by Barbara Eden
Saturday
Wednesday
Commit to Living Your Truths
Commit to Living Your Truths
by Charlotte Sophia Kasl, Ph.D.
Truth is alive, dynamic and always changing. To live our deepest truths is to become one with our integrity, power and love. Truth winds its way through our lives at many levels: Telling the truth about the facts of your daily existence, where you went, what you spent, how many fish you caught seems like a simple enough task, but many have trouble with this. They often embellish or diminish their life story by taking a major detour from the truth. Truth is about tuning to your wants and needs. What movie do you really want to see? Where do you really want to go for dinner? Who do you really want to spend time with? What sparks your interest? Attune to your body and feelings: pay attention to when you are tired, hungry, sad, or happy. How do body sensations signal what you are feeling? Chest constriction often signals fear; a knot in the throat might be related to sadness.
Opening to truth begins by understanding your motivation and reactions to various situations. This requires a fearless look at ourselves. Ask yourself, "Did I say that to make him feel guilty?" "Did I hold back my feelings of frustration so she wouldn't get upset or leave me? What kind of work or living situation is best for me? Where do I feel a sense of belonging? Living your truth also means becoming aware of other cultures, religions, customs, beliefs and social traditions. This includes opening our eyes to injustice, discrimination, poverty and the complex interconnections between them all.
Remember you are part of a greater whole -- the one unifying energy that lies beyond your thoughts, emotions and conditioning. Explore your relationship with truth. When we were younger, our need for our parents' love, care and protection led us to develop deep instincts about what got us attention and acceptance, or possibly protected us from our parents' anger or violence. If you knew for sure that you'd get spanked for admitting you broke something, it made sense to lie to protect yourself. If you were teased or called a cry-baby for being upset, you may have donned a mask of happiness or cheerfulness. These survival strategies may have become life-long habits.
Opening to the truth means questioning all the conditioning, beliefs and concepts superimposed upon your true self then practicing new behavior. Here are some fears you might question: If you feel that you're being disloyal or committing a crime against the powers that be, you need to ask "Is this fear rooted in the past or present? Am I pretending to be happy when I'm really angry, because my parents punished me for being angry? What would happen now, if I let someone see my frustration or hurt? Is it really so dangerous in this situation?"
If you fear loss or rejection when you set limits or you say yes when you want to say no, then you need to surround yourself with people who support your honesty. If you fear expressing your desires, you fear making someone upset, hurt, defensive or angry. Explore your reasons for this. Are they old habits that served some childhood purpose? How does this lack of assertiveness keep you from feeling strong, centered and in charge of your life? Part of living by your truth is remembering that sometimes, we get a yes and sometimes, we get a no.
A starting place for learning to decipher your truths is to imagine an energy or brightness meter inside you that goes from one (low), to ten (high.) Notice which people and situations lead to feeling bright, energized, uplifted and nurtured. Notice what leads you to feel drained or empty. Then take the leap and go toward that which nurtures, sparks and helps bring you toward your aliveness and power.
It will take a repeated effort to remember that the voices that chide you into making you believe you're being selfish, mean and unkind are just old tape recordings from the past. Take notice of them but don't take them seriously. The trade-off for living your truth is that you get to have more personal power, joy and love in your life.
Most of all, remember that by living a truth-centered life, you will move from fear, anxiety and regrets to a life filled with fascination, curiosity and awe! Your body will relax and as you step beyond your conditioned old self into the stream of life where you become a source of inner happiness and peace.
Charlotte Sophia Kasl, Ph.D is a psychotherapist and the author of eight books including "If the Buddha Got Stuck" and "A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path." She presents workshops nationally and does therapy intensives. For more info visit: www.CharlotteKasl.com.
by Charlotte Sophia Kasl, Ph.D.
Truth is alive, dynamic and always changing. To live our deepest truths is to become one with our integrity, power and love. Truth winds its way through our lives at many levels: Telling the truth about the facts of your daily existence, where you went, what you spent, how many fish you caught seems like a simple enough task, but many have trouble with this. They often embellish or diminish their life story by taking a major detour from the truth. Truth is about tuning to your wants and needs. What movie do you really want to see? Where do you really want to go for dinner? Who do you really want to spend time with? What sparks your interest? Attune to your body and feelings: pay attention to when you are tired, hungry, sad, or happy. How do body sensations signal what you are feeling? Chest constriction often signals fear; a knot in the throat might be related to sadness.
Opening to truth begins by understanding your motivation and reactions to various situations. This requires a fearless look at ourselves. Ask yourself, "Did I say that to make him feel guilty?" "Did I hold back my feelings of frustration so she wouldn't get upset or leave me? What kind of work or living situation is best for me? Where do I feel a sense of belonging? Living your truth also means becoming aware of other cultures, religions, customs, beliefs and social traditions. This includes opening our eyes to injustice, discrimination, poverty and the complex interconnections between them all.
Remember you are part of a greater whole -- the one unifying energy that lies beyond your thoughts, emotions and conditioning. Explore your relationship with truth. When we were younger, our need for our parents' love, care and protection led us to develop deep instincts about what got us attention and acceptance, or possibly protected us from our parents' anger or violence. If you knew for sure that you'd get spanked for admitting you broke something, it made sense to lie to protect yourself. If you were teased or called a cry-baby for being upset, you may have donned a mask of happiness or cheerfulness. These survival strategies may have become life-long habits.
Opening to the truth means questioning all the conditioning, beliefs and concepts superimposed upon your true self then practicing new behavior. Here are some fears you might question: If you feel that you're being disloyal or committing a crime against the powers that be, you need to ask "Is this fear rooted in the past or present? Am I pretending to be happy when I'm really angry, because my parents punished me for being angry? What would happen now, if I let someone see my frustration or hurt? Is it really so dangerous in this situation?"
If you fear loss or rejection when you set limits or you say yes when you want to say no, then you need to surround yourself with people who support your honesty. If you fear expressing your desires, you fear making someone upset, hurt, defensive or angry. Explore your reasons for this. Are they old habits that served some childhood purpose? How does this lack of assertiveness keep you from feeling strong, centered and in charge of your life? Part of living by your truth is remembering that sometimes, we get a yes and sometimes, we get a no.
A starting place for learning to decipher your truths is to imagine an energy or brightness meter inside you that goes from one (low), to ten (high.) Notice which people and situations lead to feeling bright, energized, uplifted and nurtured. Notice what leads you to feel drained or empty. Then take the leap and go toward that which nurtures, sparks and helps bring you toward your aliveness and power.
It will take a repeated effort to remember that the voices that chide you into making you believe you're being selfish, mean and unkind are just old tape recordings from the past. Take notice of them but don't take them seriously. The trade-off for living your truth is that you get to have more personal power, joy and love in your life.
Most of all, remember that by living a truth-centered life, you will move from fear, anxiety and regrets to a life filled with fascination, curiosity and awe! Your body will relax and as you step beyond your conditioned old self into the stream of life where you become a source of inner happiness and peace.
Charlotte Sophia Kasl, Ph.D is a psychotherapist and the author of eight books including "If the Buddha Got Stuck" and "A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path." She presents workshops nationally and does therapy intensives. For more info visit: www.CharlotteKasl.com.
Monday
Practice Makes Purple
That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Automatic Interferer
-
Werner Heisenberg showed that it will
forever be impossible to know basic reality.
Because in attempting to see it, we necessarily change it.
-
Werner Heisenberg showed that it will
forever be impossible to know basic reality.
Because in attempting to see it, we necessarily change it.
-
Daniel Menaker (NYT Magazine) describes this in human terms:
The greatest impact of the uncertainty principle on the idea of the self comes not from its implications about free will and determinism, nor from its suggestion that we can never really know the world, but from its thesis that we can't know it because our very efforts to do so change and in a way corrupt the world we are trying to know.
When Heisenberg threw this stone of hard mathematical physics into the pool of philosophy, its ripples required us to see ourselves, each of our own selves, as interferers with whatever we run across.
Such ideas of the conscious human self as an automatic interferer, a changer, a polluter of reality, may have always been part of philosophy and even art, but it was Heisenberg who for the first time scientifically demonstrated that our very efforts fully to understand what surrounds us must defeat their own purpose.
Cool quotes
Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things
whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable.
The very fact that serious and conscientious men and women treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
Hermann Hesse
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
Science is the art of creating suitable illusions, which the fool enjoys or argues against, but the wise man enjoys for their beauty or ingenuity, without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the abysmal darkness of the unknowable.
Carl Jung
Message from the Hopi Elders
We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now we must go back and tell people that THIS is the hour.
And there are things to be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore,
Push off into the river.
Keep your eyes open,
And your heads above the water.
See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally,
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey
Comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in
celebration.
We are the Ones we've been waiting for.
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert Kennedy, Capetown, 1966
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
T.E Lawrence in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
For in the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught.
Baba Dioum, Plaque in Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo
I'm sure we are all already part of the great consciousness laser...the trick is the tuning...
Ugis Oskars Ziemelis, Riyahd, SA
War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment...
Nikola Tesla, 1919
According to Plato, two people, by challenging and responding to each other, can come closer to the truth than either one could by himself. The outcome of such a dialectic is not merely the knowledge of the one added to the knowledge of the other. It is something which neither of them knew before, and which neither would have been capable of knowing by himself. Such a twosome constitutes a whole which has properties irreducible to those of each individual by him or herself.
Ervin Laszlo, in Systems View of the World
When you put a thing in order, give it a name,
and you are all in accord: it becomes.
From the Navajo, Masked Gods, Waters, 1950
Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. This pulsating energy field is the central engine of our being and our consciousness, the alpha and the omega of our existence. 'The field,' as Einstein once succinctly put it, 'is the only reality.'
Lynne McTaggart, The Field
All nature, all growth, all peace, everything that flowers and is beautiful in the world depends on patience, requires time, silence, trust, and faith in long-term processes which far exceed any single lifetime.
Hermann Hesse
We must know first that our acts are useless, and yet we must proceed as if we didn't know it. That is a sorcerer's controlled folly.
Don Juan
Noam Chomsky thinks that what we know intuitively seems to lie far beyond what we can understand intellectually. He says, for example, that modern thinkers simply haven't understood the full significance of Newton's discovery of gravity:
The possibility of affecting objects without touching them just exploded physicalism and materialism. It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes's "ghost in the machine" in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: he exorcised the machine and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there. And the mind has mystical properties.
whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable.
The very fact that serious and conscientious men and women treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
Hermann Hesse
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
Science is the art of creating suitable illusions, which the fool enjoys or argues against, but the wise man enjoys for their beauty or ingenuity, without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the abysmal darkness of the unknowable.
Carl Jung
Message from the Hopi Elders
We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now we must go back and tell people that THIS is the hour.
And there are things to be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore,
Push off into the river.
Keep your eyes open,
And your heads above the water.
See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally,
Least of all ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey
Comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in
celebration.
We are the Ones we've been waiting for.
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert Kennedy, Capetown, 1966
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
T.E Lawrence in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
For in the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught.
Baba Dioum, Plaque in Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo
I'm sure we are all already part of the great consciousness laser...the trick is the tuning...
Ugis Oskars Ziemelis, Riyahd, SA
War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment...
Nikola Tesla, 1919
According to Plato, two people, by challenging and responding to each other, can come closer to the truth than either one could by himself. The outcome of such a dialectic is not merely the knowledge of the one added to the knowledge of the other. It is something which neither of them knew before, and which neither would have been capable of knowing by himself. Such a twosome constitutes a whole which has properties irreducible to those of each individual by him or herself.
Ervin Laszlo, in Systems View of the World
When you put a thing in order, give it a name,
and you are all in accord: it becomes.
From the Navajo, Masked Gods, Waters, 1950
Human beings and all living things are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. This pulsating energy field is the central engine of our being and our consciousness, the alpha and the omega of our existence. 'The field,' as Einstein once succinctly put it, 'is the only reality.'
Lynne McTaggart, The Field
All nature, all growth, all peace, everything that flowers and is beautiful in the world depends on patience, requires time, silence, trust, and faith in long-term processes which far exceed any single lifetime.
Hermann Hesse
We must know first that our acts are useless, and yet we must proceed as if we didn't know it. That is a sorcerer's controlled folly.
Don Juan
Noam Chomsky thinks that what we know intuitively seems to lie far beyond what we can understand intellectually. He says, for example, that modern thinkers simply haven't understood the full significance of Newton's discovery of gravity:
The possibility of affecting objects without touching them just exploded physicalism and materialism. It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes's "ghost in the machine" in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: he exorcised the machine and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there. And the mind has mystical properties.
Sunday
Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
I asked the boy beneath the pines
He said, The masters gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.
Chia Tao (777-841)
Trans. Lin Yutang (A.W. Watts)
He said, The masters gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.
Chia Tao (777-841)
Trans. Lin Yutang (A.W. Watts)
Saturday
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