Focus, Temptation and Our Path in Life

"When temptation comes, I don't say, `Yes," and I don't say, `No.' I say, `Later,' I just keep walking the Red Road - down the middle. When you're in the middle, you don't go to either extreme. You allow both sides to exist."

-- Dr. A. C. Ross (Ehanamani), LAKOTA I have been receiving some very good Native American quotes in my email. I read this quote and they mentioned that temptation is really focus. I had not thought about focus as being temptation before but it makes sense. I know that when I make the bad choices that I am focused upon something besides inner balance. I am always reacting to comments and showing my emotional nature. In Buddhism and every other path of religion the middle path is the one with out extremes. It is the one where you can let everything live and exist because you are focused on life in a way that promotes mental and physical balance. The Native Americans call it being on the red path but it is really being on the personal path for everyone. The middle path has the same elements in all moments for everyone. The middle path is a path of balance, tolerance, and having good intentions towards everyone as you progress in your life. All of us have moments of  emotions where we can go either way. We can be tempted to show another who has hurt us or go to extremes. Seeing it as temptation and saying later and just deal with it when we are capable of staying in balance is a life lesson that everyone needs to practice and that includes me at times.

The Path of Life

"He [The Great Spirit] only sketches out the path of life roughly for all the creatures on earth, shows them where to go, where to arrive, but leaves them to find their own way to get there. He wants them to act independently according to their nature, to the urges of each of them.

-- Lame Deer, LAKOTA Every path of religion and spirituality I have studied states this in one way or another. We have points in our life that are set that we work from the first set point being our birth. Next come turning points in our lives which shape us and can not be changed. They are to guide us along our life path and move us in the directions that we need to go or have decided to go by our choices. I call these turning points or nodal points. I have always seen nodal points as the energy of decisions creating different paths to go. It would look like a balloon that had been covered with silly string. People used to take a plastic string and  spray it over balloons.  They would let the silly string dry and pop the balloon to see what shapes it had formed. It is how I feel a nodal point looks if we could see one. It is full of lines of paths that we could pick but did not with the main path moving forward out of all of the other paths. An example of a turning point is when you decide on a profession. It is when a family member passes out of this life. It is the decision to do the things that you dream of doing no matter how often you may have to pick yourself up after failing to try another way to achieve your goal. It is the right decisions in love and having the courage to love a person. Love makes us more vulnerable than any other time in our life. Decisions with our children create turning pints and the unplanned things that make it so we can not make life easy for them. Wanting a family in the first place is a huge decision but one that can be full or love or full of discord and upset. It is all our choices and the way we deal with things on our path. I always felt that the skills learned in anger management and coping skills are very important in today's world where we can prevent the bad and focus on the good. May every one have a Happy Holiday no matter who you worship and find their life path for the coming year.

We are all Interconnected

We are all connected to everyone and everything in the universe.Therefore, everything one does as an individual affects the whole.All thoughts, words, images, prayers, blessings,and deeds are listened to by all that is.- Serge Kahili King

I feel that this quote is very true. Everyone who is human has the same emotions and the same things we all have to endure,enjoy, love and interact with others. We all as human beings make choices that affect everyone else in the world. We all can affect a group of people, a town, a city, a state, a country or the world by our ideas, choices and actions. 

The Internet was developed by only a few men and look how much it influences the world. It is impressive if you look at how the actions of one person can make a difference for everyone. Inventions such as electricity, phones, and computers also affected the entire world.

The way we treat others also cause ripples and can change the world. The World Wars are an example of this and Vietnam is the first time the United States felt defeat over the political choices of a few. All of our choices make it so we affect others in one way or another. The actions of our countries generate the same sort of energies as our deciding how to treat our family or our co-workers.

Countries collect the energies of their choices and it has shown up in economics and in many other ways. We ought to treat others with kindness and love and the world will be a better place. We also have to release the energies of the bad choices and free out countries and our world from stagnating until we can not survive.


The countries that interact with many countries have had economic choices that are causing problems for the whole world. It is our interconnected choices and the linking energies of our actions that connect us to the rest of the world. We are all connected and all being affected by the same problems.