Category: guidance

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What If Today…

I want to share something that I wrote for a dear friend of mine recently. It was intended to provide a spark to ignite a different way of viewing life. It was something that I needed. As with all of my posts, the thoughts and words arrive for me and then moved outward into the world.

The post is a dream in a way. Of a richer life. And of course, as it is in all cases, it depends on what we choose. I wonder to myself what will I choose, I wonder too, what will you choose?

What if today…

What if today…I choose to believe…to truly accept and embrace…that every single thing that happens to me is here to benefit me. What if I choose to see beyond appearances and all of the things that blind me. What if I give myself permission to believe that I am loved and cared for and know that everything I experience in my life is there to offer me something of value. That no matter what the world tells me, I can choose my own path. What if I embrace that my heart and spirit are the ones that set me free.

What if today I release any need to control the uncontrollable. What if I spruce up my ability to yield and let go of all the things that weigh me down…to set them aside and feel the precious liberation and the expansive freedom that choice creates.

What if today I collect all the most lovable parts of me and hug them and ask them to spread their joy throughout my body…my life.

What if today I allow every sorrow, pain, challenge, and concern to take the day off…to rest…what if I placed them all gently in the ocean of bliss that is my true home, where they can be washed clean.

What if, for one day, I give up needing to be in charge of anything and allow life to flow gently through me.

What if today…I breathe in peace and breathe out love.

What if today…is that day.

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Fatherhood

It’s not often that one of my posts lands on a calendar day of celebration, but it does today, Father’s Day.

It provided me with a chance to pause and reflect about what it means to me to be a father and grandfather. For that matter, I also considered what it means to be a son, in relationship to my own father.

I realize that not everyone has a wonderful relationship with their father. I’m sure there are lots of reasons for this. Conflicts seem inevitable in every relationship and when you add in the father’s and children’s expectations, it can become pretty challenging.

I have a great deal of compassion for those with relationships that have gone off the rails, regardless of the causes. And I hope that enough of the conflicts can be worked out, so that there can be a restored sense of love and caring.

As I thought back about my own life, I came to realize something that surprised me. My first inclination was to think about what a father ‘does’. His active pursuit. How he is directly involved and the proactive steps he takes. The ways he participates in the lives of his children.

But that’s only half of the story to me.

Beyond this ‘active’ portion of fatherhood, there is another aspect that feels extremely important to me. I’ll call it a ‘reflective or responsive’ way of living and relating to one’s children.

I’d like to share some examples with you of things I’ve encountered along the way as a father. I’m not saying that I’ve always done them all or done them well but having a focus and an aim has certainly helped me, and hopefully helped my children.

Most all of them relate to being a good role-model, especially while reflecting and responding.

I start by ask myself whether I am prepared to learn from my children, not just be their teacher? As a father, am I prepared to receive, as well as give, providing space for my children to grow, expand, and exercise their love for me and for others?

Can I be a sponge, soaking up their lives, as they live and pour themselves into the world, sometimes in messy ways?

Can I be the source for tolerance, giving them room to share their own convictions, opinions, and choose their own directions?

Can I help them set a firm foundation, where truth is valued, honesty is exchanged, support is given, listening becomes the key and acceptance is encouraged?

It’s a great and wonderful thing to be a dad. It’s also a huge responsibility because it calls for so much from me. My inner sense of love and devotion is my source of power and I find that it is constantly renewing every time I’m with them or think about them.

I wonder to myself, can I help them soar and watch with delight as they spread their own wings, trying new ideas and changing directions?

Can I hear what they are saying without feeling a need to react from my own life experiences, opinions, and values? Can I accept that they have their own dreams and desires and once I know about these, can I support them, even if I feel differently?

Can I offer guidance without strings attached, so they can embrace what feels right and worthwhile to them, without fearing I will be upset or disagree with their direction and choices?

Can I show love regardless of any decisions they make and keep my heart open, so they know I am always available to them and always love them?

All of these questions are important to me because my children are not here to serve as extensions of me. My children are here to live their own wonderful existence.

The most beautiful part of fatherhood to me, is that I have the opportunity to live side by side with them, joined in love. It truly is a most wonderful gift for me, and I hope it is for them as well.

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Power Sources

The title to this post could imply many things. I’m curious, what was the first thing that popped into your mind?

Electricity, gasoline, wind, water, sun light, geothermal?

Or did you go a different direction?

Maybe politics, finances, athletics, social status, influence, popularity?

There are other avenues as well; food, animals, plants, bees?

And whereas all of these, and many more represent power sources, the ones I was thinking about were the internal ones that reside within us and the ones we gravitate to that exist outside ourselves.

Our cultural training offers us a host of options to choose from. Personally, I’ve found that many of these are quite unreliable. At first, they seem attractive, but they don’t offer much depth and can easily slip away.

Here’s an example.

One external power source that’s popular occurs when we listen to and value what others say to us instead of considering and deciding what we think and believe. Trading our power for the temporary power we receive from others does not seem beneficial or sustainable to me. Allowing the opinions of others to guide our lives may be helpful at times, but once we have a sense of who we are and where we want to go in life, it can be extremely counterproductive if we use it exclusively, rather than exercising our own internal power.

I admit that the power offered us by others can be very seductive. Receiving positive comments, congratulations and rewards can make us feel good, but if it happens in place of how we feel about ourselves, it robs us of our own power.

Comparing ourselves with others does the same thing, whether it’s about our weight, sales numbers, bank balances or popularity. Having someone, anyone else, determine our worth or value leads inevitably to a loss of our genuine power.

Shifting away from what others think, say, or do and embracing our own internal sources of power to enhance our lives is worth whatever amount of time it takes.

Creating our own sense of direction and pursuing our dreams and desires provides a pathway toward self-improvement. We can open doors into music, reading, connecting with others, writing, artwork, and all sorts of physical practices.

And during these experiences we can tell ourselves that we possess the ultimate power, which is the ability to use our free will to decide the course of our lives. We can set the stage for pursuing whatever direction we choose and can establish our own criteria for a satisfying life.

Holding onto our own power yields our best chance to create and experience whatever we choose, rather than be held captive to others’ expectations or demands.

Perhaps this feels like too much of a challenge to you. It could be that you’ve been conditioned to follow the lead of others and you strongly sense a need for support and guidance to help you exercise your own free will.

I have a suggestion for you if this is the case. It comes from my own life experience over the last twenty-six years. If you’ve read anything I’ve written, you can probably already guess what it is.

If you need guidance, aid, and support, I recommend that you begin by engaging with whatever your concept is for (god).

In my case, I have constant conversations with Lia, a feminine, ethereal part of (god) who talks with me and provides wise council, often opening my eyes to things I do not see clearly.

I can tell you with the certainty that comes from literally thousands of conversations that she loves and supports me. She offers clarification and insight and never attempts to ‘overpower’ me. In fact, she reminds me that I am in charge of my own life and am my own greatest power.

Should you want to have your own conversation with Lia or with whatever name for (god) that feels right to you, I encourage you to take just one step in that direction and see what happens. I believe there is enormous power inside you waiting to be released.

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A New Context for Disappointments

How good are you at dealing with disappointments? Does it make a difference about the size of the disappointment, or do they all effect you the same way?

It’s a topic that’s on my mind at the moment because I’m experiencing a significant disappointment. There isn’t anything I can do about it practically speaking, and of course, that’s also part of the problem. If there were things I could do, then at least I could take some action, even if it didn’t entirely fix everything.

Maybe you’re experiencing some disappointments of your own. They may be the temporary versions or perhaps, ones that repeat themselves over and over.

I decided I needed to have a chat with Lia (an ethereal feminine voice of god who loves and cares for me and who is always willing to talk with me about anything).

I brought up my issue and asked for some guidance.

Lia responded by saying, “Your attitude about your disappointment is completely under your control. You can be disappointed and feel your feelings BUT then exercise great care with your next choice. You can allow this disappointment to manifest into intense feelings of it being ‘unfair’, but you need to realize this is a subjective judgement based on limited information.”

One thing I immediately realize is that Lia will never allow me to consider myself a ‘victim’ in any circumstance, since I am in complete control over the attitudes I choose in my life.

The next thing I realize is that Lia is challenging me and offering me something valuable to consider…that I am taking the ‘short view’ (limited information) and I would be wise to reconsider this.

I’m not sure how though and she already knows this.

Lia continues, “Whenever you choose to view life solely from the short view, you miss the full story. Everything is not revealed in one single moment (or event). It takes time to become aware of the fullness of life.”

Admittedly, I’m still a little confused. I get the essence of what she’s saying but need more.

As always, she understands and adds to her explanation with a magnificent illustration.

“Imagine there is a string of dominos set up in a line, so that once the first domino is tipped over, it creates a chain reaction…a sequence of falling dominos.”

It’s a great picture for me because I’ve done this hundreds of times in my life.

I can feel Lia smiling at me as she continues, “This is your life, a constant sequence of events, which may appear unrelated, but which are intimated connected. If you judge the whole solely by the first domino, you ignore the end result of the chain reaction. Try to remember, everything is connected.”

And although I get what she’s saying, I still wonder how I can release my disappointments and shift my attitude.

“The shift I’m suggesting is for you to develop an awareness, to pay attention, and to carefully observe your life. When you encounter a disappointment, feel it fully, then make a wise choice based on knowing the disappointment is a part of something much larger in your life. It is connected to the events that preceded it and the events that follows it. Watch carefully for how marvelously everything is organized and how everything serves you (in the long run). Cultivate a level of trust in the process so that you can sit back and watch how, what you at first thought was a disappointment, turns out to be a significant part of something much larger and wonderful.”

I recognize this is going to take practice, but I already sense the incredible value it will bring me. Now I think I’m ready to put my disappointments in a new context.

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Spots

If you thought about it for a moment, how many references come to your mind for the word, ‘spot’?

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while now, you’ll remember that my mind doesn’t always travel in a straight line. Often, I see new routes and explore different directions.

So, when I landed on the word ‘spot’, many things came to mind, and I thought I’d share some of them with you, ending with one that may alter your life.

Looking down at the carpet on our floor, I noticed several spots. I wondered how they all got there, and something occurred to me. Two different ways of thinking, objective and subjective.

Objectively, it’s most likely that someone (and it could have been me), spilled something on the carpet and obviously, something that couldn’t be cleaned, otherwise, I wouldn’t still see it.

Subjectively, the cause could have been carelessness on someone’s part (animals included), or it could have been a simple accident, and no one’s fault. This led me to wonder what the difference between the two is.

Perhaps in the first case, the one responsible doesn’t care and in the second case, the one responsible may care a great deal. I wondered how I determine which one it is? Do I judge solely by their reaction to the spot? And how does my judgement impact how I feel about the spot and the one responsible for putting it there (me included)?

Another reference to ‘spot’ is the saying, “x marks the spot”. In some cases, this means that there is an ‘x’, perhaps on a map, which exists to indicate something significant is located there. Maybe the ‘spot’ is the source of buried treasure or marks the place to dig, so that a project can be accomplished. The spot is important, not in and of itself, but because it serves as a guide.

I wonder, are there ‘spots’ in our lives which would help guide us, if we knew they were there? Is it a case where they are already there, but we don’t recognize them? If so, what would we need to do, so that we would take note of them?

After a bit of consideration, it seems to me that everything in our lives is actually a ‘spot’. If we pay attention, everything is here to guide us, especially our intuitions.

A scary ‘spot’ is the one found on an x-ray. Once located, it usually creates immediate anxiety. It’s almost impossible to calmly sit back and wait for the results. Our minds are inclined to fill in the absent results with worst-case scenarios. Although it might be nothing but a shadow, we’re strongly tempted to believe the ‘spot’ will be life threatening.

This kind of ‘spot’ generates panic and fear and for good reason, especially under certain conditions.

So, what else can do we do about this kind of ‘spot’? Are there objective and subjective ways to approach it or do they blur together, making our path forward difficult?

Can we see this ‘spot’ as some sort of guide? And if so, how can it give us direction?

This feels to me like one of those decisions where, to use another expression, “the rubber meets the road”, meaning the point at which things become the most important.

This is everyone’s own personal decision point. And we each arrive at this ‘spot’, sooner or later.

If you have a guide who aids you, this would be the time to connect with your guide.

But, if you have arrived here, and have done so many times in your life and haven’t found a source, a guide who offers you wisdom and comfort, perhaps you’d like to consider this invitation. It is an invitation to form your own connection directly with the divine.

The process is simple. Sit back, close your eyes, breathe in and out gently and allow your body to settle. Relax into yourself. If you hear or see any objections or obstacles, acknowledge that they exist and promise to talk with them later, then release them, let them go. Allow yourself to feel a sense of freedom. Give yourself a chance to create some space inside you, as an opening to the divine, by whatever name feels comfortable to you. Imagine whatever ‘spot’ is creating a challenge for you and ask for help, then sit in stillness and listen. It may be a quiet voice at first, but over time, it will become a great source of strength, comfort, and wisdom. It will become a sure guide.