• Eight…

    • September 13, 2010 9:51 am

    Dearest Readers,

    “By living regularly in the spiritual consciousness–making it your habitation–no trouble can touch you.”

    This comes from the book Power Through Constructive Thinking by Emmet Fox. I read that passage this morning during the time I take to practice prayer and meditation. Part of me balked. “But I do that and still I get burned!”

    This resistance is also known as the dis-ease. The rebel. The pessimist. The faithless. She’s real and she has a voice but guess what? She’s not the boss of me.

    “No trouble can touch you” does not mean nothing “bad” is ever going to happen. It means with a positive mental attitude we can be free no matter what the situation. We can be free with second-degree burns, with illness, with physical disability. We can be free in prison, in concentration camps, in the darkest of places. We can be free if we make Spiritual Consciousness our mental home.

    My thigh is now marked by a giant red scar. It may go away. It may not. The skin is very smooth. It’s new. It regenerated itself after trauma. The pain of that experience was excruciating and yet I have managed to overcome it by changing my attitude. It wasn’t a punishment. I didn’t attract it because I’m not living rightly. I was presented with an opportunity to practice compassion (for myself and others) and non-judgment (of myself and others). I was presented with an opportunity to turn it around, to ask instead, “Where is the Gift?”

    We can always find the Gift through the power of constructive thinking. I was able to move beyond self-pity. I was able to triumph over physical difficulty. I gained humility. I gained a deeper sense of be-ing. My ability to practice of mindfulness opened up wider than it ever has before.

    As a result of all of these things I can look back and see that despite the grief of the whole burn experience I managed to become mentally free. By dwelling in the Spiritual Solution no trouble really touched me.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Everyday the dis-ease of fear comes knocking. “I want the power!” it shouts. “I wanna drive the bus!” Everyday we may seek refuge in the Spirit to send it packing. Today I will dwell in the Spirit and be free.

    The Aim of Success

    • August 14, 2010 8:48 am

    Dearest Readers,

    As part of my research for GITA I am reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. I’ve only just begun the book but already have learned so much.

    In Frankl’s “Preface to the 1992 Edition” he writes about his reaction to the incredible (surprise) success of the book which by then had sold millions of copies since its initial publication in 1946.

    “Don’t aim at success,” he writes, “the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue… you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”

    I need to hear this message over and over again. I have been so motivated by “success” for so much of my life. I have blogged before about having to re-define the meaning of success in my life in order to find Peace and how much this turnaround has helped me. I’ve been changed by it.

    Still, after reading this section of Frankl’s book, I was able to see how much of what I do is still motivated by this vague notion of greater glory. It’s not a bad thing and I’m not here to chastise myself for it but I felt humbled by the raw awareness that the old success driver is yet present in me.

    Frankl continues, “I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”

    Thanks for the reminder, Viktor. Needed that.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: What does my Conscience command me to do? What is my Highest Guidance? I will seek this knowledge and carry it out to the best of my ability without expectation of success or reward. I will trust that the reward will come by itself, at my having done my utmost to perform my True Command.

    Meaning What

    • August 3, 2010 10:11 am

    Dearest Readers,

    When I landed home over the weekend after two months away I found a big pile of The New Yorker magazine waiting for me. My father gave me a subscription a couple of Christmases ago and after my initial anxiety over the frequency of their arrival (“How am I ever going to read them all?”) I soon became hooked.

    In the May 31st issue there is an article on the great writer Somerset Maugham who is most well-known for his novels Of Human Bondage and The Razor’s Edge, neither of which I have read. I recall reading one of his short stories in university but I don’t remember its title. His name, however, has stayed with me.

    The writer of the NY article writes that the protagonist in Of Human Bondage discovers “that life has no meaning other than what one makes of it.” I found this very interesting. It’s kind of like the old riddle “when a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

    If we were not here to experience Life, would It have any meaning? Without us, without the human experience, is there any meaning to anything at all?

    In my own search for meaning I’ve often thought that we exist in order for Existence to know Itself. Hmmm, I might be getting a little too deep for a Tuesday morning. Let’s go back to the quote.

    “Life has no meaning other that what one makes of it.”

    If I believe Life is meaningless, it will be. I’ve tried the Way of No Meaning. It doesn’t feel very good. Conversely, if I believe Life has meaning then I will come to experience Its Meaning in All Manner of Things. This, too, I have tried. It not only works, it makes Life worth living.

    It’s a rather simple formula, isn’t it? Much more suited to a Tuesday morn.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” ~ Julian of Norwich