Self Awareness

Around In Circles

/ James Browning

Tomorrow marks 366 days, one full year, of writing Good Morning Gratitude.  Somehow a “leap year” seems appropriate as I ‘leaped’ into this lead only by spiritual guidance beyond my understanding.   I have learned a great deal from this true learning experience.

1 – Doing something daily becomes much easier when done frequently enough to become part of my routine.

2 – There are measures of discipline within I previously never before gave myself credit for.  I feel more able and capable than I have in years (maybe ever!).

3 – Permanently altering my routine is a good way to change any of my habits.  Getting up earlier to write for ninety minutes each day came easy (most days) once I got into the swing of it.  Now I have more time each day that ever before ‘to do stuff’ I want to do.

4 – Gratitude is cumulative.  The more I am thankful the more that comes to be thankful for.  This new attitude of gratitude sweetens every breath I take, even the most difficult!

5 – My writing has improved. Doing something every week for ten hours or more does improve one’s skills (next self-chosen challenge is to get into better shape).

6 – Apparently I have things to say that resonate with others.  I know this before and that knowledge comes now only by knowing thousands read goodmorninggratitude.com.  I am deeply thankful for the encouragement each reader has given me.

7 – Telling my secrets has brought people closer to me and has moved me to feel closer to them.  My truths, even the ugly parts, have not driven away people as I feared telling such things might.

8 – Letting the world know of my unfiltered my experiences, mistakes, successes, failures, trials, heartbreaks and tribulations has given me strength beyond what I can explain.  By venting the darkness I see more clearly in the light.

9 – What I think most about is what I get more of.  Focusing on what to write about brought much to me that is healthful ranging from making peace with old heartaches to growing my ability to open my heart.

10 – The Internet is filled with what can bring light and inspiration or ugliness and darkness to a person’s life.  It is a matter of choice.

11 – A lot of people are reading more now than in a long, long time.  The paradigm shift is they are doing much of their reading on-screen.

12 – The love and support of friends makes a HUGE difference when taking on a big task.  Without it I am certain I would not have made my one year goal of writing here every day. Thank you all.

13 – I learned first hand a lesson about growth that Alice discussed with the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

Alice: Where I come from, people study what they are not good at in order to be able to do what they are good at.

Mad Hatter: We only go around in circles in Wonderland, but we always end up where we started. Would you mind explaining yourself?

Alice: Well, grown-ups tell us to find out what we did wrong, and never do it again.

Mad Hatter: That’s odd! It seems to me that in order to find out about something, you have to study it. And when you study it, you should become better at it. Why should you want to become better at something and then never do it again? But please continue.

Alice: Nobody ever tells us to study the right things we do. We’re only supposed to learn from the wrong things. But we are permitted to study the right things other people do. And sometimes we’re even told to copy them.

Mad Hatter: That’s cheating!

Alice: You’re quite right, Mr. Hatter. I do live in a topsy-turvy world. It seems like I have to do something wrong first, in order to learn from what not to do. And then, by not doing what I’m not supposed to do, perhaps I’ll be right…

I am DEEPLY grateful for all the benefits doing this work as brought me.

Achievement is largely the product
of steadily raising one’s levels of aspiration and expectation.
Jack Nicklaus

The Cry of the Road Not Taken

/ James Browning

Clear in memory from my 20’s is becoming lost on my first solo cross-country training flight while learning to fly.  Absorbing what it took to become a pilot came easy and I was able to advance faster than most.  The danger in that accomplishment was becoming a bit too “self-impressed” resulting in partial blindness created by my own ego.   I got lost on my first cross-country solo training flight soloI

Being disoriented and off course as a student pilot was a harrowing experience for a little while until I realized I could ask for help on the radio.  Two airports about 50 miles apart honed in on my signal and triangulated where I was.  It was easy for them to give me a new course which I used to land at one of the airports about seventy miles from my “lost” location.

From this experience I learned:

Life Lesson #1 = Even a single slight change of course makes for greatly changed direction over time.

Life Lesson #2 = Sometimes the only way out of a predicament is to ask for help.

Life Lesson #3 – My ego is very capable of over-estimating my ability and dragging me into a serious situation if I don’t watch it closely.

For over a decade I spent lots of my spare time “boring holes in the sky” as pilots call it.  I even owned an airplane for about six years (a Piper Cherokee).  If you’ve heard people talk about how boats are a sinkhole for money, then multiply that a few times to get an idea of the expense of owning an airplane!  I could just have easily rented planes at a lesser expense, but I “just had to have one”.

Life Lesson #4 – Just because I want to own something does not mean I should.

Life Lesson #5 – I can easily spend far too much on something if I let my ego in the driver’s seat.

Years later after the getting lost incident, I had three different mechanical failures I felt were messages sent to me.  1) Smoke from electrical wires starting to burn partially filled the cabin while I was flying in controlled airspace until I figured out what causing the problem and turned it off.  2) Another time upon landing and pressing the brakes I realized I had none and found out later a brake line was ruptured.  With a little maneuvering the landing stayed safe. 3) Sometime later while landing a rental airplane I had taken out for aerobatics when, on landing, the gear broke on one side and could have collapsed, but thankfully didn’t.  I took those as signs and decided then to give up flying because responsibilities, including raising a son, were no longer allowing me sufficient time to fly enough to stay a safe pilot.  To this day I believe that was a wise choice.

Life Lesson #6:  Pay attention to the subtle messages life sends me.  I only have to be receptive and acknowledge them.

Each thing I do causes a slight course correction or deviation in direction of my life.  One never knows until later which variations are, 0ver time, life changing and which is the stuff that doesn’t matter.  Many times I have heard about how someone’s life was saved simply because on a whim they took a different route home and avoided the accident that would surely have taken their life otherwise; or how missing a flight turned out to be a life saver; or how taking one job over another was the difference between success and failure; how one met the love of their life by taking a trip to a city never before visited based on a dream they once had; or how outcome was affected by choice made without logic in a hundred other stories simply because a person somehow “felt” they should do one particular thing or another.

Where ever my little bit of a sixth sense comes from I am convinced, if it not directly divine within itself, it is certainly a connection to a power higher than me.  Don’t ask me to explain it because I can’t.  There are no words to logically explain this phenomena.  With increasing frequency these “feelings” come more often now I have learned to trust and take them into account.  However they come to be and from whatever source, I am deeply grateful for the benefit these gifts continue to bring to my life.  When I am centered, peacefully open and aware, my “feelings” are so much more accurate than my “thoughts”!

Would things have really been so different
Would the world really have been so shaken
If when I were a much younger man
I had chosen the road not taken

Would the days have been any the brighter
Or the nights darker than they are
Would I still have lived in such obscurity
Or shined brighter than any star

It does little good to wonder
Of things that might have been
For who, and what I have become
I must live with in the end

Though life could have been much better
All in all I do not feel forsaken
I count the blessings that I have
And cry not of the road not taken.

“The Road Not Taken” by William Kite

Live Your Life and Risk It All!

/ James Browning

One of the more difficult life lessons to learn has been to open up and allow my true self to be known by others. For much of my life the feeling hidden inside was “if you know who I really am you won’t like me”. The lesson that came slowly was my uniqueness was not a liability and was actually what drew people to me. Trying to be what I thought others wanted either drove them away or caused them to be somewhat stand-offish of the facade I projected. They did not know in what measure it was fake for certain, but sensed an uncertainty that keep distance present. When I allow the uniquely original nature of my authentic way of being, seeing and perceiving to show through is when I am apparently the most interesting. Who would have “thunk” it!

A great benefit of learning to be more openly authentic has been a few strong and deep friendships have grown and blossomed. Of course, that bond between friends is usually with people who are just as distinctive as I am (or  as “odd” if you prefer simpler clarity). After living long without truly close friends, it is with great joy that I have a few dear souls with whom I enjoy a warm and deeply trusting relationship.

It is said today we Americans have fewer true friends than ever before, replaced by lots of acquaintances. Research shows that having a large number of “casual friends” has become a sort of status symbol. It seems in modern society it pleases us to be able to say some one is a “good guy or good girl” based on limited contact. The great majority of the time such a description is made with the speaker having no substantial knowledge of the person being spoken about beyond their general public demeanor (which as often as not is only a projection of an image like I used to do!).

My discovery is friendship comes largely by chance. One never knows when meeting a person if he or she will become a rare true friend or another common acquaintance. Such knowledge only comes with time. My perception is the seed of friendship comes randomly like life does from a wind-blown seed. Once planted it lives or not based on the circumstances and environment it has been placed in. A flower seed that has sprouted in the yard can grow naturally on its own for the most part but the right attention at the right time can help it bloom with strength and vibrance.  And so it is with people and friendship. Some of the greatest blessings I have are those few friends who, with few questions, would show to help if I called at 3am in the morning saying I needed their assistance.

It is beyond my ability to express my gratitude in words for my few close and dear friends.  No matter how hard I might try, I would still be short of the adequate quality and quantity of words.  So instead I will do what I have learned to do when I don’t know how to express my gratefulness and simply say  “thank you”.

“Portrait of a Friend” – Author Anonymous

I can’t give solutions to all of life’s problems, doubts, or fears.
But I can listen to you, and together we will search for answers.

I can’t change your past with all its heartache and pain,
nor the future with its untold stories.
But I can be there now when you need me to care.

I can’t keep your feet from stumbling.
I can only offer my hand that you may grasp it and not fall.

Your joys, triumphs, successes, and happiness are not mine;
Yet I can share in your laughter.

Your decisions in life are not mine to make, nor to judge;
I can only support you, encourage you,
and help you when you ask.

I can’t prevent you from falling away from friendship,
from your values, from me.
I can only pray for you,
talk to you and wait for you.

I can’t give you boundaries which I have determined for you,
But I can give you the room to change,
room to grow, room to be yourself.

I can’t keep your heart from breaking and hurting,
But I can cry with you
and help you pick up the pieces
and put them back in place.

I can’t tell you who you are.

Live your life and risk it all.
Take some chances, take the fall.
Take your time, no need to hurry.
Have some fun, and never worry.
Anonymous

Power of Secrets

/ James Browning

Every one of us has a portion of their self-knowledge known to no one else. Some things are believed to be not worth telling; others are just very personal or embarrassing. Then there are our most closely guarded secrets. These privately kept facts run the gamut from innocent ones left from childhood to the secrets kept as adults that have rarely, if ever, told. Within the latter are often the kind of untold secrets that psychologists say can be poison to a relationship if their toxicity is bad enough or allowed to grow long enough.

From my personal path I know well the damage secrets can bring. I hid secrets of childhood and the resulting dysfunction so well that others hardly noticed anything was not quite right within me. I became quite a good actor and allowed no one to see past the illusions I projected. While the ability at keeping my secrets hidden grew, the toxic nature of them only served to make worse what was wrong within me.

The creator of an eight year effort called The Post Secret Project is Frank Warren. This began as way of him dealing with his own issues and has grown to include a secret told to told no one but written and mailed anonymously on a postcard to him by over 500,000 people. Warren says the secrets run from sexual taboos and criminal activity to confessions of secret beliefs, hidden acts of kindness, shocking habits and fears. Since November 2004, PostSecret has been a safe and anonymous “place” where people can relieve the burden of their untold secrets

Frank Warren said, It was through crowd-sourcing…the kindness that strangers were showing me, that I could uncover parts of my past that were haunting me… Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking or silly or soulful. They can connect us with our deepest humanity, or with people we’ll never meet.

Here are a few “secrets” on postcards received.

 

Here’s a link to the Ted.com website (a favorite!) for Frank Warren’s moving video about the Post Secret Project: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/frank_warren_half_a_million_secrets.html

Today I am not completely free of secrets, but the big ones kept longest and feared most are no longer untold.  By revealing my deepest secrets others have responded with everything from kindness and understanding to ridicule and contempt.  What matters is I no longer carry any of that darkness inside and am outwardly the person as the inward me.  What a relief.  I’m free!  And I’m very GRATEFUL!

What is love? Love is when one person knows all of your secrets…
your deepest, darkest, most dreadful secrets
of which no one else in the world knows…
and yet in the end, that one person does not think any less of you;
even if the rest of the world does.”
Anonymous

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

/ James Browning

“Beauty,” said the Beast, “if my presence is troublesome, I will end our conversation and leave you. For tell me, do not you think me very ugly?”

“It is true,” said Beauty, “for I cannot tell a lie, but I believe you are very good-natured.”
“Yes, yes,” said the Beast, “my heart is good, but still I am a monster.”

“Among mankind,” says Beauty, “there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those, who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart.”

Later: Beast opened his eyes, and said to Beauty, “You forgot your promise, and I was so afflicted for having lost you that I resolved to starve myself, but since I have the happiness of seeing you once more, I die satisfied.”

“No, dear Beast,” said Beauty, “you must not die. Live to be my husband; from this moment I give you my hand, and swear to be none but yours. Alas! I thought I had only a friendship for you, but the grief I now feel convinces me that I cannot live without you.”

No sooner had she said this than the hide of the beast split in two and out came a most handsome young prince. The prince told her that he had been enchanted by a magician and could not recover his natural form until a maiden would, of her own free will, declare that she loved him.

Thereupon the prince… was married to Beauty, and they all lived happily ever after.

The theme of beauty and the beast is things are not always what they seem to be. One should not be deceived by appearances for beauty lies within. One must rather try to look past what the eye can see and look inside that person where his/her true personality is found.

Another old tale about things not being always as they appear:

Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the mansion’s guest room. Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement.

As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied, “Things aren’t always what they seem.”

The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night’s rest.

When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in the field. The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel how could you have let this happen?

The first man had everything, yet you helped him, she accused. The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you let the cow die. “Things aren’t always what they seem,” the older angel replied.

“When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn’t find it.

Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death came for his wife. I gave him the cow instead. “Things aren’t always what they seem”.

What initially looks true may prove false. What first appears wrong may in time prove to be correct. Truth parading as a lie makes fact no less a fact, nor does a falsehood become factual just because it looks true. Things are often not what they seem to be.

The person I have been guilty of accepting lies and deception about most in my life has been myself! Who was the biggest teller of false things? ME!  For the longest time I tried to be what I am not and kept hidden who I really was  as I tried to please others. With much effort, help and healing my view of self has become more clear and, more often than not, is seen accurately now. In forgiving and accepting myself I befriended “the beast” thereby allowing love to replace my self-contempt.  I am grateful for the life lessons learned that allows the first real happiness of my life.

The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that let’s go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.
 Atisha

Think Low and Think High

/ James Browning

All my adult life I have bumped into conclusions made logically by scientists and researchers that say a person’s creativity peaks when they are young. There is no real consensus on how young this happens. Hypotheses vary from those who say eighteen months to others asserting peak creativity happens around twelve just before puberty.

The theories are that creativity is at its highest level when young while we “don’t know better” and have not been conditioned by reason and conformity. This way of thinking says in order to coexist with other people we learn to follow the rules and adhere to certain values (which are usually more about what you can’t do that what you can).  The result is creativity has to be placed into a straight-jacketed so we can follow what has already been instead of reinventing our worlds every day like a child does. Growing up we are taught to be polite and nice to people, to fit in, to adhere to what is “normal” (whatever that is!) and not scare others with our creative thoughts.

At least to a degree schools are conformity camps that, in varying degrees, attempt to drill what is conventional and customary into kids. While learning about life skills like readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic we also get smart-stepped into doing mostly what others do and have done. Generally we are taught there is one acceptable, true way of thinking and there is most often only one right answer for a problem (the one the teacher believes). Largely we end up being awarded for writing well, following instructions and regurgitating facts, figures and formulas and NOT for creative and lateral thinking. We are taught to rarely, if ever, question the wisdom and supreme knowledge of teachers and professors.

Research has now begun to show in adulthood we usually do lose a great deal of our creativity but it is more by choice than the cognitive fading that comes with age. The number one culprit falls under the heading of ‘use it or lose it’; we simply stop trying to be creative. We begin to do things one way, we get comfortable, don’t change and settle into easy to follow and relatively mindless ruts.

Habits are not the only things that hide away our creativity.  Falling into the ‘expert trap’ obscures it too. ‘Experts’ usually spend more time defending their “hill” than questioning it or developing other approaches. It is easy to become “all-knowing” on a subject and fall into the habit of allowing knowledge make one feel obliged to it.

Eureka! Before all my middle-aged friends begin to wring their hands in “lack of creativity anguish” I want to turn what I have written so far upside down and include material from an article in Psychology Today By Shelly Carson, PhD called “Creativity and the Aging Brain”. She wrote: In a recent study… the University of Toronto found that older participants were… more distractible than their younger counterparts. However, members of this older, distractible group were also better able to use the distracting information to solve problems presented later in the study.

Dr. Carson goes on to tell about other studies on aging and cognition that suggest an aging brain is marked by a broadening focus of attention. She says this lines up with numerous other studies that suggest that a broadly focused state of attention is a trait found in almost all highly creative people. The data suggest widened attention allows one to separate and distinguish quickly all sorts of varying information. Combining remote bits of information is the hallmark of the creative idea, Dr. Carson writes.

Still other credible research shows that the parts of the brain concerning self-consciousness and emotions are thinner in the aging brain which lines up with a diminished need to please and impress others. Dr. Carson calls this, a notable characteristic of both aging individuals and creative luminaries. She goes on to say, both older individuals and creative types are more willing to speak their minds and disregard social expectations than are their younger, more conventional counterparts.

In pondering the subject of creativity and reading about it, my conclusion is older people have a storehouse of knowledge gained from living, learning and experience. Taking bits of that knowledge and seeing them in new and original ways is what a creative brain does. The only barrier to being an older creative type is simply habits and ruts.

Highly fertile ground for deeply creative activity exists in my aging brain. To have more creativity all I need to do is throw off old ways of thinking and allow new ones to come in. That thought will send me out into the world today with a happily altered view and a grateful (and hopefully more creative) mind!

Think left and think right
and think low and think high.
Oh, the thinks you can think up
if only you try!
Dr. Seuss

A Cow in the Car

/ James Browning

Through a good bit of intention and healing, I began to have dreams again about four years ago after barely dreaming for a long, long time. Most every morning I awake now with bits and pieces of my nighttime subconscious wandering in my thoughts.  Much like one who has eaten spaghetti can end up with a few specks of sauce on them I may not remember the whole dream, but wake with little splatters of it on my mind.

This morning as I rose and began the transition from being asleep to an awakened state I was aware of a few random pieces from the night’s dreaming forays. One found me walking down the steps for side seats at an arena for some sort of show and I was dismayed there were no hand rails. In my dream my thoughts were someone was going to fall and get hurt so I made my way down carefully.

In another dream remnant I was younger and still lived with my first wife. We had just moved to a different house and opening the front door early in the morning I was dismayed to see she had let a cow spend the night in our car (the cow apparently came with the house?!). When expressing my displeasure about the damage the cow had done inside the vehicle, her reply was something like “it had to stay somewhere and I didn’t know where else to put it”. Just as odd was the car I imagined was actually one owned a LONG time ago; a mid-70’s burgundy Pontiac Grand Prix “land-yacht”.

A hundred years ago Sigmund Freud thought dreams were a secret windows into the frustrated dreams of the unconscious and believed sex was the root cause of what occurs while dreaming. Dr. Freud opened the door to modern psychoanalysis and made many lasting contributions, but many of his thoughts about dreams, including that dreaming is all about sex, have been proven to be hogwash. Can you imagine what Freud might have said if I could have told him about my dream of the cow staying overnight in my car? Even the thought makes me laugh out loud!

Letting the thoughts about last night’s dreaming kick around in my head I got curious to know a little more and did a little surfing on the ‘net. First, I discovered most people over the age of 10 dream at least 4 to 6 times per night during REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). During REM periods our brains become as active as they are during waking, although not all parts of the brain are reactivated. Dreaming periods vary in length from 5 to 10 minutes for the first REM period of the night to as long as 30-35 minutes later in the night. Too bad we can’t remember them in detail as I bet they’d make great books and movie scripts sometimes!

Next I looked into what generally people dream about frequently. The following is a composite list from several sources of what is said to be the most common subjects for dreaming:

Being chased – Thought to be an indication of a threat that is felt in waking life.

Missing an important event because of being late – Looked at to be regret over a missed opportunity, inability to make a connection, or desire to pull oneself together.

Finding yourself naked in public – Perceived to have to do with feeling exposed, vulnerable and/or awkward and may or may not have any sexual meaning.

Falling – General interpretation is falling indicates feelings of insecurity, lack of support or feelings of isolation (common among professional men and women).

 Flying – Felt to represent ambitions and the important part is said to be how you are flying: successfully, trying and failing, flying high or low as possible, etc.

 Losing teeth – Thought generally to indicate insecurity about appearance. Also, since teeth are used to bite, chew, and tear, some dreaming about losing them can mean a loss of power or fear of getting old. (most common among menopausal women).

 Snakes – Many dream analysts believe dreaming of snakes signifies some hidden threat. Also, since snakes shed their skin, some believe dreaming of them may also signify renewal and transformation.

 Trapped – Perceived to mean one feels they cannot change their situation and are trapped by it; literally locked in a cage of sorts in real life.

I rarely stew about the subjects of my dreams and my memory of them evaporates quickly anyway for the most part. However, my dream about the cow spending the night in my car will be the subject of amusing thought for a good while to come. That dream image is vivid in my mind even as while writing this and makes me smile at its absurdity! Today I am grateful simply to have dreams, whatever they mean.

Dreams are answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask.
X-Files

No Apologies, No Regrets

/ James Browning

Over time many people change. Some just get older while others find a comfy rut and live life out in it. Many just fake and and “put on” what they think people want to see. Others grow and evolve; some by choice and others out of necessity. I am one of the latter who transformed himself because there came a point life made no sense without a good deal of personal change. That’s when I got into counseling and entered recovery for depression and childhood junk. Today it is almost incomprehensible to think of living as I once did.

While many are happy for me, some are uncomfortable with the changes they notice. Others can’t or don’t want to see it at all. This is especially true of those who my connection is from long ago with little to no contemporary shared history.

Someone I knew long ago and have connected with briefly a few times over the years recently deleted me from her Facebook. The reason emailed to me was that after reading a post here about me being mostly an optimist today she simply said “I don’t believe you”. We have had little communication and had only recently established contact in limited fashion after none for over ten years.  All total we talked two or three times during relatively short phone calls and traded about that many emails. We have not seen each other in several decades.

The only real history this woman and I have dates back forty years around my high school graduation when we were both essentially kids. Yes, those were some of my dark, moody and confused days.  It was evident for anyone to see. No one would have called me anything but a pessimist then. That was then, and this is now.

My first momentary feeling about being “deleted” was to be a little hurt she could not see how far I have come and how much I have grown. Then I brought myself to the present and remembered her thoughts about me are largely stuck in a time long ago.

With repetition of experience, I have learned that if I present myself honestly and honorably yet someone can not see me as I am it the loss is theirs, not mine. In no way is it my fault that another person can not see truth when I present it. Nor is it healthy for me to try to convince them otherwise. Those whose presence in my life lends benefit to my existence are the only ones I have room for any more. No longer do I feel the need to attempt to get people to see me a particular way. Either they perceive me as I have become or they don’t.

Wayne Dyer stated my feelings well when he said, What you think of me is none of my business. Years and years and years it took for me to be able to practice the wisdom of those words. While being human does still cause me to care at least a little about what others think of me (still too much sometimes), for the most part I plainly just don’t care. Having spent decades trying to please others, be what they wanted me to be and doing things the way they wanted me to, life taught me the hard way such a way iof being is a fast road to continuous unhappiness and uninterrupted torment.

If someone thinks I am odd, that’s OK because I actually am. If another does not understand my unique views, that does not change them. If a person does not see truth when I express it, I lose nothing and the loss is theirs. And so on…

What you think of me is none of my business is one of the truths of living an overall contented life today. I trust the message of those ten words and do my best to live the wisdom in them. It is the ONLY way I can find some measure of peace in my life. I like who I am as a person, who I portray myself to be to others and truely accept myself.

Once again by stating it here, I let go of my concern over what others may think of me. To worry about what impression I may make on others is not healthy. It is impossible to control their thoughts anyway. Instead I focus on my own thinking and actions remaining true to myself. As long as I do this I come out of every situation, even messes made, with a good opinion of me and that is ALL that matters. To every teacher of all sorts that helped me find the path to live this insight I am humbly thankful.

Accept everything about yourself–I mean everything.
You are you and that is the beginning and the end–no apologies, no regrets.
Clark Moustakas

This Magnificent Cosmic Dance

/ James Browning

This past weekend I read an article about our planet’s physical place in the universe that noted what I already knew: the Earth is one of the smallest planets in our solar system. What I had not been exposed to before was when the author went to note the Earth’s size makes for an estimated share of the total universe of 0.000000000000000000000000005%.  If our entire planet represents that small of a number, imagine how many zeros it would take to represent the share percentage for my physical form!  In the grand scheme of things I am indeed tiny beyond words.

Everything that exists, as we know it, originated from the same source of energy. We are connected to the entire universe.  We all came from a mother called the “Big Bang” and what followed creation. Nothing is better or worse. Everything just is. This unifying view helps me know that my smallness does not make me irrelevant.  Anything large is made up of many pieces that are small and within that structure I matter.

Although I adore traveling to see, touch and learn about foreign places my sphere of experience includes only a tiny portion of the planet.  My “world” that I live more than 90% of my life within is no more than twenty miles from where I sit typing these words on a keyboard.  It is here in “my world” that I am sizeable enough to influence in a noticeable what is around me.

The attitude that I show others, whether strangers or those I know well, sends a small ripple into my world.  A smile or a kind word has an effect on some and on others it rolls off like water on a duck’s back. At least for a few my kindness will be received openly and added to that person’s persona that in turn gets passed on to others.

Being a law-abiding citizen has an effect on those around me.  Because I choose to live responsibility, I make my community safer for all those who occupy it with me.  While a person being “good” is often overlooked and taken for granted, it is just such mundane decency of many that makes an area a pleasant place to live.

The greatest impact I have on anyone is that I have on my self.  The manner I treat “me”, the way I think of myself, the things I do to shape my being, the thoughts about the world that float in my head and the work I do or don’t do to grow and evolve all work together to shape the person that is me.  And who I am affects the world I live in and in the tiniest and smallest way imaginable, the universe is effected.

Sometimes it is my perceived imperfections that keeps me from realizing my place in the grand scheme. Yet, it was imperfection that allowed creation and life to materialize in the first place.  Since perfection can not be improved on, there would have been no need for a power greater than us bring the cosmos into existence.  It is through perfect imperfection that we came to be.

In only the last hundred years has mankind learned of the great energy stored within very tiny particles that when released for a split second changes everything nearby. Carol L. Bowman, MD wrote: Everything in our universe is made of energy. It has been said that we humans are able to perceive only approximately 1% of all the energies that exist. We are able to perceive, through our five physical senses, a limited range of smells, sounds, sights, sensations, and tastes. All of these are perceived via energetic vibrations interacting with our physical sense organs, and thus relaying messages to the brain that we can relate to and understand, based on our understanding of the world in which we live. Thus, our reality is strictly based on our ability to perceive. And we are only able to perceive 1% of what exists!

Whether I am only a small, nearly invisible, almost nonexistent, blip within the universe or a tiny particle releasing great energy that contributes greatly to all that is and ever will be does not matter.  I saw it once expressed beautifully this way:  We are part of an ever-expanding carnival of energy; we are fortunate to be able to experience and participate in this magnificent cosmic dance.

As my life ticks away one day at a time whether I accept what happens or not, it is still going to happen.  The only wise way of proceeding is for me to embrace what is happening and move forward.  As personal as I think my life is, it is only one of billions being lived at this moment like billions and billions that have come before. All things considered it is wisest for me to live in a way where I lighten up, try my best not take anything too seriously and take nothing that happens personally.  All I need to do is live as well as I can.

In her book “Dancing the Dream” Jamie Sams wrote about a vantage point toward life the Southern Seers maintain.  It begins with the question what does one get for living a good life?  The answer?  A good life!  I am grateful for mine!

When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how
God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.
Albert Einstein
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination
But the combination is locked up in the safe.
Peter De Vries

Shut Up and Dance

/ James Browning

My DVR is one of my most appreciated gizmos.  Every week or two I surf through listings on the movie channels I subscribe and pick out a few films showing in the future and record a few; saved for when I can get around to them.  Frequently, my searching brings me across a film I have never heard of that catches my attention due to the plot description, the subject matter, actors and actresses or some combination of these factors.

“Evening” is just such a movie.  Critics and most viewers panned the film and I can understand why.  One really has to have a very still mind and be open to the message contained within it.  This is NOT a movie intended to idly entertain those who view it.  One has to be able to relate personally in some manner to enjoy…actually ‘enjoy’ is the wrong word.. to appreciate the message of the movie.

Actress Vanessa Redgrave, at seventy years old, delivers an amazing (at least to me!) performance of a woman near death remembering bits and pieces of her romantic past and dealing with the emotional present of her daughters. As her character lays dying, she relives and is moved to convey to her daughters, the defining moments in her life 50+ years prior.

The full cast is impressive and makes the movie all the more believable.  Claire Danes, Natasha Richardson, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Barry Bostwick, Toni Collette and more contribute to making the story feel “real” to me. Far from being just a romantic love story, what is told on screen is a bit too gritty and realistic to be even close to a “chick flick”.  Instead it is a moving piece about life and a thinker’s movie that leaves one with a message.  What I got from it is: There are no mistakes; there is only life.  No matter whether we do good or bad or what kind of choices are made, it is still life.  And life is never a mistake.

For my way of thinking Goldie Hawn said something akin to the message of “Evening”: The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud — the obstacles of life and its suffering. … The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. … Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death.

A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye called “Kindness” also contains a similar message in these words I have selected from it to include here:

you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Ultimately seeing the film “Evening”, reading Goldie Hawn’s quote once again and letting Nye’s words sink in mentally all bring me back to the same place:  there are no mistakes, there is only life.  Everything that happens, good, bad or indifferent” is “my life”  and to be embraced with gratitude.

By loving the best and joyous along with most painful and difficult is how I have found a measure of peace, contentment and ease for living my days.  Far from some mystic know it all who lives in constant bliss, I am just a man doing the best he can who is grateful for his life and all that is within it!  As best I possibly can I endeavor to do what the character Buddy in “Evening” says, Shut up and dance.

The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man be perfected without trials.
Danish Proverb