Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Designing My Day

Penney sent me a postcard. It says “Make Life Your Work of Art”.
I have added a one liner to my signature, “Live life as a creation.”

What are we saying? How will I design my day today?

World Peace comes to mind… I will look for signs that World Peace is a reality.
Today someone sent me a link to this site: http://www.onlyloveprevails.org/
ONLY LOVE PREVAILS... 29,436 people in 160 Countries have already signed up to participate in a World Peace Experiment!

Also found on the web the World Peace Society http://www.worldpeace.org/


I have help from spiritual forces available to me at all times.

It does seem to me that I am frequently “helped”. In asking for help with a friend’s situation the timing and connections were awesome. Just the right people came forward to assist me at every step. I got into the jail to see him, I found an awesome bail bondswoman, I didn’t have to come up with any money, he got a new living situation, all his stuff got moved etc. It was very smooth. All I had to do was my part, and that was what I could do without compromising myself. It also left him with renewed self-confidence because he also was able to actively participate in resolving his own problems. Each step of the way I asked for divine help, and although I didn't see any angels many wonderful people gave me enormous help to accomplish what needed to be done.

We Were Made for These Times

by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph. D

My friends do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments. The luster and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement...

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind...Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your vaneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.

Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to a voice greater? Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small determined group who will not give up during the first, second, One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these---to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I, too, have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours.
They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

You Can Be a Light Unto Yourself...

Be a light unto yourself, betake yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves. -The Buddha

To be aware is to watch your bodily activity, the way you walk, the way you sit, the movements of your hands: it is to hear the words you use, to observe all your thoughts, all your emotions, all your reactions. It includes awareness of the unconscious, with its traditions, its instinctual knowledge, and the immense sorrow it has accumulated—not only personal sorrow, but the sorrow of man. You have to be aware of all that; and you cannot be aware of it if you are merely judging, evaluating, saying, "This is good and that is bad, this I will keep and that I will reject," all of which only makes the mind dull, insensitive. From awareness comes attention. Attention flows from awareness when in that awareness there is no choice, no personal choosing, no experiencing... but merely observing. And, to observe, you must have in the mind a great deal of space. A mind that is caught in ambition, greed, envy, in the pursuit of pleasure and self-fulfillment, with its inevitable sorrow, pain, despair, anguish—such a mind has no space in which to observe, to attend. It is crowded with its own desires, going round and round in its own backwaters of reaction. You cannot attend if your mind is not highly sensitive, sharp, reasonable, logical, sane, healthy, without the slightest shadow of neuroticism. The mind has to explore every corner of itself, leaving no spot uncovered, because if there is a single dark corner of one's mind which one is afraid to explore, from that springs illusion... It is only in the state of attention that you can be a light unto yourself, and then every action of your daily life springs from that light—every action—whether you are doing your job, cooking, going for a walk, mending clothes, or what you will. This whole process is meditation... J. Krishnamurti

http://www.teosofia.com/meditation.html