Hello!
We're now coming
to the end of another month in our lives, and we
hope
that you've been able to make the most of all that
July offered you. As we
reflect on the month just past, let's look for ways
that we can get even more
out of our opportunities, and help others to get the
most out of all of theirs.
Presence is more
than just being there. -Malcolm S.
Forbes
Hope is an adventure, a going forward,
a
confident search for a rewarding life. -Karl Menninger
It
is arrogance to expect that life will always be music. Harmony, like a following breeze at sea, is the exception.
In a world where most things wind up broken or lost, our lot is to
tack and tune. -Harvey
Oxenhorn
The
unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what
sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars,
peace, love, hate, all that. Accept that it's unknown, and
it's plain sailing. -John
Lennon
In a world of five-sensory humans that understand power as
external, intuitive knowledge is not regarded as knowledge, and,
therefore, is not processed. It is not submitted to the
intellect. It is not expanded or studied or made technical
and disciplined. Just as we were taught to develop and
employ cognition--to think things through-- so, too, can we learn
to develop and employ intuition--to ask for guidance and receive
it. Just as there are technologies to discipline the mind,
such as analytical thinking, studying, repetition, and respect for
the mechanism, so, too, are there techniques to engage and
discipline the intuition.
The first of these is to honor emotional cleansing at all
times. If you are emotionally blocked and you cannot, or you
do not, know what you feel, or if you have blocked what you feel
so effectively that you become emotionless, you become a negative
person, and you create a physically diseased body. By
keeping your emotions clear, emotional negativity does not reside
in you, and you become lighter and lighter. This opens your
intuitive track because it allows you a clear sense of
loving. It brings you closer to unconditional love and
renders you harmless. It lightens the quality of your
frequency, so to speak, and therefore the guidance that you
receive is clear and unobstructed as it enters your system.
This requires that you clear yourself each day of your emotional
impacts. Just as you dispose of your physical body wastes
and toxins, so, too, dispose of your emotional wastes and toxins
by finishing emotionally unfinished business, by not going to bed
in anger,
by seeing that you do not feel contaminated emotionally,
and by learning to work with and to honor your emotional currents
of energy.
The second is a cleansing nutritional program. Being
physically toxic interferes with your intuition.
The third is to honor the guidance that you receive.
Emotional and physical cleansing leads to intuition, and this
leads to learning to respond. You must be willing to hear
what your intuition says and act accordingly. Many people do
not wish to hear what can be heard so easily, and, therefore, they
deny that they hear anything.
The fourth is to allow yourself an orientation of openness toward
your life and the Universe, to approach the questions of your life
with a sense of faith and trust that there is a reason for all
that is happening, and that that reason, at its heart, is always
compassionate and good. This is an essential thought that
needs to be in place in order to activate and cultivate intuition.
What is intuition, and how does it work?
Intuition is perception beyond the physical senses that is meant
to assist you. It is that sensory system which operates
without data from the five senses. Your intuitional system
is a part of your incarnation. When you leave your body, you
will leave behind the intuitional system that was developed for
you, as you will leave behind your personality, because it will no
longer be necessary.
Intuition serves many purposes. Intuition serves
survival. It prompts you to pursue that which has no
apparent reason in order to survive. Hunches about danger,
for example, about what is risky and what is not, about which
street is safe to walk and which is not, or about checking the car
under the hood, help you to remain in the physical world.
Intuition serves creativity. It tells you what book to buy
for your project. It tells you where to meet the colleague
that you need to meet, and which ideas from one field will
complement which ideas from another. It is the hunch that a
certain painting should be done in grey, and that another should
be done in purple. It is the sense that an idea that has
never been tried before might work.
Intuition serves inspiration. It is the sudden answer to a
question. It is the meaning that takes form in the fog of
confusion. It is the Light that comes to the darkness.
It is the presence of the Divine.
Intuition can be thought of as a type of wiring that can be used
by various sources. One of these sources is the soul.
Intuition is a walkie-talkie, so to speak, between the personality
and the soul. This happens through the higher self.
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Life is a balance between known and unknowns. Space,
nature, the inner workings of our bodies--so many aspects of our
lives are still mysteries even with all the information we
have. Our world's religions have given us
explanations. Science has explained what the religions
could not and refuted some of what the religions have
taught. Yet so much mystery remains. I have found
that the more I can relish the mystery, the more meaning I can
draw into my life.
Pregnancy comes to mind. I spent both of my pregnancies
caught up in a great reverence for the mystery of life. My
first time around, no matter how many books I had at my bedside
to inform me, there were still so many questions. First,
there was the confirmation of the pregnancy. Then there
was the wonder of how I would feel and what life would be like
with a baby in it. There was not knowing if the baby was
okay until all seemed to check out well. There was feeling
the movement of a child inside my belly and yet not knowing what
he looked like and who he would be. There were anecdotal
warnings of what labor would feel like, but this didn't come
close to erasing the acute anticipation of what it would really
feel like.
There was also reverence for the natural intelligence of the
body. I had no hips on my little, boyish, hundred-pound
frame when I became pregnant with my first child. As the
pregnancy went on, my hip bones and back produced excruciating
pain as the joints spread to accommodate the growing mass of
cells that my body was hosting. During the last trimester,
the pain was so bad that I had to roll my gargantuan body out of
bed and onto the floor, where I would crawl on my hands and
knees to my chosen destination. It took until about eleven
a.m. every day to stand up straight.
Unrecognizable to my former self at one hundred fifty pounds, I
gave birth to an eight-pound, two-ounce baby boy after a
fifty-hour trek through the peaks and valleys of labor.
When I was back home, four months of sleep deprivation and
hormone-induced emotional toil allowed for a revelation that may
seem obvious to those not in my situation: "Oh my
God, there is a hip to park this baby on!" All that
had been previously unknown had yielded a new "known."
"Isn't Mother Nature amazing?" I thought.
"She created a shelf to hold my baby. That's what all
that pain was about! And look! I have a second
shelf! Maybe I should have another baby!"
And then I had twins (just so my hips wouldn't be jealous of
each other). Well, not really, just because after
thirty-five, my body got sloppy and dropped two eggs instead of
one. All those millions of spermatozoa had two eggs to
bombard and I got a boy and a girl out of the deal. Seven
pounds each! Not bad. I was in another period of
mystery.
"What would it be like to have two?" I wondered.
There I was expecting again. Living in the question
mark. There were knowns--two babies--one boy, one
girl--and the unknown--would they be okay? Could I deliver
them myself? Ah, anxiety, mystery's close cousin.
To be fair, of course, there are those that relish
mystery. Doctors and researchers, I imagine, revere the
mystery as they approach solving it. Artists have to
approach an empty canvas or score book and jump into the unknown
in order to create. But for a lot of us, the impulse is to
hide from that which we don't understand or can't answer.
We lose our reverence for mystery, and instead choose fear,
avoidance, and denial. It's easier to shut down and close
out the unknown rather than enter it with a conscious awareness
that we don't have the answers. It is frightening to trust
ourselves to be creative, to find answers or resources or people
who can help. We avoid that quest, even though it's an
opportunity for connection with our essential, creative selves.
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.
The
next time you are caught in a traffic jam, don't fight. It's
useless to
fight. Sit back and smile to yourself, a smile of
compassion and loving
kindness. Enjoy the present moment,
breathing and smiling, and make the
other people in your car
happy. Happiness is there if you know how to breathe
and
smile, because happiness can always be found in the present
moment.
When we consider compassion, we look at our ways of relating to
other people. We look at the trials and difficulties that
others are going through, and we try to put ourselves in their
position so that we can come closer to understanding just how they
feel and just why they act as they do. And when we
understand their conditions and their motivations, we can see them
and their actions in a new light. That man might have been
rude to us just now, but when we find out that his wife has just
left him or that he's afraid of losing his job, then the rudeness
takes on a different light. And even more than just
understanding where he's coming from, we may even be able to help
him out a bit.
But in our societies of today, we seem to be pulling away from
compassion and moving towards judgment. As a teacher, it's
getting more and more difficult to teach young people about
compassion--if we read a story about a character who did something
wrong, it's much more common today to hear young people say,
"It's his fault--he had it coming," rather than, "I
feel bad for him--he made a mistake, but so does
everyone." Because they watch so many television
programs that are focused around judging other people, this
judgment has become their norm, and since they've watched so many
people be judged, they have an attitude that says that people
actually deserve to be judged, and that they can judge others
whenever they want.
Compassion is a sympathetic
feeling. It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone
else's shoes,
to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it's
like to be
in someone else's predicament, and simultaneously, to feel
love
for that person. It's the recognition that other
people's problems,
their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our
own--often
far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to
offer some assistance,
we open our own hearts and greatly enhance our sense of
gratitude.
Judgment,
though, doesn't leave much room for
compassion. When we are compassionate, we
recognize the behavior or the act, but we also
recognize that we all make mistakes and that a
person now has some serious problems on his or her
hands. When we're compassionate, we see a
starving person and feel deep sympathy inside with
that person, and we don't decide that the hunger is
somehow that person's fault. When we're
compassionate, we sit and listen even if we don't
hear what we think we should be hearing.
Compassion asks us to leave behind judgment and
focus on the suffering that another person is going
through so that we can help them.
The best way to feel compassionate is to be
completely aware of what people are going through,
and simple observation often isn't enough to tell us
this story fully. There are times when we have
to stop and think deeply about what another person
may be experiencing, especially if their experiences
are very different from ours. I don't know,
for example, what it's like to go through life with
a debilitating illness--physical or
psychological--so sometimes it's difficult for me to
feel compassion for people whose lives and
experiences are limited by diseases from which they
suffer through no fault of their own.
On the other hand, I know intimately what it's like
to grow up with an alcoholic parent and to go
through debilitating depression, so it's easier for
me to feel compassion when I hear of others going
through the same thing. In the former cases,
just because I haven't experienced the same things
does not mean that it's impossible for me to feel
compassion, just more difficult. In the latter
cases, compassion comes more easily to me, but my
compassion obviously shouldn't be limited to people
with whom I have shared experiences.
Shallow observation
as an outsider is not
enough
to see
their suffering. We must become one with
the
subject
of
our observation. When we are in contact with another's
suffering,
a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with."
So why should I
even care about being compassionate? I know
that personally, I feel much better about myself
when I've shown compassion to someone rather than
judgment. I feel that I'm being more human
when someone tells me of a mistake and I say
something like, "I'm sorry you had to go
through that, and if there's anything I can do to
help you, please let me know," rather than,
"That was stupid, and you deserve everything
you're getting."
One of the reasons for which many people avoid being
compassionate is because they mistake it for being
an enabler. They feel that if they're
compassionate, they may not be holding people
responsible for their actions or inaction. But
here's something important--it's not our place to be
holding others responsible. It's our place to
be responsible for ourselves, not for others.
And when we lose our compassion because we've judged
someone else, we lose a lot more than just an
opportunity to help someone else out.
Most importantly, we lose the opportunity to live
from a place that is more deeply human. Some
of our most important learning about our own
humanity comes when we show caring and love to other
people, for that's what being human is all
about--caring and loving each other, not judging and
harming others.
I
am compassionate. I allow my heart and imagination to
embrace
the difficulties
and concerns of others. While maintaining my own
balance, I
find it within myself
to extend sympathy, attention,
and support. When they are
grieved, I listen with
openness and
gentle strength. I offer loyalty, friendship,
and human understanding. Without undermining or enabling, I aid and assist others to find
their strength. I allow the healing power of the Universe to flow
through me,
soothing the hearts and feelings of those I encounter.
So it's
important that we do allow our hearts "to
embrace the difficulties and concerns of
others" if we're truly going to live our lives
fully. The compassion that we show to others
can contribute greatly to the peace and goodwill of
the world, and we can help others to live their
lives fully as they realize that they are not alone,
and that there are others out there who don't just
care for them, but who also are willing to
understand them and help them through their
difficulties. Our contributions to other human
beings are our contributions to the world, and our
compassion for others can help us to make those
contributions more loving, more helpful, and more
lasting.
Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made
up of those tiny
successes. The big ones come too infrequently.
And if you don't collect
all these tiny successes, the big
ones don't really mean
anything.
When we
don't acknowledge the finish line, we have no cues for which
direction we should take today. By the time we finally
approach the end of the race, we will be so lost and disoriented
that we'll be in danger of collapsing without ever reaching the
goal. In avoiding the knowledge of our eventual decline and
death we are not equipping ourselves for the difficult demands
those final miles will make on us, and we may find out too late
that we were never truly alive.
If, on the other hand, we
accept the fact of our mortality and integrate that
knowledge into our current consciousness, we will be able to move
closer to the essence of who we are. This is where we can
discover larger meanings. This knowing will be our most
powerful internal resource as we live out our lives.
Consciously allowing ourselves to be honed and deepened by
experience -- including loss and dependence -- we can attain the
emotional and spiritual depth that is wisdom, plus an internal
freedom that engages fully with life even as we are dying.
These will be the crowning achievements of a long and completed
life. Late life, even with chronic illness, carries the
potential for depth of meaning and purpose not possible at earlier
stages.
Expecting
the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a
little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you're a
vegetarian.
Dennis
Wholey
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
