Hello,
and welcome to the newest month of our lives!
We hope that this day
finds you doing very well, ready for another set of
days with which we can
make some very important moments of our lives!
Rowing against the tide is hard and
uncertain. To go with the tide and thus take advantage
of the workings of the great natural force is safe and easy.
-Ralph
Waldo Trine
Success
often comes to those who dare and act; it seldom goes to
the timid who are afraid of the consequences.
-Jawaharlal Nehru
Continuous
effort--not strength
or intelligence--is
the key to
unlocking our potential. -Winston
Churchill
We
win half the battle when we
make up our minds to take the world
as we find it, including the thorns.
-Orison
Swett Marden
It has been said that the one thing that can
limit the expression of your happiness and the
fulfillment of your sincere desires is your own
non-application of the laws of life and the
power of infinite mind in your life.
Priceless pearls of happiness are before you NOW
to claim as yours. Let's take a look at
ten of them from the book Helping Yourself
with Macrocosmic Mind by Rebecca Clark.
1. Know Who and What You Are. Find
Yourself. Realize you are an important
part of God's plan, a unique link in the human
chain that extends from creation into the
unknown future. Not again will an
"aggregate of magnificent atoms" just
like you stand on this Earth. Know
this. Be secure in your beingness as a
child of God. See yourself as God sees
you--Glorious!
2. Count Your Blessings! When
problems loom and confusion and troubles mount,
we sometimes forget the good already expressing
in our life. It has been said that every
atom in the universe responds to praise and
thanksgiving. You really cannot afford not
to count your blessings!
3. Act Maturely.
When I was a
child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a
child; I thought as a child; but when I became
an adult, I put away childish things.
Grow up a little more each day. Learn from
life, but wear the learning lightly, remembering
that we must put away the childish things.
However, we need not lose the childlike
simplicity of those who are the "children
of God."
4. Eliminate Fear. Life may be so
often filled with fear--of ourselves, of others,
of unknown things, of what we regard as
obstacles, of what we may feel as "being
outside of God." (As if we ever could
be!) Fear thwarts happiness. Fear is
the most destructive of emotions, surpassing
even jealousy in its corrosiveness. And
it's totally unnecessary!
5. Give of Yourself. No one can live
happily solely unto him- or herself. It is
part of normal living to want to give of what we
have--our love, service, devotion, help, praise,
friendship, encouragement, or plain, ordinary
kindness. The more quickly we seek to
respond to the inner core of our nature, the
more quickly we may achieve happiness.
6. Value Simplicity. It is important
to rediscover simplicity. Truth is
simple. Simple pleasures of life are often
counted among the greatest, and the simple truth
qualities of love and goodness--although not
always the most sophisticated or highly valued
in our so-called advanced technological society,
are still great sources of happiness.
7. Welcome Changes. One of Nature's
immutable laws is that all things must either
progress or perish. Perhaps you may have
heard the phrase: "Nature abhors a
vacuum and allows not the static." This
being so, it becomes important to our happiness
to learn to flow like a gentle river through the
changes that enter our life. We can
welcome changes with a knowing that it may be
for the "better." Label no new
idea as impossible. If life seems to hand
you a lemon, then make lemonade! Without
changes, we might still be wearing skins and
living in caves!
8. Exercise the Law of Unlimited
Supply. What goal would you set for
yourself if you absolutely knew you could not
fail? What dreams would you manifest if
you knew you had unlimited resources? What
exciting work would you choose if you absolutely
knew you could acquire the skill necessary to
perform this work? What projects would you
launch if you knew you had the wisdom and the
power to remove all obstacles and be totally
successful?
9.
Pause to Enjoy Life! Serenity is
never in a rush, never impatient, or short of
time. Take the time to enjoy life to the
fullest, to stand and stare at something
beautiful. A painting. A tree.
Hug a tree! Praise a glorious sunset, or
sunrise. Appreciate your child, your mate.
10. God First! This is the best
way! God and you form a majority of
one. There is nothing that cannot be
accomplished when you place your hand in God's
care and keeping. Perhaps happiness cannot
be "prefect" or "total" on
this earth plane, but we can come mighty close
to expressing our inner light and obtaining as
much peaceful happiness as possible.
Remember, a smile is the light in the window of
your face that tells everyone that your heart is
at home.
We
have some
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non-fiction!
My dog doesn't worry about the meaning of life.
She may worry if she doesn't get her breakfast,
but she doesn't sit around worrying about
whether she will get fulfilled or liberated or
enlightened. As long as she gets some food and a
little affection, her life is fine. But we human
beings are not like dogs. We have self-centered
minds which get us into plenty of trouble.
If we
do not come to understand the error in the way
we think, our self-awareness, which is our
greatest blessing, is also our downfall.
To some
degree we all find life difficult, perplexing,
and oppressive. Even when it goes well, as it
may for a time, we worry that it probably won't
keep on that way. Depending on our personal
history, we arrive at adulthood with very mixed
feelings about this life. If I were to tell you
that your life is already perfect, whole, and
complete just as it is, you would think I was
crazy. Nobody believes his or her life is
perfect. And yet there is something within each
of us that basically knows we are boundless,
limitless. We are caught in the contradiction of
finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which
causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time
being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless
nature of life. So we begin looking for an
answer to the puzzle.
The
first way of looking is to seek a solution
outside ourselves. At first this may be on a
very ordinary level. There are many people in
the world who feel that if only they had a
bigger car, a nicer house, better vacations, a
more understanding boss, or a more interesting
partner, then their life would work. We all go
through that one. Slowly we wear out most of our
"if onlies." "If only I had this,
or that, then my life would work Not one of us
isn't, to some degree, still wearing out our
"if onlies." First of all we wear out
those on the gross levels. Then we shift our
search to more subtle levels. Finally, in
looking for the thing outside of ourselves that
we hope is going to complete us, we turn to a
spiritual discipline. Unfortunately we tend to
bring into this new search the same orientation
as before.
Most people who come to the Zen Center don't
think a Cadillac will do it, but they think that
enlightenment will. Now they've got a new
cookie, a new "if only." "If only
I could understand what realization is all
about, I would be happy." "If only I
could have at least a little enlightenment
experience, I would be happy." Coming into
a practice like Zen, we bring our usual notions
that we are going to get somewhere--become
enlightened--and get all the cookies that have
eluded us in the past.
Our whole life consists of this little subject
looking outside itself for an object. But if you
take something that is limited, like body and
mind, and look for something outside it, that
something becomes an object and must be limited
too. So you have something limited looking for
something limited and you just end up with more
of the same folly that has made you miserable.
We have
all spent many years building up a conditioned
view of life. There is "me" and there
is this "thing" out there that is
either hurting me or pleasing me. We tend to run
our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or
displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or
situations that we think will give us pain or
pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other.
Without exception, we all do this. We remain
separate from our life, looking at it, analyzing
it, judging it, seeking to answer the questions,
'What am I going to get out of it? Is it going
to give me pleasure or comfort or should I run
away from it?" We do this from morning
until night.
Underneath
our nice, friendly facades there is great
unease. If I were to scratch below the surface
of anyone I would find fear, pain, and anxiety
running amok. We all have ways to cover them up.
We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too
much television. We are always doing something
to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some
people live that way until the day they die.
As the years go by, it gets worse and worse.
What might not look so bad when you are
twenty-five looks awful by the time you are
fifty. We all know people who might as well be
dead; they have so contracted into their limited
viewpoints that it is as painful for those
around them as it is for themselves. The
flexibility and joy and flow of life are gone.
And that rather grim possibility faces all of
us, unless we wake up to the fact that we need
to work with our life, we need to practice.
We have
to see through the mirage that there is an
"I" separate from "that."
Our practice is to close the gap. Only in that
instant when we and the object become one can we
see what our life is.
Enlightenment
is not something you achieve. It is the absence
of something. All your life you have been going
forward after something, pursuing some goal.
Enlightenment is dropping all that. But to talk
about it is of little use.
The
practice has to be done by each individual.
There is no substitute. We can read about it
until we are a thousand years old and it won't
do a thing for us. We all have to practice, and
we have to practice with all of our might for
the rest of our lives.
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.
Despite
all the doom and gloom that constantly assault our senses, there
is a way for us
to ransom our lives and reclaim our futures: it consists in
turning away from the world
to recognize what in life makes us truly happy.
For each of
us, what that is will be different.
But once we obtain this inner
knowledge, we will possess the
ability to transform our outer world.
"You
can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more
about other people than
you know
about yourself," the pilot and writer Beryl Markham
reminds
us.
We cannot let this continue to occur.
We just had a storm roll
through. It started with the wind picking up, then very soon
the rain started falling heavily. There was thunder and
lightning, and for a while it seemed that we were in for a long,
heavy storm. Then the rain lightened, the wind slowed, and
the clouds started moving away from us rather than toward
us. It was just a typical summer storm, short-lived but
intense, quick but fruitful.
So many of the storms of my life have been just like this
one. While they make me think that they're going to be
severe and long-lasting, they end up being much less to worry
about than I've initially thought. Arguments, conflicts,
loss, worry, illness, financial woes--they've all turned out to be
very real, but not nearly as disastrous as I thought they would
be.
In truth, it's very difficult to tell the future--when we see
storm clouds on the horizon, it's hard to tell if we're in for a
ten-minute storm or a ten-day storm. This was especially
true many years ago, before weather forecasting became so
advanced. Forecasters depend on the past to predict the
future, though--their forecasts are based on what has happened in
the past when weather conditions were similar. In our daily
lives we have the ability to apply past experience to present
conditions to predict what's going to happen, but we don't always
use it.
Adversity is like the period of the
rain. . . cold, comfortless,
unfriendly
to people and to animals; yet from that season
have their birth the flower,
the fruit, the date,
the rose and the pomegranate.
Walter Scott
We tend to be
pretty good at it when little children are
involved. If a child started crying when
someone took his toy away, we can predict pretty
well that a similar action would make him or her cry
again. Yet somehow we find it difficult to
believe that our spouse is upset because of
something inconsiderate that we did again, or that
someone at work has the nerve to be offended because
we did the same thing they asked us not to do
before. These small "storms"--people
getting upset and conflict rearing its head--are
part of what makes life so difficult for so many
people, yet many of them are completely avoidable.
And even if they aren't avoidable, it would be good
if we were to recognize that "this, too, shall
pass." No storm is forever. First
of all, they don't stay in the same place for
long--they move along and become a storm
elsewhere. As they move, though, they also
dissipate, losing their strength as they go and
eventually ceasing to exist. This storm that
we're going through today is not going to be here
long, and we can either try to fix it or let it
pass.
Of course, if we opt to let it pass, it's important
that we make sure that if we had anything to do with
its creation--if it happened because of something we
said or did--then we need to be more careful in the
future so that we don't cause more storms in the
same way.
And
once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it
through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure,
whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When
you
come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who
walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
Haruki Murakami
And once a
storm comes up, it's important that we remember that
even though it may seem to be fierce and
destructive, it's also providing needed water for
the plants and waterways. Though it looks like
nothing good can come of a storm, they serve a
necessary purpose in the overall scheme of things in
life.
Likewise, some of the storms in our lives also bear
important messages and lessons for us. Our
times of struggle and trial help us to learn about
many things, such as patience, compassion, peace,
love, hope, and many other things. If we look
at the storms of our lives in this way, we can
appreciate them more even when they're very
difficult for us to get through. Even if
things seem dark and tempestuous, we can be sure
that something good will result as long as we
persevere and make our ways through the storms.
Only when the winds of adversity blow can
you tell
whether an individual or a country has
steadfastness.
John
F. Kennedy
When your
storms come, try to keep your perspective and look
for the positive within them. If you can't
find the positive, then remember that this, too,
shall pass--the storm will blow over and leave you a
stronger and more resilient person. Try to be
like a tree that bends with the wind so that it
doesn't break; give a little bit and make yourself
less rigid and less breakable. If you can
learn to forecast storms, then by all means do
so--it will be a valuable skill to have and it will
save a lot of hurt feelings. But no matter
what, remember that the storms are necessary and
inevitable, and since you can't hide from them the
rest of your life, you might as well make the most
of them.
As
difficult as it can be to find genuine inner calm, it is the key to
creating
peace in the world as we know it. The world will not change until we
do,
and there is nothing the world can deliver to us that will give us the
peace
we crave. Peace comes not from the world, but from God.
I have walked 25,000 miles as a penniless
pilgrim. I own only what I wear
and what I carry in my small pockets. I belong to no
organization. I have
said that I will walk until given shelter and fast until given food,
remaining a
wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace. And I can
truthfully
tell you that without ever asking for anything, I have been supplied
with
everything needed for my journey, which shows you how good people
really are.
With me I carry always my peace message: This is the way of
peace: Overcome
evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.
There is nothing new
about this message, except the practice of it. And the practice
of it is required not
only in the international situation but also in the personal
situation. I believe that the
situation in the world is a reflection of our own immaturity. If
we were mature,
harmonious people, war would be no problem whatever--it would be
impossible.
All of us can work for peace. We can work right where we are,
right within
ourselves, because the more peace we have within our own lives, the
more we
can reflect into the outer situation. In fact, I believe that
the wish to survive
will push us into some kind of uneasy world peace which will then need
to
be supported by a great inner awakening if it is to endure.
Blessed
are they who have learned to admire but not envy, to follow but
not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not
manipulate.
William Arthur Ward
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).
™
