Taking up Life

Elder's Meditation of the Day - August 30 "I started drinking more seriously, seeking refuge, seeking death actually, from a world that was feeling more and more unnatural to me. Following a painful accident related to drinking, I finally realized that I must decide whether I want to follow my grandparents or truly take up this life. Circumstances that followed led me to choose life." -- Barney Bush, SHAWNEE I read this and it hit home to me. I have so many clients that have something happen where their souls do not want to be on this earth. Some of them take up drinking and others just take up hiding from life. They can be abused by their family and friends and wonder why life is so much suffering. Denial is a keyword here because you can tell that Barney Bush had an accident related to drinking. I have lived in a small town and have seen so many people who keep drinking after DUI's and they hurt others. Yet the drink is more important to them than their own life. It is more important than family, a job, or anything else in life. They are trying to drown their pain and their unhappiness. They always think of the times when they were drinking as the only times that they had any fun. They can not drink for years and yet the times when they were drinking are what they think of and mention. Sometimes you can leave the drinking but never quit being a drunk. I feel the same way about drugs, and now I have a way to try to help. Trauma or something happening that a person can not deal with causes this. Yet people do have a chance. They can each day find one thing they love and say Thank you to God, Allah, Buddha or whom ever that they worship. Loving yourself and doing things like loving kindness meditation where you send love to yourself will help. Realizing that many people are cruel because they are miserable and just not listening will work for most people. Taking responsibility for yourself and knowing that you can not blame your life choices on anyone else. Finding your true self never happens at the bottom of a bottle or in drugs. They are used to numb you so you do not feel things intensely. Knowing your true self is something that helps you to love yourself, and grow as a person.

Nothing Happens Quickly

"The best teachers have shown me that things have to be done bit by bit. Nothing that means anything happens quickly - we only think it does."

-- Joseph Bruchac, ABENAKI. I saw this quote and saved it. I always hear everyone ask how fast will you be able to do this? How quickly can I heal? How soon will I receive the package. The whole world tries to make everything go quickly. In spiritual circles it is promises of your whole life changing with one seminar or webinar. One session with this person for XXX will change your life forever. It can happen but the reason it happens is we have progressed in our work or our life to get things done quickly. The person who wants things to travel quickly uses a special services because life has taught him this way works. The person who wants to heal fast may have been ill for most of his life. Yet he still has the hope that things will fix themselves with out his work on the situation many times. The person who has chronic illnesses and does not ask this will be in a work or endurance program to make themselves well. We are the person that has to fix things so they get better. It means that if exercise helps we do exercise. If we are allergic to something but love it anyway we do not eat it. I have friends who are gluten sensitive but love doughnuts, Friends who are lactose intolerant but drink milk and eat ice cream. They find ways to do this but it is because they want to do it. It is hard to work upon ourselves as we are told so many things by so many different people. Self-help is one of the biggest markets on the internet. Spiritual self-help is great also and being able to fix yourself yet some times all of us needs guidance and ways to heal from others. A good doctor makes someone feel better than they have in years but they still have to quit the bad things that made them ill. A good teacher can show someone something that changes their lives but it is just part of the puzzle. Solving our puzzles with others helping us and our helping them is what life is all about in this world.

Love

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
Rumi 

How many of us can describe what true love feels like. We have expectations of Love, obsessions about the people we love. Disappointment because we do not know what love is and try to impose all these conditions on the ones we love. We can live with someone for years and find out that they are going through the motions and do not care. We learn to care about others after we have lost them and know all the good things we could have said if we had not been to busy ignoring what the person really was in our lives.

We can love our friends and find that our friends are our true love. Many people like that feeling when you first meet someone. You think how wonderful they are because you do not realize how loud they snore. Yet that person is still the same person you fell in love with but you have imposed your restrictions upon them.

We can grow in love or grow apart. Yet growing apart does not mean you cease to love that person it just means you want to do different things and act in a different way. Others we love can make us be people we do not want to be. How does this happen? It is because we get stuck in the past and how we consider people act to others. We all had the examples of our parents on how you love others. Some of the examples are great and some need some work.

Yet the beauty and wonder of love is shown by flying towards a secret sky. Beloved can also mean what we are to the divine. The wonder of the others beauty can cause a hundred veils to drop as we try to drown ourselves and satiate ourselves in the physical beauty and love of others.

Letting go of life means we let go of the past and how we act like our examples of love. It means just loving a person with out restrictions and caring for them. Stepping forward with out feet means love is scary. You care so much for someone and hope they will love you back.

Yet all of us need love including the love for ourselves. I hope all of you find your true love and have your true love to hug after reading this post. Affection and hugs makes life worth while.

Self-Rejection and Identity-Love yourself

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” 
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

I have had this happen in my life and many others lives. The people I help have rejected themselves and any way that others would call them beloved. The rejection not only includes rejection by the divine forces that they believe in but feeling they are not worthy of divine love, personal love and personal happiness. Everyone has times where they not only reject themselves and what they are but reject the divine forces that call them beloved.

We all have our inner sacred voice that tells us what the divine feels for us. I know that I have had rough times and I will never forget a meditation I did because it made me cry. It was a meditation to see myself as the divine saw me. I just cried because I had never had anything think that much of me including myself.

I have found that walking strong no matter what others say is the only way to live. Why should we accept what they say and reform ourselves if it is obviously something we have never done. Accusations are just that ways to make others feel bad. I have seen others accused of things that they never did just so someone else can be blamed for problems.

It is a trap to reject ourselves and our true nature.