Category: choosing

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Choosing Your Ingredients

A funny question came to mind recently.

But first, a little background information.

In 1973, in an effort to standardize the food industry, the United States began requiring that packaged foods provide nutritional labels spelling out the number of calories, grams of protein, carbohydrate and fat and the percent of the US Recommended Daily Allowance of specific ingredients.

Then in 1990, the USDA mandated that all food companies were required to make consistent claims and include a detailed, standardized nutrition facts panel on all products intended to be sold.

This resulted in the nutritional labels you now find on almost every food item sold and additional changes are planned for the future.

My question is, what do you think it would be like if every human had a label attached to them listing their ingredients, like the food products we eat?

I’m not talking about the percentages of the most common chemicals found in humans; like oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus.

What I mean is, what if we came with a label identifying the contents of our hearts and minds? A label that provided insight into our feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.

In one way it might make it easier to understand each other.

And perhaps there would be warnings on our labels, letting others know which topics were most likely to trigger negative reactions before conversations began.

The idea also made me wonder, if we could see our own label clearly, would we still want each ingredient to be inside us? Or perhaps we’d recognize that one or more of them do not make us happy, fulfilled, or joyful. That some of our contents create misery and suffering.

If we knew in advance that some of our ingredients were harmful to us, we might make better decisions.

Well, what if we started over? Is that possible?

If you answered ‘yes’, what would you consciously choose to place inside yourself, if you could begin again?

I found the question intriguing and needed to sit back for a moment before answering.

I tried to clear my mind, which is quite a task some days. I think there are lots of ingredients that would be good to start with, but I ended up choosing ‘love’. Love for me and love for those around me. Is there any way that could ever go wrong?

But an important part of me asked what that actually means. How does love work? After all, there are so many difficult and challenging situations we all face. Is love really the answer to them all?

I sat back again, awaiting my own answer.

I came to an immediate conclusion…yes, love is the answer to everything. It is the main ingredient. With it firmly in my heart I see everything else fitting together. Love allows me freedom. It makes it possible to see through fear, sadness, anger, and all of the other warnings I might encounter.

And if I want to add other ingredients, love works with them all in unison, courage, compassion, bravery, generosity, empathy, faith, trust and so many more.

If you decide to start over, I hope you choose ingredients that serve you well.

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The Power of Choice

Do you believe that you have a choice?

Not everyone does believe this. They maintain that they are limited and although they may at times have a choice, they don’t always. They believe that there are defined limits that cannot be exceeded.

I wanted to know where I stood on this question, so I began exploring this idea of choice. I wondered how far I might be able to go with my ability to make choices.

Could I for instance, decide in advance, how something could or would turn out?

One thing I discovered early in this process was that if internal fears were present, I felt very limited. I found that fear very effectively blocked my way forward. It didn’t matter which fear was present, they all seemed to have the same effect.

I also encountered an interesting dimension to fear. It has an amazing ability to alter reason. Despite the presence of facts, fear has the uncanny ability to sidestep them and create projected outcomes, some of which don’t even make sense, but appear very believable.

I wondered how do I, how does anyone move beyond this, once fear is present?

A voice appears inside me offering an answer. As usual, it is Lia’s voice (an ethereal feminine voice of god that comes to me whenever I have questions I’d like answered).

She offers this simple solution, “You just decide. That’s what you are always doing. You make a choice and then take action steps.”

Sounds easy enough. But then it occurs to me that there are many different kinds of choices, and they feel different to me, making me wonder if her solution applies across the board.

There are subconscious choices (my default choices), conscious choices (that I make either proactively or reactively), spontaneous choices (made immediately in the moment) and, at least for me, spiritual blueprint choices (ones I just ‘know’ are a part of my path).

Lia reacts saying, “As you explore the world of choices, it is helpful to keep in mind that nothing happens TO you. You are not the victim in any experience. All things that happen, happen THROUGH you. Everything is a part of your spiritual blueprint (those events you came to earth to experience), and each serves you, either directly (moving you forward) or indirectly (pointing your way forward by sharing that they are not the way).”

That statement was going to take me a minute to absorb.

I ended up telling Lia that I could use some additional clarification, so she went on to say, “There is a wealth of possible choices, and they exist inside your mind. Some of these you view as threats. You extrapolate these threats (fears) and create ideas in your mind which you ‘believe’ are true, but they are just ideas (thoughts), and you have the choice whether to believe them or not. No thought has any true independent power. They receive their power only if you choose to believe them. Without this power they are empty.”

This all made sense to me, especially as I brought to mind some of the idiotic fears I’ve created over the years.

Her wisdom continued, “Rather than focus on your thoughts created by your fears, it will benefit you richly to realize that you have other choices you can make, ones that do serve you.”

She went on to encourage me to find a way of shifting.

Here’s what I came up with. “I release any choice I do not wish to experience and embrace (choose) those I do wish to experience. I acknowledge my perfect freedom to do this now and at all times.”

Letting go of my fear thoughts allows me to shift and choose thoughts that directly serve me, ones that bring love and joy into my life. It’s a constant kind of thing, but I now feel equipped to make good choices and experience life in a positive way.