Life

[citychick]

The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming
in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is
to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your
attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now.

Emmet Fox

As I live more and more, I'm slowly learning how to live in the present moment. I'm learning what it means to truly be in the right here, right now, rather than thinking about the past or wondering about the future. In my life, this is one of the most important things that I've ever learned, for my days are much fuller, much richer, as I learn to see, to notice, to feel, and to appreciate all that's here in this world with me in the now.

This is one of those concepts that I used to wonder what people meant when they talked about it. After all, I am alive right now, so of course I'm living in the moment. But even though my body's here, where is my mind? Where is my attention? What am I focused on? And if I'm focused on something other than right now, how can I take advantage of all the gifts and possibilities that the right now is offering me? My body is here, and if I can keep my attention here, also, I can get much more out of the present moment. Not only that, but I can give much more to the present moment, also.

I had a friend once who almost always talked about the past, mostly about her high school years. At times it was very difficult to be with her because it seemed that she was actually living in the past, and no matter what we might be talking about in our current lives, the conversation always would turn to her past. It got to be kind of sad, for I could see that people started to avoid being with her--she chose to focus on parts of her life that she knew but no one else was familiar with, and no one was really interested in constantly reliving her past with her.

Right now. What powerful words those can be if we recognize them for what they are: truly the only time we have for sure, and every single right now is the most important moment of our lives, for it's the only moment in which we can act and make choices that will affect our future right nows.

~~~~~~

A further thought:

At the level of mind, you exist as a
collection of memories from the past.
The mind is like a curtain which acts as
a barrier between you and the reality
of the present moment.
When you are in the mind,
you are somewhere in the past.
You are not in the reality
of the present moment.

Leonard Jacobson

[Ann]

Nice read, CC, and just what I needed to see today. Great to see you, you always inspire me.

[MycoolFitz]

There is no other place. We’re forever here…There’s only this one place: right here, right now…To be here is freedom from insanity, fear, worry, struggle, striving, the urgent desire to control, and the habitual yearning for security and escape from pain.”—Steve Hagen, Buddhism is Not What You Think

[citychick]

Hi Ann it's nice to be back. I've really missed everyone.


I like the quote Fitz, thankyou.

[citychick]

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. . . . Look at
every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as
you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone,
one question. . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does,
the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.

Carlos Castaneda


What will I be doing tomorrow? Where will I be? With whom will I be? While I can't predict the future, of course, I do know that the answers to these questions to a great extent depend on what I do today, on decisions I make about which road to get on right here, right now. There is, of course, no right or wrong road, and we may end up going down several different roads for different aspects of our lives, but we do have many decisions to make.

I do like Castaneda's idea of paths having heart, though, for that gives us a very important criterion for choosing the paths that will take us into our futures. To me, the idea of a path having heart means that the path is one that will lead me to compassion, to love, to caring, to the better parts of myself. If a path has no heart, then it will be empty and barren, and while it may lead me to a certain outcome, I will learn very little there and I'll be able to share little of who I am.

We choose paths every day. Today I will choose certain paths in certain relationships, in my job, in my personal life, in my education. And if I can look at those paths closely and objectively, I can make a difference in how my tomorrows turn out when they become todays, for if I'm on heart-filled path, it will bring out the better parts of who I am. And that, to me, is the most important part of anything I do.


~~~~

A further thought:

If we are spiritual beings on a human path rather than
human beings who may be on a spiritual path, then life is
not only a journey but a pilgrimage or quest as well.

Jean Shinoda Bolen

[indigo]

It's good to have you back CC.

[Rusty Zipper]

I can make a difference in how my tomorrows turn out when they become todays, for if I'm on heart-filled path, it will bring out the better parts of who I am.

[Ann]

Then ask yourself, and yourself alone,
one question. . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does,
the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.

I just love this post today.

[SCRedhead]

Originally Posted by MycoolFitz

There is no other place. We’re forever here…There’s only this one place: right here, right now…To be here is freedom from insanity, fear, worry, struggle, striving, the urgent desire to control, and the habitual yearning for security and escape from pain.”—Steve Hagen, Buddhism is Not What You Think

Wow! Thanks, Fitz, that is exactly what I needed to read today.

[emmanuel2012]

Dr. Wayne Dyer suggests looking at yourself as a
spiritual being having a human experience, rather
than a human being having a spiritual experience.

Now, IS all there is..

David Bowie:
"Fill Your Heart with love today, don't play the game of time...
Things that happened in the past only happened in your mind,
So forget your mind, and you'll be free...." -"fill your heart"

To me,
The Future is way too Bright,
It shines Light on the present moment, just enough that my consciousness can tolerate it,
And My mind, like a crystalline prism, reflects some of this Light upon the past, creating shadows. I can, in the present moment, reflect upon the past, and see its darkness, relative to the present moment, which contains precisely the amount of Light I need to see clearly.

Happiness can be found everywhere.
But it seems that wherever you go, there you are.

[citychick]

I can, in the present moment, reflect upon the past, and see its darkness, relative to the present moment, which contains precisely the amount of Light I need to see clearly.

Beautifully said, emmanuel2012. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.




SCRedhead

[citychick]

Today's world needs change, alteration, renewal, and corrections of errors. It needs new ideas, new approaches, methods, plans, procedures, and new ways of doing things. Maybe you should think of going -- literally or symbolically -- to a circus today, where you'll see stunts you never dreamed possible. The novelty and originality there may stimulate what you need more of in this life. Have the daring to take a flight for the idea you believe in!

Wilferd A. Peterson


So much of what we do in our lives, we do by rote. We do much of what we do because it's "tradition" or because it seems safe and risk-free, or simply because that's the way we've always done things. This way of approaching our lives is fine if we live in a cage and have no options, but for free people who are trying to forge their individual ways through life, it's no way to live.

Life is about risk and trying new things. So many new things get pushed our way all the time that there's never any real reason for us to continue to do things over and over again in the same ways. When we get caught in ruts, we stagnate and we don't allow ourselves to learn. This year's flowers are much different than last year's were, no matter how much alike they seem, and this year's life for us is full of new opportunities and potential, if only we take the time to look at what we have available to us in new ways so that we can discover the exciting possibilities that are there for us.

I used to have a friend who impressed me with the way he looked at the world. The only way that I could explain it was that he didn't just look at things and situations head-on; rather, he walked around them, under them, through them, and looked at them from many different ways. And his view of them always differed from the "standard" view, the one that most other people shared.

I want to be like that. I want to learn about things by seeing the possibilities in them. I want to make my life rich by trying new and different things without having preconceived notions of what outcomes should be. I want to be daring enough that at the end of my life, I'll be able to say to myself "No matter how it turned out, I feel good about my life because I was always willing to take chances and to learn more about life than I would have if I had done the same things over and over again." If I'm able to take my leave of this planet with that idea as part of who I am, then I know that I will have contributed also to the lives of others.


~~~~~

A further thought;

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. . .

Søren Kierkegaard

[indigo]

Thank you cc for such a thughtful thread.

[Rusty Zipper]

grateful today...

i can take some healthy risks...


thanks CC

[citychick]

It need not discourage us if we are full of doubts.
Healthy questions keep faith dynamic.
In fact, unless we start with doubts we cannot have
a deep-rooted faith.
One who believes lightly and unthinkingly has not much
of a belief. One who has a faith which is not to be shaken has won it through
blood and tears--has worked his or her way from doubt to truth as one
who reaches a clearing through a thicket of brambles and thorns.

Helen Keller


Sometimes in my life, I need validation. I need to know that I'm not the only one who thinks a certain way or who believes in certain things. This particular quotation was a God-send to me, at a time when I was filled with doubts about what was being told to me at church. I was surrounded by people who seemed to feel that doubting was a sign of a lack of faith, and some of them even would have gone so far as to claim that any doubts I had must have come from Satan himself.

There is much to doubt in any religion, for the religious norms and ceremonies that we witness today are the results of people's interpretations of the Bible, not anything that was mandated by God himself. We were given the gift of logical thought, and we were given the gift of discernment, and anyone who says that we don't have the right to doubt is just afraid of losing the "power" that clinging to religious traditions brings to him or her. Doubts send us in directions that we never would explore if we were to hold on blindly to beliefs that we adopt as our own from others.

But clinging to tradition and believing blindly the teachings of others leads to a shallow spirituality. There's very little opportunity in such an approach for a direct relationship with God, and without having gone through a time of doubts, a faith never has been tested. It's only by testing that we truly validate anything.

Do you have doubts? Then embrace them, explore them, find out all you can about them. Doing so will lead you to a newer and more vibrant faith. It probably won't happen immediately, and it may take much longer than you ever were prepared to have to wait, but you will reach the point of faith that you were meant to reach. And once you're there, the chances are that more doubts will come up, leading you down a completely new road that you're meant to explore. . . .

~~~

A further thought:

You call for faith: I show you doubt,
to prove that faith exists. The more
of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith o'ercomes doubt.

Robert Browning

[emmanuel2012]

citychick,
i doubt that anything you're saying here isn't resoundingly true to anyone that it is thoughtful enough to explore the deepest realms of philosophy, cosmology and consciousness. i'm full of doubt as to whether you've met enough people in your life that fully understand how awakened you are, and thus i further doubt that you might not have yet realized, that the beautiful minds you see and have seen in others, would have been impossible to render as beautiful, if it weren't for the beauty of your own. ... simpler put, it takes one to know one .. Namaste

i also have met teachers and mentors and guides that have taught me how to truly "think outside the box," and i held a desire to be like them. What it is, to have that desire, is a desire to think like them, and...
as we think, so shall we be.

Thought is a communion of action, that's why its eventually called. "communication"

Ha! Now i'm just making things up.

QUESTION EVERYTHING...things that haven't been questioned lately deserve the most questioning!

[citychick]

Namaste emmanuel2012.

as we think, so shall we be.

I've always loved that quote. Though there are days when it disturbs me because there are times when I feel less than positive, but their frequency is declining the further I get away from my last drink.

Thanks for the reminder not to entertain negativity for long, and to keep my thoughts focused on all the good life has to offer.

[citychick]

Stressing the practice of living purposefully as essential to fully
realized self-esteem is not equivalent to measuring an individual’s
worth by his or her external achievements.
We admire achievements—in ourselves and others—and it is natural and appropriate for us to do so.
But that is not the same thing as saying that our achievements are the measure or grounds of our self-esteem. The root of our self-esteem is not our achievements but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for us to achieve.

Nathaniel Branden

Sometimes we seem to get it backwards and think that we are worthy because of the things that we accomplish. Most of us live in cultures and societies that value achievement above all else, and that sort of attitude can get us to think that we have to continue achieving in order to maintain our self-esteem.

Unfortunately, though, we don't realize that until we improve our self-esteem, there's a strong possibility that we won't be able to achieve much of what we set out to do. It's hard to do our best work when we don't feel good about ourselves, so our achievements may be lessened by the way we see ourselves. While we may luck out and achieve something great with low self-esteem, the chances are that we won't.

True self-esteem is not dependent on anything outside of ourselves; rather, it's the way we regard ourselves as human beings. If we see ourselves as worthy people and treat ourselves as such, then we have a good chance to accomplish what attempt. But succeeding or failing at that attempt will have no effect on the way we see ourselves, for our self-worth is already something that we accept completely. It doesn't depend on what we do.

Sometimes we get it wrong--we can't improve our self-esteem by our accomplishments, but we can improve our accomplishments by working on our self-esteem and valuing ourselves as human beings who deserve the best we have to give ourselves.

~~~

A further thought:

It is a psychological fact that people always conform to the image they hold of themselves. Change their image and you change their actions, their reactions, their environment, their worlds.

Jack Holland

[citychick]

Conscience, as I understand it, is the impulse to do the right thing because it is right, regardless of personal ends, and has nothing to do with the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

Margaret Collier Graham


May my conscience be my guide, but only if I trust it and follow it truly. My conscience knows what's right and what's wrong, but my rational mind tends to play around with all that my conscience tells me is right and true. It's right to do this, but doing it doesn't help me financially; not doing it holds financial rewards that may benefit my entire family. So by not doing it, I help my whole family, even if I'm not doing what I know is right.

When we try to judge the differences between right and wrong, we fall into the trap of passing judgment, and that rarely helps us out. Margaret puts it simply: conscience is the impulse to do the right thing because it is right. If we leave the idea there, many of our decisions become much simpler, less bogged down in the right/wrong argument. We don't have to define our terms, and the grey areas are fewer and less foggy.

What is the right thing? Sometimes we do the right thing and we see disastrous results; perhaps the disaster was the most important thing that's happened to the people involved. Sometimes we do the right thing and see no results at all, but we never know how our actions will affect other people years down the road. The question becomes much simpler when we don't have to define "right" and "wrong," when we trust ourselves to do what we know inside is right.

~~~~

A further thought:

Conscience is the root of all free courage;
if one would be brave, let one obey one's conscience.

James F. Clark

[Rusty Zipper]

and sometimes, the right thing,

is doing what we dont want to do...

for me, thats when i see the most positive results...

as my alcoholic natural instincts,

tend to go want to against the grain...

Obey!

yes Boss!!! lol

[IO Storm]

Reminds me of an old, old hymn...

"Trust and Obey"

For me, it's impossible to do one without the other. So I have to be gut level honest

with myself..

Do I trust myself to make sound decisions?

Do I trust my conscience?

I rely on a Higher Power..to help..so I do!

I've sure had to drop a lot of pride and "me'ism"..lol, along the way though.

I have to continually "get out of the way"..to be able to "listen."

It sure helps me to "obey" the "Yield" signs..


Thanks CC, and Rust..

[citychick]

Do I trust myself to make sound decisions?

That lept of the page at me Sherry. A lot of the time I don't.

It's like the reading says, "the conscience speaks, then the mind begins to question the validity of the suggestions." When that happens feelings of fear are inevitable and I become 'stuck' in fear and indecision. Eventually tho, stuck becomes too uncomfortable and moving off in the direction my conscience advises is the only way to alievate the angst.

I'm getting much better at acting and then letting go of outcomes. It comforts me no end to know at the deepest level that God has every aspect of my life well in hand.

is doing what we dont want to do...

And that's when things work out much better than I could ever plan.

[citychick]

Fear is like a little garden spider that makes us jump back or the poor lost bee on the steering wheel that we blame for our automobile wreck. The problem in fear is our response -- the way we treat animals or insects that frighten us. . . Fear is also the universal scapegoat we blame when we take flight from intimacy or shrink up inside ourselves in a thousand little ways.

Dan Millman


Many books have been written about fear and its effects on us. Many people have studied just how we respond to fear, and just how much our fears limit us from living life as fully as we were meant to. Fear is one of the major topics of many self-help books, for much of our behavior and our perspective is based on what we fear, how much we fear it, and how we respond to that fear. Fear could be called the great saboteur, for it affects our lives and our potential in many negative ways, often keeping us from being or doing all that we were meant to be or to do.

Fear tends to make us pull back from things, or to avoid facing them in the first place. Fear makes us think that risk is always harmful, that doing the unknown can only turn out badly.

Most of our fears, though, tend to be the products of our imagination. When we start imagining all the bad things that can happen, of course we're going to fear taking a certain action or facing a certain risk. No one wants to have awful things happen to them, and many people actually use their fears as a helpful excuse not to do certain things, even if those things might have incredibly positive results in their lives.

Fear is often simply a question of attitude, and a question of not seeing things quite clearly. In all my life, I have almost never seen my worst fears come to pass, and even when they have, the outcome hasn't been nearly as bad as I imagined it would be, in any circumstance. My life has gone on, and I've been able to deal with what life has given me as well as what I've taken from life. Some types of fear are helpful, like the kind of fear that keeps me from walking out onto a ledge of a very high building, but most of my fears are unfounded, except in the recesses of my own imagination.

~~~~

A further thought:

To be ambitious for wealth, and yet always expecting to be poor, to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach east by traveling west. . . . No matter how hard you work for success, if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors, and make success impossible.

Charles Baudouin

[citychick]

Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the
blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it?
No, we just enjoy it. Each second, each minute of our lives can be
like this. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to
enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, even the sensation
of our breathing. We don't need to go to China to enjoy the
blue sky. We don't have to travel into the future to enjoy
our breathing. We can be in touch with these things right now.

Thich Nhat Hanh


"Each second of our lives can be like this." Can it really be true that we can fill every single moment of our lives with wonder and appreciation for the beautiful things in our lives? Is it possible for us to live our lives in a perpetual state of gratitude and appreciation? To be honest, I believe it is. What's the secret of reaching that point? Lots and lots of effort, I think, in order to cast off our ideas of how we think things should be and accept things for the way that they are. Only then will we see the beauty in everything and everyone around us.

When we do reach that point, we'll start to see just how sacred is the life that surrounds us all the time, just how beautiful everything around us is. Emerson wrote once that we start to think that life would be great if we just lived in some exotic place like Venice, so we pack our bags and sell our stuff and move to Venice. When we get there, though, we find that Venice is very nice, but we're still the person we were before we left, and life is very much the same for us, no matter how exotic our surroundings. How we see the world is more important than what our surroundings look like.

Enjoyment and appreciation are matters of choice. "Wherever we are, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine." Wherever we are, and whenever we're there. It's pretty simple, yet so hard to put into practice. It takes work, and it takes constant effort. It takes opening our minds and our hearts to the possibility of seeing--truly seeing--our surroundings and all that they hold.

Why should we have to go somewhere else to be happy, when there's so much right where we are that could make us so, if only we were to allow it all to make us happy?

~~~

A further thought:

I live now and only now, and I will do what I want to do this moment
and not what I decided was best for me yesterday.

Hugh Prather

[Ann]

"Wherever we are, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine."

Or the joy in raindrops. We may not see how the flowers drink thirstily and blossom even more beautifully, all because there were a few raindrops.

Just for today I will observe and enjoy all the beauty that surrounds me.

Thanks, CC, I love these morning inspirations.