Real Poverty

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty."

~ Mother Teresa ~

Having Difficulty Meditating?

« You say you have difficulty meditating. Why is that? It is because you have still not fully understood that each moment in life is not isolated but linked to all previous moments. So you must take care to prepare conditions, so that when the time for meditation comes you are able to do some real work with your thoughts.

Suppose you have had an argument with someone. The next day when you want to meditate you will be endlessly mulling over your grievances and settling scores with that person. Instead of feeling detached and managing to raise yourself to the soul and spirit realms, you will be stuck on the ground, totally preoccupied with your arguments of the previous day. The same old story will keep repeating itself for this or that reason, and you will never be able to meditate. So, let’s be clear about this. You can achieve a great deal with thought, but only if you realize that, as each moment of your life is linked to all the previous ones, the work of thought, like all other work, requires preparation. »

~ Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov ~

Having a Breakdown - Tending the Emotions

Most of us have had the experience of holding back our emotions for such a long period of time that when they finally come out, we have something resembling a breakdown. For a certain period of time, the overwhelming flood of feelings coursing through our bodies consumes us, and we stop functioning. Often, these outbursts take us by surprise, welling up within us as we drive to or from work, watch a movie, or engage in some otherwise mundane task. We may feel like we do not know what triggered us, or if we do know, it does not make sense of our overpowering emotional response. This is because we are releasing feelings that have accumulated over a long period of time, and whatever inspired the release was just a catalyst for a much larger, much needed catharsis. 

When we find ourselves in the midst of such an experience, it is important that we allow it to happen, rather than fight it or try to shut down. Wherever we are, we can try to find a private, safe place in which to let our feelings out. If we can not access such a place immediately, we can promise to set aside some time for ourselves at our earliest possible convenience, perhaps taking a day off work. The important thing is that we need to give our emotional system some much-needed attention. It is essential that we allow ourselves to release the pent-up emotions inside ourselves so that they do not create imbalances in our bodies and minds.

When you are feeling better, make a plan to find a way to process your emotions more regularly. You can do this by employing a therapist or making a regular date to talk to a trusted friend. Journaling can also be a great way to acknowledge and release your emotions, as can certain forms of meditation. Making room in your life for tending your emotions on a regular basis will keep you healthy, balanced, and ready for life.

~ Madisyn Taylor / DailyOm ~

Protecting With Pure Intent

Wanting to protect other people may be due to your desire to take care of everyone around you. While this can be healthy, perhaps today you might want to reflect upon your reasons for defending others when they are capable of taking care of themselves. Should you have a need to protect someone else, you may want to think about what it is you have to gain. If you know that you will receive praise, for example, you can ask yourself why that is so important to you and maybe even think about ways in which you can give that to yourself. Understanding your motives for helping others could allow you to give them what they truly need rather than fulfilling your own desires. 

Having the right motives for taking care of and protecting others means that when we do help, we are doing so out of a sincere desire to foster their best interests. There are probably many times when we feel that defending people will bring us something positive, such as praise or loyalty, when in fact these things never manifest themselves in the ways we desire. Truly supporting someone means that we do so from a place of pure intent and hope for nothing in return. By thinking about your intentions today, your protection of others will come from your true heart-centered desire to help.

~ DailyOm ~

Photo source: http://lightworkers.org/wisdom/julie-miller/188077/lovingkindness-blessing

Healing

Healing is not a quest to solve your mysteries, but to learn how to live within them. Life is full of mystery. In fact, life is only a mystery - a journey beset by fogs we didn't see coming and detours into magical gardens that we had no idea were being cultivated for us. Asking why the painful and wonderful events of our lives occur when and as they do is a useless waste of energy. We can never know all that was involved in creating these moments in our lives. In psychological - and Divine - parlance, these events are "overdetermined": So many factors, incidents, forces and energies are involved in them that you can never determine any single cause.

Illness remains one of the leading mysteries in life. Why does it happen? "Why me? Did I do something to deserve it? Will I live through it?" You may wonder if this disease is tied to your traumatic marriage or your childhood or toxins in the environment. Get past the questions. Focus on your healing in the present time.

~ Caroline Myss  / "Why People Don't Heal and How They Can" ~

Healing With Love

Careful Preparation

Care was used in preparing the garden soil in order to get it into the proper condition. Here again the analogy to spiritual process is true: We must remove from the creative medium of Mind all negatives. It must be at peace. Everything must be removed that would obstruct the right development of whatever good results we seek. When you are poised, calm, at peace, filled with happy expectancy and serenely trusting in the fulfillment of the highest good, you are ready to do your spiritual planting.

All summer long the warmth of the sun and the refreshment of the gentle rains bring your garden through the various stages of growth to rich maturity, which is the reason you planted it. Your spiritual garden, first planted in the soil of emotional serenity, must be kept nourished with love and watered with expectancy. Do not let any weeds of doubt or anxiety hinder its progress. Give it daily attention, entirely free from worry or fear as to the outcome. Remember, you can trust the soil to do its part if you do your part! 

~ Dr. Ernest Holmes, “How to Change Your Life” ~

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How to make it through

A broken heart is simply a heart that has a chance to become stronger. It’s a heart that is more self-sufficient, more open to the truth, and more capable of lasting love. 

~ Martha Beck ~

Becoming Rich

“Becoming rich in personal relationships, learning to return love for hatred, being always aware of the unity of life, these things are the most difficult achievements on the face of the earth. Only when we see a person who has accomplished such feats do we begin to glimpse the heights a human being can attain.”

~ Eknath Easwaran ~

Source: http://www.easwaran.org/blog/2015/03/06/ya-blog-post-a-passage-for-march-2/

Entering into Joy

Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, along with all our busy thoughts about earth, sea, and air;

if the very world should stop, and the mind cease thinking about itself, go beyond itself, and be quite still;

if all the fantasies that appear in dreams and imagination should cease, and there be no speech, no sign:

Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still – for if we listen they are saying, We did not make ourselves; he made us who abides forever – imagine, then, that they should say this and fall silent, listening to the very voice of him who made them and not to that of his creation;

so that we should hear not his word through the tongues of men, nor the voice of angels, nor the clouds' thunder, nor any symbol, but the very Self which in these things we love, and go beyond ourselves to attain a flash of that eternal wisdom which abides above all things:

And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, leaving behind all other sights and sounds but this one vision which ravishes and absorbs and fixes the beholder in joy; so that the rest of eternal life were like that moment of illumination which leaves us breathless:

Would this not be what is bidden in scripture, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord?

~ Saint Augustine ~

LOVE IS ...

• The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. ~ Thomas Merton ~

• Love is without conditions—it is respectful, mindful, sees all life as sacred, and acts in accordance. Love reminds you that this very planet is a living being. Love is the very essence of the Divine in you, and it sees the Divine in others. ~ Colette Baron-Reid ~

• Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses. ~ Ann Landers ~

• Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~

• I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death. ~ Robert Fulghum ~

Dedicated to the Ones we love, no matter what!

Love!

A Prayer to Savor the Moment

Security Is Within You

"We start anew. We start with the proposition that Life is for us when we work with It; that we shall experience love when we become loving; that faith transcends fear, and peace will rout confusion, just as good will overcome bad. And in this process of the greater overcoming the lesser, there is no conflict, no struggle or battle. There is only the fact that as we work at the level of causation, that level which transcends appearances and conditions, the effects are not violently changed but harmoniously transmuted into something else, that something else being a fuller expression of God's good. And in considering this remember that if God's nature was not good the universe would be divided against itself and would destroy itself.

"We now find ourselves in a position where we no longer need to let ourselves be buffeted about by conditions around us. Neither do we need to put on our battle uniforms and make valiant attempts to engage our enemy. Rather we take a non-resistant attitude toward our conditions. The battle we need to wage is an inward one. With our own thinking. We need to destroy not the appearance or condition but the old well-worn pathway of negative thinking which was the causative factor. We need not fight those things in our experience which bring us insecurity; we need to recognize that the only security that we can ever experience must of necessity arise from the security that we feel within us. And that security within us rests entirely on our conviction and belief that there is a Power greater than we are and that we can use It. We need a sound faith and conviction in the nature of Life Itself, in Its essential good and harmonious action.

"Basically, all that we have to do is to learn to get rid of our fears and doubts, to remove all confusion and bewilderment, until at last we arrive, either through intuition or through the due process of logical thinking, at a place where we can start out with the simple proposition that 'I am one with God, the infinite creative Intelligence, and am no longer conditioned or controlled by any external situation whatsoever.' This is where we start. This is the point of departure from being influenced by conditions to influencing conditions. Instead of being in the back seat of a runaway driverless car with endless hazards ahead, we now find ourselves in the driver's seat, calm, cool, deliberate; and with a knowledge of where we want to go and how we are going to get there, we proceed carefully to guide and direct our way along the highway of life."

~ Source: An excerpt from "A New Design for Living" by Ernest Holmes ~

Make me an Instrument of Your Peace