Archive for January, 2009

Do What You Love

I can claim none of what follows as my own, and I am indeed still learning to put into practice the things listed below.  The following comes from Steve Pavlina as his Twitter posts, and I think they are brilliant and should be shared with all:

Do what you love -> get good at it -> share your talent to create value for others -> receive value in return -> do more of what you love.


Since many people are worried about the economy, there’s greater demand and more opportunities for people who aren’t worried.


If you have trouble discovering what you love, start by dropping from your life that which you don’t love. Purge the wrong answers first.


If you love doing X, then do X. Don’t do things you dislike because you think it will give you the chance to do X. Just do X. No excuses.


If you love helping people heal, you can start doing that today… long before you graduate from med school. Again, dump the excuses.


If you want to be a rocket scientist, take the time to learn the skills you need. Meanwhile, go build & launch some model rockets this week.


Pretend you died yesterday and lost all. Then live this day as the first day of your afterlife. Harder to make excuses when you’re dead. :)


If you turn toward what you love, you’ll be staring directly into your greatest fear. Don’t look away. Take a bold, brave step forward.


Doing what you love is challenging. Doing what you don’t love is pointless.


Think about it…

Acceptance Vs. Judgment

Do you want to know how to begin being happy in your life?

Stop judging everything!

I know… easier said, than done.  However, if you can achieve this, you will have taken your first step into a much larger world.  A world where things are no longer governed by duality, but by Oneness and Unity.

Let’s take a look at judgment and see what it does for you:

Let’s say you get into an accident.  The driver in front of you slammed on his brakes and you ended up rear-ending his car with yours.  Here is where you would normally begin judging the situation, or reacting to the situation (which is just a passive form of judgment, and a worse one at that because you’re not even consciously choosing it).

Judgment immediately begins to decide who is at fault and who is free from blame in your accident.  Your mind usually sides with you on this one, so the other guy is obviously at fault, right?  Now you’re superior to the other driver and God is on your side because you’re right and the other driver is in the wrong, right?  Now you’re upset over all the damages that have been caused to your car, you may even be angry at God for allowing all this “bad” stuff to happen to you.  All of this happens in your head almost instantly upon impact.  Most of us are already pre-programmed to judge what goes on around us all of the time.  We’re bombarded with ads that make us “like” this or not like that.  Think about how you’re already judging this article, and you’re not even the whole way done reading it yet…  Did you mean to do that, or have you been programmed ahead of time to feel like this whenever your beliefs are questioned?

The problem with judgment:

The problem isn’t that it’s right or wrong to judge.  The problem is that judging things doesn’t give you a clear picture of reality… It creates a distorted reality of what you judge it to be, and it always reproduces more judgment as a result.  The old saying comes to mind, “when you point a finger there’s always three fingers pointing back at you”.

Judgment brings about duality… right, wrong, black, white, good and evil.  The problem with this is that there always must be an opposite to things and a striving for a balance of those things.  Peace will always have War.  For there to be Good, there must also be Evil.  There has to be two sides in a conflict, whereas there is only one side in Unity.

The mind is a duality machine or a duality computer if that helps to look at it like that.  It will always break things into opposites (subconsciously at least… you may not always be aware of it).  But for instance, when I say “Don’t think of an elephant.”  You immediately see a picture of an elephant in your mind, or you might hear one if you’re audibly inclined.  It does this because it’s designed to present all the facts to the real person in charge… You!

The real you isn’t your mind… it isn’t your thoughts… the real you is the person behind the thoughts, the Watcher or Observer of those thoughts.  Some might call it your spirit, or soul.  Some refer to it as the Divine spark that is in us all… the part of us that is God, or at least God-like (if God is a Spirit and we are made in his image, then we are a Spirit too, right?)  Regardless of how you define it, or what you want to call it,  this aspect of ourselves exists.

Your mind will always judge things according to it’s programming.  It is after all just a super computer.  If you don’t program it, someone else will do it for you.

Acceptance

Ok, so if the mind is a duality machine and it will always judge things then why bother with acceptance or try to change things…  Because Acceptance is a tool to help the real You wake up and be in charge of your life.  Don’t you ever get tired of being at the mercy of the circumstances of your life?  Someone spilled coffee on me, oh Damn it! Now I have to be pissed off all day, or sad and depressed cause my shirt is ruined.  I said something mean to my husband, now I have to feel bad about myself and beat myself up until I do something to make me worthy of my own self respect again.

Acceptance will allow you to program your mind over time to work for you,  and not to be in control of how you feel.  Let’s look at how this might work:

So you get in an accident, the guy in front of you slams on his brakes and you crash into the back of his car.  Your mind goes off into it’s whole judgment thing (or the gathering of data if you will).  It’s trying to provide you with every available detail.  The reality of the situation is that you just got into an accident.  That’s it.  See?  No emotional attachment necessary.  You can add one of those later if you feel you must, and you can have it be a useful one as well.

You see, all we really know about this life, all that can be accurately said about you is, You Are.  Everything else is just an experience of your existence.  The accident happened… it exists… It Is.  Everything else is just your opinion.  You don’t need an opinion (or judgment if ya like).  It’s hard to let go of that opinion, that ego.  It requires a dying to the self or ego.  But like we said before, you are not your thoughts or your mind or your ego either.  You are the one who realizes that you even have an ego.  Confused yet?  :o )

So let some of that sink in… see how you feel about it (yes, go ahead and judge it)…  read it over a few times and then when you’re ready…  start to accept things instead of judging them and see how it feels.

Begin with the rest of the day… Simply allow yourself to not have an opinion on anything.  When someone says something about that new president, don’t have an opinion on the matter.  When you say something mean that you didn’t mean to, don’t have an opinion about it.  When you smash your car into the back of another, don’t have an opinion about it.  When she leaves you at the altar, don’t have an opinion about it.  When your friends let you down and you let down your friends, don’t have an opinion about it.

See if you don’t go to bed full of peace in your heart and with your mind free from worry.

Spring Love

Just like water from a spring is love from the heart.  No matter how much you give, more flows out right behind it.   It is always full and overflowing.  But if you dam up the flow and keep it from coming forth, not only do you deny others of life-giving water/love, but you deny yourself as well.

Love to your being, is like money to an economy…  it must always be flowing and changing hands or a depression is experienced.  Where there is no movement, there is no life.

Think about it…

I Have A Dream

Being that today is Martin Luther King Day, and having seen many youtube links for his famous speech about having a dream, I’ve been made to think about my own dreams.

My dreams are for a literal Garden of Eden on the Earth.  A planet where it’s people have no want for food.  A people who don’t eat food that kills them, and can live in their bodies for as long as they choose to.  I want to see a future where we build only the things we need, and that only out of sustainable resources.  I dream of a place where we are free from money and the banks that control that money and thus our lives.  I long to see the children of this future, for they will be far from what we consider human beings to be today.  They may resemble us in appearance, but that will be it.  I want to see people follow their hearts and not their minds.  I want Love to be the rule, and not the exception.  So yes, Martin, I too, have a dream…

What’s yours?