my feeling this morning is only your loss. Life is more than half attitude. What kind have you chosen this morning? Each is the creator of his or her point of view.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine
and shadows will fall behind you.
Walt Whitman