Wisdom

A Cumulative Treasure

/ James Browning

There are many great thinkers and doers I was never taught about in school.  They were left for my eventual discovery at a time when I am capable of appreciating them. As a kid I would not have understood what those men and women stood for or have learned anything but surface facts anyway.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell is one of those whose wisdom and legacy I have only encountered in recent years. He was a British philosopher, mathematician and writer known for his work in broad range of subjects from education and history to philosophy and social commentary. It is the latter two for which I have become an admirer.

Noted for his many spirited anti-war and anti-nuclear protests, Russell was a prominent public figure until his death at the age of 97 in 1970. He never slowed down until the very end and lived his life about as fully as a person can. At the beginning of his autobiography is the following abundantly real prologue that within a few paragraphs tells pointedly who Bertrand Russell was and what he believed.  The second paragraph when he writes about love I find particularly meaningful.

 “What I Have Lived For” by Bertrand Russell

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life:  the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

I read Russell’s words again for the umpteenth time and am moved even more deeply than each previous reading.  They educate me at a core spiritual and emotional level beyond my ability to describe intellectually.

Whether from a century just past or millenniums ago, the richness of wisdom and knowledge others have left behind is a cumulative treasure I benefit from today. We all do if we pay attention to what has come before us. Mr. Russell died the year before I graduated high school. I believe he would be pleased of my eventual discovery of him at a time when I can appreciate what he had to say. It has been my discovery that reading what great men and women had to say is a tremendous way of gaining time-tested insight. This knowledge does not make my life any easier. Rather, it makes it more understandable and to have greater meaning to me. It is with humble gratitude I acknowledge that.

 Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
Voltaire

Fairy Tales Are More Than True

/ James Browning

“Once upon a time”… a story begins signaling almost always there is happiness to be found before the tale ends. For the happy to have meaning, there must be trouble or heartache or tragedy; sometimes all three and more. Such is life.

If one turns the thoughts of the difficulty and trials of one’s life inside out, there is to be found a fairy tale in each one. Some times a life story is only a small tale, to be told infrequently to few. Others are almost bigger than reality tales told often to many. But every life creates its own legend, saga and yarn. And who writes those stories? Each one of us pens them with each day another word in the true story that has been our existence.

“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” G. K. Chesterton

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.” Albert Einstein

“Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality — for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.” Terri Windling

“Think of every fairy-tale villainess you’ve ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and remember that somewhere, sometime, they’ve all been real.” Jim Butcher

“Classic fairy tales do not deny the existence of heartache and sorrow, but they do deny universal defeat.” Greenhaven Press

“At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of ‘commenting on life,’ can add to it.” C. S. Lewis

“..at the center of every fairy tale lay a truth that gave the story its power.” Susan Wiggs

“There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.” G. K. Chesterton

… In most instances, fantasy ultimately returns us to our own now re-enchanted world, reminding us that it is neither prosaic nor meaningless, and that how we live and what we do truly matters.” Michael Dirda

“We may say that the characters in fairytales are ‘good to think with’…[and that] the job of the fairytale is to show that Why? Questions cannot be answered except in one way: by telling the stories. The story does not contain the answer, it is the answer.” Brian Wicker

Each life creates a surprising and amazing tale to be told. No two are ever fully alike. Every one is extraordinary and amazing; some are odd and bizarre; others are remarkable only in tiny ways. Every single life is a story filled with unique wonders of being that contain remarkable and uncommon happenings.

Gratefulness fills me when I realize that troubles and pain somehow akin to mine are told in every fairy tale ever written. And like my life, every fairy tale has happy parts mixed in with heartache and tragedy. A movie lasting two hours can only contain a small portion of what is in the book it is based on that took days to read. Likewise every detail of a life can not be told even in volumes of books. My tendency of living is to get hung up on the details. If I can pay attention to what my life distills down to on a few pages like a fairy tale, the realization comes quickly that I am in fact living an incredible story.

At the essence of my days is a story of wonder and intrigue; of happiness and heartbreak; of joy and sorrow. With how each day is lived I write the story that is “mine”; one never gold before.  Seeing life cast in this light no longer allows me see my existence as anything but remarkable and as truly a fairy tale as any one ever told. I am deeply thankful for this new perspective. .

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Only Life You Could Save

/ James Browning

One of the type phrases I have worked diligently to eliminate are statements like “she made me angry…”, “he made me feel bad…”, “they caused me to feel self-conscious.” and any other assertion that pushed the majority of my mood or state of mind off on someone else.  Certainly what others do, affects me.  Being long shy of perfection, the actions and words of others do get to me, but far from how the once did.

If I could soak up only the good effects that come from praise, positive acknowledgement or expressions of caring and love, that would be wonderful.  I am glad to be “made” by others to feel such things and choose to be effected by them.  However, the tendency is to reflect away the pleasant to some degree and soak up the negative to a point beyond what was said or done.  It is a human condition that dates back to living in the wild when acute awareness of what was bad, wrong or dangerous kept one alive.  That sensing ability is not without benefit today, but I would be better if about 90% of that sense left me.

I know the effect on me of another’s actions or words is in vast majority my choice.  No one makes me feel ANYTHING unless I give my permission.  No longer does that old dodge for my feelings and reactions work well for me.  Once the truth is known, it is quite difficult to delude one’s self any more.

“THE JOURNEY” by American poet Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only that you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

These days I am focused on saving and shaping the one life I have control over: MINE!  In the doing of it there has been a discovery I actually can change others indirectly.  As time passes others notice my genuine growth and peace of mind and end up wanting some of what I have.  It is a path I can instruct others about.  The best I can do is illustrate what I have learned through my actions and thereby teach by example.

Once upon a time “I walked mostly in the dark of ignorance”, but now make my way largely “in the light of knowledge” learned the hard way (at least the majority of the time!).  To be grateful for the person I am today, gratitude must be genuine for every trial and problem faced.  Those challenges, especially the ones I could not imagine how I was going to live through initially have brought my most profound teachings.

Don’t settle for comfort.
Don’t ignore the emptiness.
Seek love.
KatieP – http://head-heart-health.com/

“Omnia Vincit Amor”

/ James Browning

A woman came out of her house and saw three old men with long white beards sitting in her front yard. She did not recognize them and said “I don’t think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat.”

“Is the man of the house home?”, they asked. “No” she said. “He’s out.”

“Then we cannot come in until you are together” they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened. “Go tell them I am home and invite them in!”

The woman went out and invited the men in. “We do not go into a House together” they replied. “Why is that?” she wanted to know.

One of the old men explained: “His name is Wealth,” he said pointing to one of his friends and said pointing to another one “He is Success, and I am Love.” Then he added “Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home.”

The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. “How nice!!” he said. “Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!”

His wife disagreed.“ My dear, why don’t we invite Success?” Their daughter-in-law was listening and jumped in with her own suggestion: “Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!”

“Let us heed our daughter-in-law’s advice” said the husband to his wife. “Go out and invite Love to be our guest.”

The woman went out and asked the three old men, “Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest.”

Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: “I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?”

The old men replied together: “If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would’ve stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever he goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success.”

“Omnia Vincit Amor” was written by Virgil over two thousand years ago. Today his phrase “Love Conquers All” is as truthfully meaning as it was then.

I have lived a life experience that proves the point made in fable above. I chased Success and with lots of sacrifice (too much) achieved it. Succeeding brought the reward that I actually chased: Money.  Yet that Wealth carried me an even further distance from happiness.

Ultimately it was the love of one I had hurt badly with my disloyalty and unfaithfulness who helped pull me out of the emotional pit of shame and depression I ended up in. Such a valuable, near life saving lesson I learned from being helped by the one I did not deserve it from. It was her caring that broke through and showed me what Love really was. Only with that help did I become able to love with an open heart today.  I have almost no contact with her what so ever, but hope she knows ALWAYS, I will be grateful.

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.
Oliver Wendall Holmes

Whatever the Outcome… Forgive Yourself

/ James Browning

Likely the period of most profound growth for me was time spent immersed in learning who I was and coming face to face with ‘what was and is’ while at “The Meadows” in Wickenburg Arizona.  Those weeks in the high Sonora  Desert in 2007 were eye-opening and life changing beyond anything I can describe.

When I think of the experience, the first things that come to mind are:
1) Life is pretty much what you make it into.
2) Letting the past go is critical to having a future.
3) People I care about and those who care about me are what really matters.

On point number three I was exposed at The Meadows to a loosely structured way of making amends.  The process can those willing to listen and hear what I have to say, but is not sure thing.  However it almost always works in helping me make peace with myself.

To verbally attempt to make amends all that’s needed is someone willing to hear me out, even if they can barely stand to do so.  Attempting to make amends with another who does not want to be around me and holds great bitterness and hatred will only serve to make the chasm between us wider and deeper.

The amends process is mentioned often in recovery and self-help groups although the only “written form” I am aware of is the sheet just below.

The process is to over time thoughtfully fill out the ‘amends sheet’ and share the contents with the person you hurt, offended or wronged.  Sometimes sharing it with another is impossible and my healing comes from the focus to complete the form.  At other times it will make no difference and the abhorrence the person feels will be unaffected.

There are other occasions when a someone considers what was shared and accepts the amends somewhere in the future.  And there are the instances when an amends makes an instant difference.  It has amazed me how a person who could hardly stand to be in my presence softened and connected with me again when I spoke my amends. The “Likes/Loves” section can lend a lot toward helping reestablish some equilibrium between people.

It is important to remember an amend is not just an apology, but instead is about establishing justice as much as possible. If the indiscretion can’t be paid back or rebuilt, then symbolically restoration needs to be made.  Nothing says the latter stronger than a true change in the behavior and future actions of the offender.

Sometimes it makes no sense to make an ‘in-person” amends as more damage could be done by it.  At others amends are impossible because a person one hurt has passed on or is impossible to locate.  Then a “living” amends can help. This simply means living differently. Amends are about a genuine change in behavior instead of the patchwork of an apology.

The ten tips below about making amends can be found here in depth LINK
1. Face your own feelings first… it’s not always self-evident.
2. Understand what it takes to make amends. Go beyond desire to cover up shame.
3. Write down the reasons to make amends.  Get out of your head and on paper.
4. Look over your reasons… See patterns emerging?
5. Practice what you need to say in your head. Prepare your notes (form).
6. Express genuine regret and provide measurable promises to change.
7. Decide to meet … face-to-face (at) a good, neutral place (if it makes sense)
8. Don’t overdo it! Avoid making assumptions about their feelings or perspective.
9. Keep it simple and to the point.
10. Resolve to move on.  Whatever the outcome… forgive yourself.

Today’s blog came from looking for a file in my documents and stumbling across “The Meadow’s Amends Form”.  It has served me so well in making peace with others and myself.  The greatest benefit of each attempted amends, whether accepted well or badly by another, is the healing that has come to me.  For every one I have made and all those I yet will, I am very grateful for the process I was taught its many benefits.

The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged;
he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
G.K. Chesterton

NOTE:  To save the form right click on it at the top of the blog and select ‘save picture as”.

Only In Your Mind

/ James Browning

Not long ago I came across a slight twist on “as you think, so shall you find” written by Wayne Dyer.  It’s a long paragraph and took a few reads to get to the essence of what he had said.   So here I have broken it apart into five pieces so it is a little easier to absorb.

As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts.  

Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind.  

Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts.  

For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior.  

Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.

People are as you perceive them, not as they are is.  That’s the truth Dyer’s paragraph boils down to for me.  Of course, EVERYTHING on Earth is as we think of them and not the completeness of what they are.  For example, what we see is not what is actually before us.  It is what we perceive based on reflection of light.  Even then there are spectrums of light we can see and many we can not.

How I live today is far different from how it was ten years ago.  It is not the conditions of my life that have changed.  I am still me, the same person as before.  The world remains round.  The sun continues to rise and set.  Folks around me are still basically the same.  I have the same job in the same profession.  It is not people, places, things and situations that have been altered:  It is MY WAY OF THINKING that has become changed.

My practical discovery is the only way to change one’s life is to change my thoughts.  My previous experiments of applying external things to alter my existence did work sometimes, but only for a short while.  Rapidly my life always returned to the same as before:  the life I wanted to change.

These days I am mostly happy because I chose to be.  There was no internal switch I flipped and caused that to be.  I worked at it.  When I began to live as if I was happy, I began to have more happiness.  Optimism came to me because I planted the seed of it within, nurtured it and over time it grew.  And so on.

Stopping being obsessed with my past came only when thought by thought, little by little I began to catch myself thinking about it.  At first being able to push away tripping over my history only worked occasionally.  However, with long-term consistency and practice I can now, more often than, successfully push the past away.  All I have done and all that has happened is still within me and thoughts still arise about it.  The difference is I can exercise some control and shorten the duration of such thinking.  In this way my life is no longer directed by what happened and I live more in the present than ever before.

Nirvana eludes me.  Enlightenment has not descended upon my being.  Instead as an athlete trains to get in shape, I have trained myself mentally over time to compete with my thoughts.  I don’t always win, but I am victorious a lot:  enough to be permanently life changing.  My gratitude for these insights is profound and my thankfulness for the many teachers I learned about this path from humbly resounds within.

We tend to get what we expect
Norman Vincent Peale

How You Made Them Feel

/ James Browning

The story below has come into my email several times over the last ten years, yet it never fails to touch me in a positive way.  I hope it does the same for you.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
The Cab Ride

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I walked to the door and knocked.. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.   After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940’s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.  She kept thanking me for my kindness.. ‘It’s nothing’, I told her.. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated’.

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy’, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly.  ‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice’.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice.. ‘The doctor says I don’t have very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. ‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.  We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.  As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s go now’.

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.  Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.  ‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked, reaching into her purse.  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.  ‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.  ‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’  I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light… Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest o f that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments..

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Reading again about the kindness in the story I am grateful to be reminded that people and love is all that really matters.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou

Content and Worth of My Thoughts

/ James Browning

Having had a series of little things happen all in one day I found the peace of mind from a wonderful week’s vacation knocked slightly off-balance this past weekend. I lost my car keys and never found them, a candle melted on a pillow and a speaker, a folding closet door broke off its hinges, an electronic photo frame a deceased friend gave me stopped working and three other similar annoyances came at me inside six hours.  But I am OK! I used number one and number two below of my ‘twelve guidelines for peace of mind’.  Almost always when I find myself agitated, uneasy, worried or irritated it is because I am violating one of my own guidelines.

1.  The only control possible is control over myself.  I can’t change what happens to me, but I can exercise some power over my feelings about any occurrence.  Plus, only when I am in self-control can I learn any lesson that might be shown to me.

2.  Accept what is.  Every day I will face inconveniences, annoyances, accidents, aches and pains that are completely beyond my control. The power of peace comes from my enduring them cheerfully.  When I do sometimes a disadvantage becomes an advantage.

3.  Give up the need to be recognized or noticed.  Praise is only momentary.  Nurturing my sense of worth is far more important than the praise of another.  All I need to do is believe in myself, do my best to live ethically and sincerely and let go of perfection.

4. Keep the green monster of jealousy out of my life.  Being jealous blocks my peace and ties me up with animosity, longing and fear while showing only insecurity.  Jealousy or envy always brings restlessness and is a quick and easy way to show just how stupid I can be.

5. Stay out of other people’s business.  I need to mind my own business no matter how good my intentions are.  Because I think my way is the best does not mean it is for someone else!  I must let others have their “own stuff” without interfering.

6. Forgiveness is a gift I give myself.  Nurturing ill feelings is like taking poison and expecting someone else to get sick.  Resentments and grievances fester to hurt only the one who bears them:  ME!  Forget, forgive, and move on.

7. Limit intake of information.  After a point “the news” is simply mental noise. My rule of thumb is consume no more newscasts, data and information than I need. Over indulging makes peace elusive as my mind becomes like an overloaded ship that’s difficult to sail and keep on course.

8. Listen to my intuition and my heart. My heart accurately guides me toward what is right.  When I pay attention to my intuition, deepest values and principles I find them to be nearly always a more accurate navigation system than my thoughts.

9. Eliminate unessential stuff.  This is a work in progress, but I FINALLY get “less is more”.  It is easier to have a peaceful mind with less to worry about. Eliminating the non-essential allows more focus better on the essential.

10. Think about self less.  In the past the majority of time was spent thinking about my needs and problems.  The lesson learned has been that purely self-centered thoughts rarely bring peace. More than ever I try to cultivate thoughts of what I can do for others and then do them.

11. Slow down.  My life is far too much of a rush, but I realize the detriment of it.  Another work in progress.  To make the best decisions I need to slow down and step away from distractions.  Only then can my heart and intuition best guide me.

12. Less procrastination. Failing the first time does not really matter.  Mistakes usually can be rectified.  Too much time previously was wasted with “should I or shouldn’t I?” Months and even years were lost in my futile mental debating. The key is to get off my buff just do it.

My gratitude this morning?  To be past the nagging happenings of Saturday!  The quality of my life begins with the content and worth of my thoughts.

Do not confuse peace of mind with spaced-out insensitivity.
A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive, very aware.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Right Outside Your Door

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what’s past. “We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We’re always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

When we’re at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusive memories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don’t appreciate the living present because our “monkey minds,” as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

Most of us don’t undertake our thoughts in awareness. Rather, our thoughts control us. “Ordinary thoughts course through our mind like a deafening waterfall,” writes Jon Kabat-Zinn, the biomedical scientist who introduced meditation into mainstream medicine. In order to feel more in control of our minds and our lives, to find the sense of balance that eludes us, we need to step out of this current, to pause, and, as Kabat-Zinn puts it, to “rest in stillness—to stop doing and focus on just being.”

We need to live more in the moment. Living in the moment—also called mindfulness—is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to experience.   From a “Psychology Today” article By Jay Dixit November 01, 2008 link

“True Joy” by M. Jolynn Rawson-Hunt
I’ll be happy once I’ve done this certain thing.
We all say this often not realizing what it brings.
We look only to the future for our happiness.
Letting life slip through our fingers in its fullness.
Will we really feel complete when the task is done,
or look back and see how we missed so much fun?
Self consumed so we can’t see anything else,
hurting those we love as well as ourselves.
So many things around us to be grateful for,
when seeking for an answer willingly open the door.
So often, others see what’s in front of our face,
but we’re too blind to look as we’re snared in the race.
What is this life supposed to be about?
Is it money, fortune, fame, or a big house?
When speaking to a man on his dying bed,
none of these answers are what he said.
Family, love, laughter are what we should seek.
These are the precious things right outside your door.

Trying to be fully present in the “now” is a battle regularly fought and I am grateful for any reminder that brings me more fully to “this moment”.  Frequently I drift into the “stinkin’ thinkin'” about the past or present, but find more quickly than ever I can snap back into the now.  All I have to do is be mindful of what I am doing and reset myself.  I am grateful for the path I have walked and am still on, that moves me ever so slowly to being more and more fully present in the “now”.

Waste not fresh tears over old grief’s.
Euripides

How Good Can It Get?

/ James Browning

Rejection is protection is a quote I read for the first time yesterday.  Those three words stunned me with their simplicity and truth.  Never has such a thought occurred in my thinking.  Maybe I just wasn’t ready to see the wisdom.

The word ‘reject’ previously always had a negative meaning. I never considered before that being cast off or discarded might have a sliver lining.  The possibility that rejection could be for my own benefit, NEVER occurred to me.  Oh, I played pretend quite a few times saying “things always work out for the best”… yada, yada, yada.  Rarely was such expressed with a belief what I was saying was fully true.

It was yesterday while reading Alan Cohen’s latest release “How Good Can It Get” (originally published in 2004 as “Mr. Everitt’s Secret”) that my previous way of seeing was challenged and expanded.  Still today those simple three words are ringing in my head as I wrap my thoughts around it.  “Rejection is protection” is a game changer for me. 

In “Lesson 10” of Cohen’s book is found:  People think there is one mate, or one house, or one job they must have, and if they don’t get it, they are ruined.  That’s ridiculous!  No one person, place, or company is the source of your good.  Life is the source of your good, and it has ingenious ways to deliver everything you need.  The game board is much bigger than you realize. 

Admittedly there are still sharp feelings about rejections of the not too distant past such as an unwanted divorce and being fired from a long-time job. While well beyond what happened, there is yet to form any idea of precisely what I was being protected from.  In accepting the truth to be found in “rejection is protection” I am hopeful in time the good will become apparent. 

Thinking back there are examples about positives than can come from rejection. I remember twenty plus years ago when I was rejected after eight months from a position I had worked toward for over a decade.  The result was a much better job that allowed me to achieve success beyond anything I could have imagined.  The company that rejected me was sold and went through massive change within months of my departure.  I was protected from all that.

Being rejected when in my 20’s by a girlfriend who was two-timing her fiancé to be with me was a blessing.  Although it hurt like hell at the time within a few months I met a woman who I spent over two decades of my life with.  We married and had a wonderful son together. Looking back it’s easy to see I was protected from an unfaithful woman who probably would have not have been disloyal to me. 

It seems the longer ago being rejected happened; the more apparent the “protection” angle is to grasp.  Seeing “rejection is protection” within happenings of the last five years or so is just darn difficult. 

Another chapter in “How Good Can It Get” threw a further challenge toward another thought etched deeply into my brain.  Since my teen years I have believed struggle and difficulty is how lessons are best learned (NO PAIN, NO GAIN!).  A revealing  light was flashed on my previously accepted narrow truth as I read: Sure, you learn from pain, but you also learn from ease and fun – sometimes even more effectively.  When you are learning to ride a bike, you learn from falling off, but you learn just as much – maybe more – when you stay balanced and enjoy the ride.  Pain has a purpose, but it is highly overrated as a teaching device.  If you pay attention to internal signals and external feedback, life won’t need a two-by-four to get your attention. 

WOW!  That caused a deeply set belief to have an almost instant revision made to it.  With opened eyes it is without doubt I accept that being taught by painful experiences is only one way of learning.  Being in the now, accepting the good coming to me, enjoying experiences as they happen and savoring happiness are highly instructive ways of learning. 

In the past I never gave much credence to “the good stuff” being good to learn from.  I am glad to add a widened way of seeing through my kaleidoscope view of life.  This morning I am grateful for the unexpected lessons gained from Alan Cohen’s book and the power beyond me that brought the book into my life.

The only real measure of success is happiness. 
Alan Cohen