for a long time...
One thing that I thought about a lot was this:
Life places us where it will but what kind of human beings we are or become depends solely on ourselves.
Life-circumstances-decisions....some, of our making, and others, made for us by others...all play a role in where we find ourselves.
How do we react or respond to these?
---We can coast along, unthinkingly.....
---We can push down disturbing. questioning thoughts so as not to upset the place-space we find ourselves in.....
---We can react...respond...to the situations we find ourselves in...this would include new situations and people, or, it may include situations that are disturbing to us, or people we really would rather not have anything to do with.....
How we deal with these...how we behave...will tell us a lot about ourselves....and we do need to know about ourselves because this is something that keeps cropping up.
So, the questions, in fact, are:
What kind of human being are we?
What kind of human being would we be?
What kind of human being do we want to become?
It's no use, really, trying to reach out to others because willy-nilly we hope they will echo what we feel....hope they will reassure us of our worthiness....
The litmus test of our response--our very own individual response--has to be how we feel about ourselves...whether we appreciate ourselves...whether we feel worthy inside of ourselves...worthy enough to deal with the circumstances and places and people we find ourselves with/in... and all of these go into moulding our human-ness...
The thing is that at the end of all this we stand alone......so we need to become strong enough to stand alone...
28 April 2017
10 April 2017
The best day of your life...
is the one in which you decide your life is your own. No apologies. No excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
---Bob Moawad.
If I believe this to be true and not some good-sounding words, then I have to tell myself this every day. I also have to tell myself:
-----I don't need to be good at everything I do. I need to stop demanding this of myself at every point, instead of obsessing about it.
-----not to push down 'off moods'. I need to tell myself that when I feel off, my body and heart and mind are trying to tell me something. They are trying to tell me that some part of me needs a little special attention. The 'true me' is demanding this of me and I should heed it, if I want to be whole again.
-----that I am only human, and as such, am imperfect. But, I am precious. I need to accept this and forgive myself for believeing I have failed in this__, this__, and this__. I need to stop flagellating myself, forgive myself, not worry about what a, b, or c might be thinking, and put my life back on the track from which I had temporarily derailed myself and move on in a new direction - on my amazing journey - leaving the pain behind.
---Bob Moawad.
If I believe this to be true and not some good-sounding words, then I have to tell myself this every day. I also have to tell myself:
-----I don't need to be good at everything I do. I need to stop demanding this of myself at every point, instead of obsessing about it.
-----not to push down 'off moods'. I need to tell myself that when I feel off, my body and heart and mind are trying to tell me something. They are trying to tell me that some part of me needs a little special attention. The 'true me' is demanding this of me and I should heed it, if I want to be whole again.
-----that I am only human, and as such, am imperfect. But, I am precious. I need to accept this and forgive myself for believeing I have failed in this__, this__, and this__. I need to stop flagellating myself, forgive myself, not worry about what a, b, or c might be thinking, and put my life back on the track from which I had temporarily derailed myself and move on in a new direction - on my amazing journey - leaving the pain behind.
07 April 2017
Keeping silent...
to avoid further hurt doesn't really work out, because the unsaid words build up and these can cause terrible harm to our bodies...the mind anyway becomes a mess...
Keeping silent when one must speak up against an injustice is worse, because we harm not only ourselves, but also someone we could have helped...if nothing else, someone in distress hearing our voice would take courage from it...the person would know he or she is not alone and someone is hurting with him or her.
Keeping silent when we see something or someone going on the wrong path is bound to land us with an uneasy conscience...a conscience that will keep interfering with our thoughts. We could have helped, we could have stopped something bad from happening, we could have stopped someone from doing the wrong thing - and we didn't.
If we use silence as a protective measure, we couldn't be more wrong. It is not.
Rebecca Solnit says, "Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the erased, the unheard. It surrounds the scattered islands made up of those allowed to speak and of what can be said and who listens. Silence occurs in many ways for many reasons; each of us has his or her own sea of unspoken words."
She brings out the difference between silence and quietude. Silence is imposed by us on ourselves or by others on us (because we are afraid), whereas quietude is what we seek.
Sometimes it may seem better to be silent, but the unsaid words will demand an outlet and so either we have to work them out of our system or we have to give voice to them. Work them out of our system means that we decide these words are really empty and meaningless and the person uttering them is neither worth our time or attention. We use our spiritual lessons to sublimate the hurt and let it go. We know that forgiving would let us let go of the hot coal of words burning our hearts, and we forgive and move on and maybe even move away.
Giving voice is more challenging because here we are not willing to let the issue go, or we are fed up of being taken for granted, or we are hurt to the quick. We also know from past experience that we cannot win a war of words. Then, it would be better to wait for a time when we can say what we want to without venom for venom not only poisons us but also causes huge damage, and we may not be able to deal with that.
The wonderful thing is that 'every day each of us invents the world and the self who meets that world.' So we have the chance to choose when to be silent and when not to... and when we need to just walk away with no bitterness in the heart...
Keeping silent when one must speak up against an injustice is worse, because we harm not only ourselves, but also someone we could have helped...if nothing else, someone in distress hearing our voice would take courage from it...the person would know he or she is not alone and someone is hurting with him or her.
Keeping silent when we see something or someone going on the wrong path is bound to land us with an uneasy conscience...a conscience that will keep interfering with our thoughts. We could have helped, we could have stopped something bad from happening, we could have stopped someone from doing the wrong thing - and we didn't.
If we use silence as a protective measure, we couldn't be more wrong. It is not.
Rebecca Solnit says, "Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the erased, the unheard. It surrounds the scattered islands made up of those allowed to speak and of what can be said and who listens. Silence occurs in many ways for many reasons; each of us has his or her own sea of unspoken words."
She brings out the difference between silence and quietude. Silence is imposed by us on ourselves or by others on us (because we are afraid), whereas quietude is what we seek.
Sometimes it may seem better to be silent, but the unsaid words will demand an outlet and so either we have to work them out of our system or we have to give voice to them. Work them out of our system means that we decide these words are really empty and meaningless and the person uttering them is neither worth our time or attention. We use our spiritual lessons to sublimate the hurt and let it go. We know that forgiving would let us let go of the hot coal of words burning our hearts, and we forgive and move on and maybe even move away.
Giving voice is more challenging because here we are not willing to let the issue go, or we are fed up of being taken for granted, or we are hurt to the quick. We also know from past experience that we cannot win a war of words. Then, it would be better to wait for a time when we can say what we want to without venom for venom not only poisons us but also causes huge damage, and we may not be able to deal with that.
The wonderful thing is that 'every day each of us invents the world and the self who meets that world.' So we have the chance to choose when to be silent and when not to... and when we need to just walk away with no bitterness in the heart...
05 April 2017
Waiting...
on God's time.
This is another huge lesson I learnt over the past few days. Though examples of God's amazing timing have always stared me in the face, I just didn't pay as much heed to them as I should have. But what happened during these last few days have brought it home to me without a shred of doubt that all things that happen, happen according to God's own timing....and His timing is never wrong. This is the absolute beauty of it. While we may rant and rave at the time something is taking to happen, or we feel that what we want is not happening at all, you can be sure that all kinds of unseen and even unknown forces are at work...all kinds of things are happening behind the scenes to get us ready for what we have asked of the good Lord. The gift does not come a moment too soon, or a moment too late - it comes just exactly on time....the time when we need it.... The thing is that we have to be ready to receive what we ask for...we have to be ready to live the gift that is granted to us.
Trusting is a difficult thing to do but if we look at all the things that have happened to us...the way our lives have gone, we will see that everything has happened according to God's plan...the plan that He in His infinite wisdom and love has worked out for us.
For those who do not believe in God....look at it as the forces of Nature. We would have to agree that there is some Supreme Power guiding the forces of nature - there is a plan and life is happening according to that plan...and this is for every living creature... We are not random biological creatures living a random life...
This is another huge lesson I learnt over the past few days. Though examples of God's amazing timing have always stared me in the face, I just didn't pay as much heed to them as I should have. But what happened during these last few days have brought it home to me without a shred of doubt that all things that happen, happen according to God's own timing....and His timing is never wrong. This is the absolute beauty of it. While we may rant and rave at the time something is taking to happen, or we feel that what we want is not happening at all, you can be sure that all kinds of unseen and even unknown forces are at work...all kinds of things are happening behind the scenes to get us ready for what we have asked of the good Lord. The gift does not come a moment too soon, or a moment too late - it comes just exactly on time....the time when we need it.... The thing is that we have to be ready to receive what we ask for...we have to be ready to live the gift that is granted to us.
Trusting is a difficult thing to do but if we look at all the things that have happened to us...the way our lives have gone, we will see that everything has happened according to God's plan...the plan that He in His infinite wisdom and love has worked out for us.
For those who do not believe in God....look at it as the forces of Nature. We would have to agree that there is some Supreme Power guiding the forces of nature - there is a plan and life is happening according to that plan...and this is for every living creature... We are not random biological creatures living a random life...
03 April 2017
Tune in to your inner voice...
at all times. Lots of things happen to crowd out that inner voice, but as soon as we feel hesitant about something, or have made an error of judgement, or have said something unkind without thinking, or have done something we should not have done, in retrospect,... it means we were temporarily tuned off. We somehow got disconnected. Of course we are bound to get disconnected....this happens....especially when we have a thousand things going on. But, we need to get connected back as soon as we can. There are signs that we need to pay heed to, which tell us when we have gone off the track.
Why I am saying this is because I have recently gone through a wonderful experience. I believe it is a miracle. My right eye which had developed pan uveitis 20 years ago, was declared out of danger last Thursday by my doctor. It hasn't been easy these 20 years. The doctor said that while he had done what had to be done, it was the healing hand of God that had finally healed my eye...
Many times when I failed to listen to my inner voice regarding my eye, I have felt the negative effects. These, with time and care, did ease off, but I needn't have suffered in the first place. This is something concrete. But ever since then, for the days we were in Madras, I have been thinking over all the times I could have avoided a lot of heartache and pain if I had listened to my inner voice. The options are not always easy to choose from, believe me. Sometimes both roads in front are painful....but the inner voice helps decide which pain would be easier to bear and overcome. A lot of my pain has happened from not listening - both physical pain and mental/emotional pain. My eye being declared healed has taught me a huge, huge lesson. It may take time, but with determined care and obedience to the inner voice, good things do happen. What is 20 years in the scheme of the Universe....I need to be eternally grateful that my vision has been restored. Another lesson - there is no quick fix solution to life's problems. There is no one way to handle all problems. A lot of patience is required. For each little step up, conscious gratefulness is necessary and has to be expressed. For each step down, of paramount importance are hanging in there, not letting go of faith, and gritting our teeth and doing all that needs to be done even though the end is temporarily out of sight. There is also no one result - good - in the solution of problems. Many times problems are sent to us and the hurt that is in them helps us to see what we had been blind to before... We actually need to be grateful for this pain and make sure we fix what needs to be fixed.
We need to draw the positive energies of healing towards ourselves. I use this Kabbalah chant - Mem Hey Shin - to bring the energy of healing to me.
Giving up is really not an option for if we are to live, then we have to live with hope, enjoy each day and above all be grateful to God for all that He sends our way...
Why I am saying this is because I have recently gone through a wonderful experience. I believe it is a miracle. My right eye which had developed pan uveitis 20 years ago, was declared out of danger last Thursday by my doctor. It hasn't been easy these 20 years. The doctor said that while he had done what had to be done, it was the healing hand of God that had finally healed my eye...
Many times when I failed to listen to my inner voice regarding my eye, I have felt the negative effects. These, with time and care, did ease off, but I needn't have suffered in the first place. This is something concrete. But ever since then, for the days we were in Madras, I have been thinking over all the times I could have avoided a lot of heartache and pain if I had listened to my inner voice. The options are not always easy to choose from, believe me. Sometimes both roads in front are painful....but the inner voice helps decide which pain would be easier to bear and overcome. A lot of my pain has happened from not listening - both physical pain and mental/emotional pain. My eye being declared healed has taught me a huge, huge lesson. It may take time, but with determined care and obedience to the inner voice, good things do happen. What is 20 years in the scheme of the Universe....I need to be eternally grateful that my vision has been restored. Another lesson - there is no quick fix solution to life's problems. There is no one way to handle all problems. A lot of patience is required. For each little step up, conscious gratefulness is necessary and has to be expressed. For each step down, of paramount importance are hanging in there, not letting go of faith, and gritting our teeth and doing all that needs to be done even though the end is temporarily out of sight. There is also no one result - good - in the solution of problems. Many times problems are sent to us and the hurt that is in them helps us to see what we had been blind to before... We actually need to be grateful for this pain and make sure we fix what needs to be fixed.
We need to draw the positive energies of healing towards ourselves. I use this Kabbalah chant - Mem Hey Shin - to bring the energy of healing to me.
Giving up is really not an option for if we are to live, then we have to live with hope, enjoy each day and above all be grateful to God for all that He sends our way...
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