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21 April 2009 |
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First
keep the peace within yourself,
then you can also bring peace to others.
Thomas
à Kempis
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Most
of the important things in the world have been
accomplished by people who have kept on trying when
there seemed to be no hope at all.
Dale
Carnegie
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If
a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas
Jefferson |
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Death is not
putting out the light.
It is only extinguishing a lamp
because the day has come.
Rabindranath
Tagore |
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Letting
Go of Spiritual Laws of Success
(an excerpt)
Hugh
Prather
As
a people, until the 1960s we didn't believe in
metaphysical laws or "universal principles" so
much as we believed in the one great Game Plan: If
you did "what was right." If you didn't
question "authority," your place in society, or
the status quo. If you didn't lie, swear, cheat, or
"drink to excess." If you worked long
hours and saved your money so that some day you could pass
it on to your children. If you were loyal to your
country, the company you worked for, the political party
of your family, and your alma mater. If you
performed your duties as a housewife or a
"provider." If you attended your house of
worship and tithed regularly. Then "everything
would work out" and at some point you would walk into
the sunset.
This
unquestioned approach to life extended even to one's
personal choice in car companies, the dress styles of the
day, and one's taste in music and movie stars. The
key was sticking to "the plan," which everyone
more or less understood and agreed on. As a culture,
we were surprisingly consistent in our adherence to this
approach. We told each other stories of the rewards
of people who "worked hard and lived by the
rules." We cherished examples of what happened
to those who didn't.
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No
one felt a need to uncover the laws of love or
success because our society thought it already knew
"how to conduct yourself" in ways that
allowed one's life to work out. That it was
possible for life to work out and that
"everything adds up" was never questioned.
Then
along came the Vietnam War and doubt began pouring
into our cultural psyche. Within a remarkably
few years, we no longer believed in a single game
plan, and at the start of the twenty-first century
we have come close to assuming that acting counter
to "the way things are done" gives you a
better chance at happiness than walking "the
path most traveled." Now devotion can
turn you into a "caregiver"; your family
can "enable" you to fail; your children
can impede "your dreams"; your company,
your religion, and the political leaders you last
voted for can fail to "meet your
needs." You should feel free to
experiment with different "lifestyles" and
"exotic" forms of entertainment. You
should be open to switching friends and family
members as you are to changing your job, location,
or hairstyle.
Although
it was inevitable that we would begin to challenge
the cherished "strengths" of our society,
we have paid a heavy price for going beyond merely
questioning our values to obsessively undermining
them. We have focused so strongly on doubting
our former approach to life that doubt has become an
end in itself. Most of us find that we can no
longer look at anything without anxiety,
uncertainty, and cynicism. The average person
can't even sit down and eat a simple meal without
conflict.
Understandably,
we now long to know what can be counted on,
what the basic forces and facts are. If
the old way doesn't get us the life we want, what
will? We hunger to know the rules and we want
them spelled out and numbered.
Fortunately,
this will never happen. If it could, we would
be locked forever in an unfair and loveless reality.
After
thousands of years of looking for them, it should be
obvious there are no hidden laws. The world
simply is not governed by a philosophy, doctrine, or
set of rules. No one's life is predictable,
solvable, or even reasonable. Once we
acknowledge this, a great and totally unnecessary
burden is lifted from our shoulders.
Unquestionably,
many writers and teachers claim to have discovered
the laws of happiness and success. But no one
agrees on precisely what these are. It's also
curious that in our culture, it is close to being a
tradition that our religious and spiritual leaders
seldom practice what they preach, which raises the
following question: Do they really
believe they have discovered the laws of happiness
and success?
Why
would we even want such laws? Isn't it because
we think the key to change is to change the people
and circumstances around us? We insanely
believe that the key to peace is war. Yet as
soon as we try to control anything, we split our
mind and lose our sense of inner comfort. We
can change what we bring to the people and
circumstances surrounding us, but we can't dominate
them.
Perhaps
the only approach that comes remotely close to a
rule of life is that when you are relaxed and
flexible, you are happy; when you are rigid and
controlling, you are unhappy. Therefore, the
key is actually to let go of our urge to get
people to behave and events to go our way.
No
matter how experienced the psychologist, how learned
the theologian, how wise the philosopher, or how
holy the saint, none of them can control a
two-year-old. Who among us can even predict
the weather? As someone said to me recently,
"The next time you think there is some
situation you can control, try doing it when you
have diarrhea."
The
simple fact is that you and I don't control the
tiniest events of our lives. Despite repeated
New Year's resolutions, most members of the human
species can't even turn down a donut. Thus the
idea of controlling our partner, teenager, in-laws,
or supervisor is ludicrous.
It's
interesting that the great spiritual teachers of the
past did not control outcomes. Jesus couldn't
even get his disciples to stay awake for an
hour--although he tried twice! What made these
teachers great was that they devoted themselves to
the people before them wholly and constantly--even
though the results were disappointing. In
contrast, you and I have limited patience and
"can only do so much." If the
picture doesn't change, we bail out.
Most
people think they know the pieces that make up the
puzzle of their life. They believe that they
already have a few of them resting quietly in place,
and all they have to do is get the rest of them to
fit. However, even the ones that momentarily
fit are changing shape and soon will not fit, and to
those that float just out of reach, new ones are
forever being added. No one's life, including
the lives of the saints ad ascended masters, finally
gets ironed out and runs smoothly.
Jesus,
the Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and
Mother Teresa's approach to life is thought
by many to have come close to perfection. If
theirs was not a flawless, approach, certainly it
was about as good as it gets. Yet even their
lives often did not go well. If that is true
of individuals who by the end of their lives lived
impeccably, then nothing you or I do with our minds
or bodily habits can force our lives to run well.
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Bestselling
author Hugh Prather has a knack for putting
his finger on the pulse of America's emotional
and spiritual angst. In The Little Book of
Letting Go he gives voice to the internal
chatter that prevents us from enjoying or
pursuing our true desires. "Within our
human heart we all feel the call to be simple,
to be present, to be real," Prather
writes. "Yet throughout the day, the
world urges us to be at war with ourselves and
each other: 'Be resentful about the past.' 'Be
anxious about the future.' 'Be dissatisfied
with what you do see.' 'Be guilty.' 'Be
important.' 'Be bored.'" Prather compares
these thoughts to the stale clutter in the
back of our refrigerators. By cleaning out our
minds, we allow room for fresher and more
nourishing foods for thought. |
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The true end of education is not only
to make the
young learned,
but to make them love learning;
not only to make them industrious,
but to make them love industry;
not only to make them virtuous,
but to make them love virtue;
not only to make them just,
but to make them hunger and thirst after
justice.
John Ruskin |
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| A
mother I know had spent the whole summer in the company of
her children, thinking only of their needs. On her
return in the fall she went for the first time in months
to an adult dinner party. To her horror she
discovered that, to start conversation with the
distinguished man next to her, she said automatically,
"I bet I can finish my soup sooner than you
can." |
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The
Gift of Change
Marianne
Williamson
Life as we knew it is passing away, and something new
is emerging to take its place.
All of us are playing a part in a larger
transformative process, as each of us is being forced to
confront whatever it is we do, or even think, that keeps
love at bay. For as we block love's power to change our
own lives, we block its power to change the world.
Humanity is moving forward now, though in some ways
we are doing so kicking and screaming. Nature seems to
be saying to all of us, "Okay, it's time. No more
playing around. Become the person you were meant to
be."
We would like to, but it's hard. The problems of the
world today seem larger than they have ever been before,
making it easy to succumb to cynicism, fear,
hopelessness, and despair. Until, that is, we remember
who we are.
For who we really are is a power bigger than all our
problems, both personal and collective. And when we have
remembered who we are, our problems -- which are
literally nothing other than manifestations of our
forgetfulness -- will disappear.
Well that would be a miracle, you might say. And that
is precisely the point.
This book is about learning who we are, that we might
become agents of miraculous change. As we release the
fear-based thoughts we've been taught to think by a
frightened and frightening world, we see God's truth
revealed: that who we are at our core is love itself.
And miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.
It is said in Alcoholics Anonymous that every problem
comes bearing its own solution. And the gift being borne
by our current challenges is the opportunity to make a
large leap forward in the actualization of our own
potential. The only way the world can make a quantum
leap, from conflict and fear to peace and love, is if
that same quantum leap occurs within us. Then and only
then will we become the men and women capable of solving
the problems that plague us. As we leap into the zone of
our most authentic selves, we enter a realm of infinite
possibility.
Until we enter that zone, we are blocked, for God
cannot do for us what He cannot do through us. To say He
has the solutions to our problems is to say He has a
plan for the changes each of us needs to go through in
order to become the people through whom He can bring
forth those solutions. The most important factor in
determining what will happen in our world is what you
decide to let happen within you. Every circumstance --
no matter how painful -- is a gauntlet thrown down by
the universe, challenging us to become who we are
capable of being. Our task, for our own sakes and for
the sake of the entire world, is to do so.
Yet for us to become who we most deeply want to be,
we must look at who we are now -- even when what we see
doesn't please us. This moment is driving us to face
every issue we've ever avoided facing, compelling us to
get to some rock-bottom, essential truth about ourselves
whether we like what we see there or not.
And until we make that breakthrough in ourselves,
there will be no fundamental breakthrough in the world.
The world we see reflects the people we've become, and
if we do not like what we see in the world, we must face
what we don't like within ourselves. Having done so, we
will move through our personal darkness to the light
that lies beyond. We will embrace the light and extend
the light.
And as we change, the world will change with us.
We spend so much time on unimportant things -- things
with no ultimate meaning -- yet for reasons no one seems
to fully understand, such nonessentials stand at the
center of our worldly existence. They have no connection
to our souls whatsoever, yet they have attached
themselves to our material functioning. Like spiritual
parasites, they eat away our life force and deny us our
joy. The only way to rid ourselves of their pernicious
effects is to walk away ... not from things that need to
get done, but from thoughts that need to die.
Crossing the bridge to a better world begins with
crossing a bridge inside our minds, from the addictive
mental patterns of fear and separation, to enlightened
perceptions of unity and love. We're in the habit of
thinking fearfully, and it takes spiritual discipline to
turn that around in a world where love is more suspect
than fear.
To achieve a miraculous experience of life, we must
embrace a more spiritual perspective. Otherwise, we will
die one day without ever having known the real joy of
living. That joy emerges from the experience of our true
being -- when we detach from other people's projections
onto us, when we allow ourselves permission to dream our
greatest dreams, when we're willing to forgive ourselves
and others, when we're willing to remember that we were
born with one purpose: to love and be loved.
Anyone who looks at the state of the world today is
aware that something radically new is called for -- in
who we are as a species and in our relationship to each
other and our relationship to the earth itself. Yet the
psychological fundamentals that hold this dysfunctional
world in place are like sacred cows: we are afraid to
touch them, for fear something bad will happen to us if
we do. In fact, something bad will happen to us if we do
not. It is time to change. It is time to do what we know
in our hearts we were born to do.
We are here to participate in a glorious subversion
of the world's dominant, fear-based thought forms.
There are only two core emotions: love and fear. And
love is to fear as light is to darkness: in the presence
of one, the other disappears. . . .
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Marianne
Williamson's book
is incredibly important,
as brilliant and fresh as
Return to Love, yet written
with the urgency demanded
by our times. A truth teller,
a seeker, a mother and
a learned woman in this
scary and strange new
world, her voice is at once
strong medicine for our woundedness, warmth,
insistence, good humor,
and a little light to see by."
--
Anne Lamott |
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Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week. |
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Eyes
Wide Open
tom walsh
A
Not-so-Subtle Reminder
Something
happened to me the other day that provided an important
wake-up call, a pretty extreme reminder of just how good
we have things in life. I was working with a
couple of students on the track team, doing some
plyometrics, when I started to work a little bit on some
short platforms that we have. We use them to jump
up on and down from, and the help the runners and
jumpers to develop the muscles in their legs that
provide a lot of the lift and distance that they need
when doing their events.
I
don't even remember what happened, really. I had
just started, and I guess that one of my feet
slipped. All I know for sure is that I fell
forward and hit my face against the metal platform and
ended up on the ground, my hand to my eye, covered in
blood. I was in shock, especially because it had
happened so fast that I really didn't have time to stop
it or even to recognize what was happening before it was
already over. I was dazed because of the blow to
my face, and the only thing that I could think of at
first was whether or not I still had my left eye.
Thankfully,
I did. I tested that out first by closing my right
eye and opening my left, and it still worked--I could
still see.
I
wouldn't have gotten up or anything at all if the eye
had been gone--all I could think of was how traumatic it
would have been for the students to see something like
that.
As
it was, there was just a lot of pain and a lot of
blood. One of the other coaches helped out a bit,
trying to rinse the area and clean it off a bit so that
we could see how bad it was. To make a fairly long
story short, I ended up going to the hospital and
getting 14 stitches along my left eyebrow, 12 of them on
the surface and two below the surface. And then I
went home in a bit of pain (not much, though, thanks to
anesthetics), still pondering how
fortunate I was and what I had learned from the
experience.
Once
more in my life, I was reminded of just how quickly
things can change--for the better or for the
worse. It didn't take more than a second for my
whole world to change for a short time--I have to take
antibiotics, I have to sleep on my back so I can't roll
over onto the wound, I have to care for a wound that
wasn't there a couple of days ago, and on and on.
When our lives aren't changing significantly, it's easy
to get complacent, to allow things to move on at the
same pace day after day, being satisfied and comfortable
with the status quo. I really don't want to be
satisfied and comfortable, to be honest--I want to live
my life and allow for life to do its thing, rather than
trying to control it to make it become what I want it to
be.
I
also re-learned just how much it hurts to get a blow
like that, and just how frightening it can be to feel
the stunning effects of it and to see that much blood
coming from a wound in my own body. Usually, it
gets easy to see other people who are wounded and not
think at all about how much pain they've been through--I
hope to be more compassionate in the future, recognizing
their strength for getting through what they've gone
through.
This
incident helped me to remember just how great it is to
have people around to help us. As I lay in the
room at the medical center, waiting for the doctor to
come in and put some stitches in my head, I couldn't
help but think of how glad I was that there was someone
there to do that. What if I had had such a wound
many years ago, when medicine was much less advanced, or
when I might have lived so far away from a doctor that a
wound like mine wouldn't have been worth the trip?
All through my life I've had the help of doctors and the
people who work with and for them, and I certainly am
glad that they're around, and that they've done all the
studying and work necessary to do well all that they
do. My body would be a mess by now if they weren't
there.
Finally,
I've been reminded just how important gratitude is in
our lives. After I got hurt, I could have reacted
by being mad about such an awful thing happening to me,
or I could be grateful that things didn't turn out much
worse--after all, I missed my eye by about an inch, and
if I had hit that spot on the platform with the eye
instead of the brow, I most probably would have lost the
eye. And then how would things have been?
Life
throws us some curve balls sometimes, and it's important
to receive the lessons that those curves give to
us. After all, if we're given a lesson and we
refuse to learn from it, then what good are we doing
ourselves here on this great planet of ours?
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How many of us get up in the morning feeling truly
grateful for the day? Most of us wish we could turn the
clock back and keep sleeping. The truth is, when you are
happy to wake up and are grateful for the day, your life does
change.
Each new day is an opportunity to pray for your loved
ones and to act in a loving manner towards them. I start out
by saying my prayer of thanks and asking for guidance and help
from all available resources. I find I am always grateful
for the new day, no matter how hard it is or will be, because I
know I am not ready for my days to end. After all, the
alternative to waking up and facing another difficult day is
death. For all I know, after death the unenlightened may be
sent back to wake up to the glory of the new day and its
opportunities.
I want to experience more days and the difficulties
and opportunities they will bring. I want the chance to test
myself. Maybe this makes me a glutton for punishment, but if
I can help one living thing get through the day and not hurt
anyone else in the process, I go to sleep thankful for the time I
have been given and eager to awaken to tomorrow.
Bernie
Siegel |
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