Tag Archives: Buddhism

March 28, 2013

What next…?

By Alice

Bertie (a whopping 6 years old) is… well… I guess boisterous is the best word to describe him. A little like Bagpuss (do you remember that kids’ programme?), when Bertie’s awake, the rest of the house is awake. He wakes up hollering, goes to bed hollering and does a fair bit of hollering in between. There’s no volume switch, no brakes. Bertie hurtles, headlong, through life, stopping only when he meets resistance, and even then only if he has to. And his demeanour is almost invariably one of noisy cheerfulness.

But just of late, as so often happens at around this age, he’s pondering the bigger questions. I guess Easter throws this up a little for children – they’ve been talking about it at school – death and resurrection. And it got me thinking about how confusing, and a bit scary, these big questions can be for our smallfolk.

“Can you ask god to give you a new body, when you die, so I can see you again?”

You see, one of his favourite bedtime stories just now is “The Mountains of Tibet” which is a rather surprising choice for one so apparently oblivious to the deeper potentials of his surroundings. “Gumboot’s Chocolatey Day” is far more up his street, you’d think. But the Mountains has obviously struck a chord somewhere. Resurrection at school, reincarnation at home… It’s beautifully written and illustrated, and provokes rumination on all sorts of levels… for an adult at any rate, I’d thought.

After all, his previous command had been far more in keeping with one his age:

“Be a boy. Then you won’t have to lay babies.” ;)

I’m not afraid of death. I don’t want to die, you understand. But I’m not afraid of it. For myself. (My feelings around pain are much more ambiguous…) I have young children, so naturally I have concerns about their well-being were their mummy not around to look out for them. And I see and feel compassion for their fears when they talk about it themselves. I want to tell them not to be afraid. That it’s just a transition. That it’s all part of the design. But I know they’re a little young for all that, and that they’ll have to work it out for themselves a bit…

“I don’t want you to die, Mummy” said my 8 year-old at breakfast this morning. One introduces a theme, another runs with it…

“I don’t want to die either, darling.” I tried to explain that these days people tend to live a good long time, although we can’t rule out accidents or illness. We can’t know when we’re going to shuffle off. And I tried to tell him that if I did, I hoped he would be thankful for the time we had together, and would show me what a good job I’d done being his mummy by living as full and happy a life as he could. At that he nodded, and smiled again for the first time since the conversation had begun.

But by now I was worrying. I had this terrible vision of a young man slogging his guts out trying to be happy, to prove to his dead mother that he could be, that she had been a ‘good mummy’! :)

It’s a minefield, death, life, happiness, spirituality, purpose… And it’s a sticky wicket when it comes to sharing it, too. I don’t subscribe to the theory that I have the right to tell my children what to believe. I can tell them what I believe, but to my mind they have no obligation at all to feel the same way. What they do believe, they will work out in their own good time. When they are ready and the time is right. They will, most likely, embrace, reject, struggle, and make peace with all kinds of channels of thought.

And that, as it is for the rest of us, is simply their journey.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Acceptance, Buddhism, Love, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Right Motherhood, Rites of Passage

February 12, 2013

Detachment: Let it go!

By Alice

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January 26, 2013

A few more thoughts on forgiveness.

By Alice

Today, I have been listening to the dulcet tones of Jack Kornfield. He has the most soothing and calming voice, which helps a lot, but it is the content of his talks that is the most enlightening. For anyone who hasn’t heard of him, he is the author of such excellent books as “A Path with Heart” and runs the Spirit Rock Meditation Centre in California.

I was pottering about my kitchen, everyone else in the family occupied, listening to his guided meditations. Possibly not the best way of meditating, but better than not at all, to my mind anyway :)

And, in his inimitable fashion, he fed me some gentle food for thought.

The way it works for me is this:
I’m washing up, listening, drifting away, my mind snags on something. I stop what I’m doing and focus better. This is what snagged me:

“Stand up for yourself.
Tell the Truth.
It will be okay”

Which was just what I needed to hear at that moment. (Another fabulous way this universe works).

But he went on to do a lovingkindness meditation, which led me down the forgiveness route again.

I often write about the same theme many times. Sometimes I worry about that. About repeating myself. But here’s the thing:
These themes are things that we, as human beings, can struggle with our entire lives. I can’t write about it once and just ‘get it’, like flicking a light switch. It is tidal. The tide comes in and you have it. It ebbs away again and you struggle to hold onto it . But the difference here is that it never goes out quite as far as it did the first time, and eventually, instead of a turbulent and stormy ocean, you find the water has stopped at the shoreline, and you have a still, peaceful lake.

You have it.

So, forgiveness.

Forgiveness is vital to the healing process.

But it isn’t a sticking plaster. You can’t paper over the hurt with it. You can’t force it, even. And this is important.

You cannot force yourself to forgive.

It is a process.

And there are many stages to this process, not dissimilar to the stages of grief. For those unfamiliar with the five stages of grief, the Kubler-Ross model is this:
1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance

And anybody who has been badly hurt will experience most if not all of these stages. My understanding of it, though, is that it is not until you get to the Acceptance stage of the process that you are able to forgive; it is not until you have worked through it all, and truly understood and assimilated, that you are able to let go.

I have said before that we have this perception that forgiveness lets your aggressor ‘off the hook’. In fact, the person being let off the hook is you. You no longer have to dwell in that world of holding on with hate, of clinging desperately to your injustices., of being locked into a cycle of vicim consciousness, which is disempowering to say the least. You are free to move on, unshackled from the ball and chain you’ve been dragging behind you for too long, empowered and in charge of your own life, responsible for your own happiness, no longer at the mercy of someone else’s responsibility for your unhappiness. From victim to conqueror!

Many victims of abuse become angry at the suggestion that they must forgive in order to move on. It has often taken such an enormous effort of will to stand up for themselves in the first place, that they fear that forgiving will set them back into a vulnerable position, that they will have to go through this all over again. And at that stage you are not ready. Your anger fortifies you, stiffens your resolve not to allow such things to happen to you again. It is natural, healthy and in the order of things that you feel it. But it is not a place you can live healthily in forever. The time has to come when you have strengthened yourself enough there to shed the anger and move on with your life, the lesson learned, the boundary strengthened, your happiness lying ahead, and not behind.

Anger, hatred, all those negative emotions are a chain around your heart. They may be protecting it from past (or present) abuse, but they are also preventing you from letting love in, from future happiness, from freedom.

So, when the time is right – and only when the time is right – cut the chain and let your heart fly free.

You cannot lose.

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4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Acceptance, Buddhism, Jack Kornfield, Love, Meditation, Mindfulness, Personal Responsibility, Right Motherhood, Victim Consciousness

October 10, 2012

Day 14: Fear

By Alice

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
― Marie Curie

It would appear that no sooner has one insight come and punched you in the nose than another, while your hands are cupped around your face, swipes you around the back of the head… I speak, mostly, with my tongue in my cheek.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been pretty anxious for as long as I can remember. Anxiety takes so many forms, there are so many things we are afraid of in our daily lives, but today it was put to me that it is pretty much the biggest obstacle to peace and happiness (along with forgiveness, of course, as previously discussed).

What are you afraid of?

Disapproval?
Rejection?
Running out of money?
Ill health?
Death?
Hidden costs?
Your children’s safety?
Being hurt?
The unknown?

Every day, every minute of every day, there lurks potential fear. What if you did run out of money? What if you do meet disapproval? I mean, really, what if? Won’t you just find a way through it? Clearly some fears are of things far more beyond our control than others, and we have to face them anyway. But so much is just a ‘what if’?

Jack Kornfield (yes, I’m still with him, though I’m onto his “Your Buddha Nature” talks just now) made this following very good point. I sat stunned. Literally. Well… you know.. no one actually hit me over the head, but they might just as well have done.

You’re walking in the woods and you’re afraid of being chased by a bear (the fear is not of walking in the woods, so your fear is not realised now)
You’re being chased by a bear and you’re afraid it’ll catch you (the fear is not of being chased, but of being caught, so your fear is not realised now)
The bear has caught you and you’re afraid of being mauled (the fear is not of being caught, but of being mauled, so your fear is not realised now)…

… you see the point? The fear is never in the moment, it is always based on a potential future reality…

But more than that – the things we fear sometimes do come to pass (though they often don’t), and we fear them until they happen, until they are the now, at which point we survive them, and somewhere the other side of them, we’re fine. It’s still now. And, ironically, we have found something new to fear.

So, as radical as it may seem, what about giving up fear?

I’ve lived through some experiences I would never have imagined possible. But it’s now. Right now, and here I sit writing this with nothing to fear. I know I could give you a long list of things I could fear, but what’s the point? If now is all we have, if the future is a total unknown, why waste now fearing then?

What if we just made the most of now?

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
― Nelson Mandela

Or, I suppose, feel the fear and do it anyway?

On a lighter note, knitting has been keeping me sane. I believe it was Reverend Kusala who first switched me on  to the idea that even doing the washing up could be meditative. Well… knitting really is. :)

Winter is in the air over here, and I’ve put a few handmade snugglies in my shop. Pop over and have a look if you feel like it.

With knitting therapy in full flow, there’s bound to be more!

 

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October 1, 2012

Day 6: Apple Crumble and LovingKindness

By Alice

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d rather see you in better living conditions.

~ Hafiz

Oooh, but Day 6 started with an uphill battle…

It was a little after 5am when my bedroom door was pushed open. I have a suspicion that mothers are born with in-built springs that contract, even in sleep, at the slightest sound from their offspring. I was up and out of the door before I realised I’d been woken up.

Fortunately, it wasn’t an emergency. Just a bleary-eyed five-year old who thought it was ‘too dark’ to go to the bathroom alone. I mumbled an “Off we go, then” and kept him company till he was safely tucked up again.

Trouble is, it’s tricky getting back to sleep at that time of the morning, isn’t it? I’m guessing that this is one of those times that learning to meditate is its own reward. Because before you’ve mastered it (and I surely haven’t yet), this is the time of the night when your mind decides to take the driving seat. Everything you are worrying about; worrying about happening, worrying about forgetting, worrying about not happening; jostles for position at the forefront of your mind, even while your mind itself is, to no avail, shouting at them all to STOP! I need to SLEEP!

So it’s a tired day. But, to put it in context, not nearly as tired as, say, the weeks (or months) it takes until your newborn decides to sleep through the night. You know… perspective!

But tired days are often days filled with mini-frustrations, too. You know, you slave over a hot stove and produce a delicious homemade risotto and your little one refuses point blank to eat it, even though porridge is his favourite food, and it’s not so very different, right? And then he completely wolfs the apple crumble his daddy made. Harumph! ;)

Fortunately, though, the threatening rumbles of distant thunder stayed distant, and after the children’s tea (which seems to be the ideal time) and before their bedtime, while they were winding down (or winding each other up, in some cases), I carried myself off for today’s meditation.

I leaned on Jack again. And today he was talking me through Lovingkindness Meditation. It’s hard to explain this, but although really all I did was listen to the theory of lovingkindness meditation, there is just something about the way he talks that opens your heart in preparation, calms you, steadies you. I came away as though I had had half an hour of complete, uninterrupted, focused meditative peace.

Truly, it was more food for thought, too. He explained that lovingkindness meditation is taught as an ‘antidote to fear, and anger, and confusion. And a closed heart.’

And that makes sense to me. Fear, anger and confusion… they constrict your heart, don’t they? If you close your eyes and think about the physical reactions brought about by those emotions, doesn’t it actually feel as though your heart is being squeezed, just a little? If you live your life in fear – which could just as easily be called anxiety – then you won’t allow love in. And people are afraid of so much, from the smallest things that appear utterly insignificant to their fellow human beings, to the biggest which, I suppose, is death. And that’s pretty significant too. You worry till you die? Doesn’t that seem to you a crazy way to ‘endure’ this life we’ve been gifted?

So, if the antidote to that kind of fear-laden doom is love, what do we have to lose? Which is pretty much verbatim what I said to a doom-laden son this afternoon. He had a list as long as your arm of perceived injustices. It’s so hard, at that tender age, to understand how easy it would be just to let them go. So I settled for
“Just try to be kind… I mean, what have you got to lose?”

In the meantime, my head and heart are full of Jack Kornfield’s words. In his soft, gentle, loving voice, he said:

The evocation of lovingkindness is what matters..
…and in the end of our life, when we look back, what matters is very simple:
“Did I love well?”

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September 26, 2012

Meditation – the 30-Day Challenge

By Alice

I have mentioned Dr Wayne W Dyer before. On many occasions. I also follow his feed on facebook, and yesterday a very timely update appeared in my newsfeed. The link was to the Hay House website “Heal Your Life“, but it was his preamble that snagged on my conscience. It said this:

“Once you become accustomed to regular meditation, you’ll enjoy it so much that you’ll find yourself making it a top priority in life. Make a 30-Day commitment to meditation, and you will have developed a new habit–one that will serve you well for the rest of your life.”

I sighed.

I try. I fail. I make excuses. I forget about it for a while…

And then this.

So, I am accepting the 30-day challenge. I figure, with five young children aged between 2 and 12 in my life, if I can do it, then it may just be inspiration for other mothers in similar situations to give it a go.

My hope, of course, is that 30-days will lead to 30 years. :)

Day 1

This morning, I was woken by a bedroom door opening as one of my little ones headed for the bathroom. I looked at the time. It was about half an hour before my alarm was due to go off.

Under ‘normal’ circumstances, I would roll over and try to catch 30 minutes more zzzzz, but today I remembered my intention and decided to use this time to meditate. I didn’t want to get up and risk waking anybody else, so I assumed a comfortable position, there in the warm and cozy dark, and began.

Make no mistake. I am a novice. I am not yet very good at it. I use a simple breath meditation and, in order to prevent my mind from wandering too much, I think “breathing in” on the in-breaths, and “breathing out” on the out-breaths. When I find my mind wandering, as it inevitably does, I put the puppy back on the mat and resume focusing on my breath.

It didn’t take long before I felt very calm and peaceful. In my book, that’s a very good (and rather unusual) way to feel on a school morning and the more I can do to promote and prolong that kind of atmosphere, the better.

And then I remembered Louise Hay’s affirmations. I modified my mantra a little and, began ‘saying’ “Breathing in, I welcome positivity; breathing out, I release negativity”.

By the time the house was stirring, I truly did feel positive and calm, and ready to face the world. Needless to say, it didn’t last entirely until they had all left for school, but I like to think my composure lasted noticeably longer than usual. I certainly have a renewed determination to continue with this.

But it also got me thinking (after meditation) about language, about manifestation, about what we draw into our lives. About how we can assess the level of acceptance in our lives by the language we use, entirely unconsciously.

Take my mantra, for example. I toyed with various in-breaths: “I welcome positivity, I invite positivity…” That part I didn’t question. But with the out-breaths, I began by saying “I reject negativity”.

It’s a subtle distinction, but the level of attachment is clearly higher with rejection than with release, wouldn’t you say? And if you are attached to something, you will struggle with it. Reject is too forceful, too negative. Release simply ebbs away.

Having read “Ask and it is Given“, I am also aware of the theory of manifestation: that *yearning* for something will keep it from you, but that holding in your mind that it will happen will  draw it steadily closer to you. It’s the same idea. Non-attachment. Acceptance. Invitation and Release.

What will you welcome or release today?

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September 24, 2012

Mining for the Truth Diamond

By Alice

Teatime.

It is so often mealtimes in our house that the big-gun conversations materialise apparently out of nowhere.

We were talking about anger. About how anger, met with anger, can only produce more anger… ad infinitum. Until what you are left with is the wasteland discarded by the volcano.

But if you meet anger with calm. If you register your dismay at the situation, without evaluation, without distress, and walk away, then it is over. It’s a heckuva lesson to learn. And it takes serious practice.

“But then they’ll think you’re a coward!” my son exclaimed.

“And does that make you a coward?” I asked.

“Well… no… but…”

If you do something because of what someone else might think of you if you didn’t… then they are controlling you. Your strings are no longer your own to pull. Your mind is no longer your own to make up. You are being led by the nose.

The problem arises the moment it matters to you what someone else thinks of you, what their perception of you might be if you act in a certain way, or if you don’t (though  you, in fact, know that way to be authentic). As soon as appearances are more important than truth, honesty and integrity, there comes into existence a major problem. The truth is not always comfortable, can often require a climb-down, loss of ‘face’ and some humbling, but it is vitally important for a relationship to thrive. Any relationship. From the one you have with the person who delivers your post, to your most intimate, primary relationship. Actually, and perhaps most importantly, to the relationship you have with yourself. If there is something that stops you meeting your own eyes in the mirror when you contemplate or recall it, you have a problem. It isn’t only that these things have a way of coming out, it is deeper, more intrinsic and more crucial to your inner peace. It prevents your being at peace with yourself. In the same way that a Catholic will go to Confession and lay his or her sins before the priest, you must learn to be your own confessor.

Integrity is, after all, doing the right thing even though no one is looking. But it is arguably harder to do it when someone is looking, someone whose opinion of you you value, someone who does not think or feel the same way as you, whose integrity is perhaps a little more questionable than your own. If you perform an act, even though a little voice is whispering in your ear “Don’t do it. It isn’t right…” or a big voice is hollering through the core of your being “Stop! This is lunacy! It ISN’T RIGHT!”, just because someone else might think badly of you if you don’t, then the sanest and most integrous course of action is not to perform the act, but to distance yourself from the person who wants you to.

The minute you do something because it’s more important to you what another person thinks of you if you don’t, even though you know it to be the right thing, you are lost. And you will have to find your way back.

And the more wrong turns you take in this fashion, the harder it gets to come back. The more rotten you feel in yourself, the less peace you have, the more the facade needs bolstering, the more balls of disingenuousness and deceit you have in the air. And the more likely it is that dropping one will signal a major breakdown in your life.

All of which can only highlight the importance of acting now, today. Every difficult situation you find yourself in, count to 10. There is no need for instant or defensive response. Take a few deep breaths and centre yourself. However tired, fed up or grumpy you feel, try to find the true, the kind, the loving response. It simply cannot harm you.  A few words of wisdom from people much wiser than me:

However many holy words you read, However many you speak, What good will they do you If you do not act on upon them?

~ Buddha

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

But don’t be disheartened when you fail. You’re human. And it’s all part of the practice.

x

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September 10, 2012

Story-time

By Alice

I was talking to a friend today about acceptance.

Sometimes, it’s only the act of verbalising your thoughts that crystallises them enough to finally get a handle on them, isn’t it?

We were talking about the difficulties my family and I have endured these past four years. On the face of it, it has been horrendous. A tale of poverty and hardship, abandonment, hatred, power-plays, control-tactics, mind-games, hysteria, mudslinging… the list goes on. A truly horrible story.

And the story hasn’t ended yet.

But that’s all it is.

A ‘story’.

It’s all a process, this life. It is intricate and beautiful, even in its most apparently difficult of periods. How can you recognise happiness if you have not endured misery? What is wealth if you have not experienced privation? It takes time to understand this mechanism. And dedication. It isn’t easy learning to stay on track, to rise above the story, to remove yourself from your own and other people’s dramas, to detach, hold up a hand and say “Yours is not my reality”. One thing I have learned is that your participation is not necessary for others to continue to involve you in their stories. So what is your choice? Do you continue to try to change their view? Or do you accept that they have a right to their own beliefs, and leave them to it? One path leads to growth and the other to a continuation of conflict. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out which is which.

But you cannot decide you don’t want this, either. To deny the lessons you must learn this time around is to fight reality. And fighting reality can only bring more unhappiness. How many times have you reached the light at the end of a tunnel only to discover a new understanding, a different perspective, a lighter feeling? Even if, in context, that lightness doesn’t ‘make sense’?

Maybe it’s time to let go, and allow your story a happy ending… :)

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June 14, 2012

Be Here Now

By Alice

I’ve had a few signposts lately (as is the usual way of my world these days) and they set some cogs whirring about life.

There is so much dissatisfaction about. So much disappointment. So many ‘if onlys’ and ‘what ifs’. And ‘if only I had…’ or ‘if only I were…’

But isn’t that missing the point?

Life isn’t going to begin when you get there, to some distant and different, new and improved destination. Life just is.

Here.

Now.

And it isn’t remotely dependent on anything *else*, *other* or *out there*.

I’ve written before about the picture on the wall in our house. I bought it because it grabbed me at the time. It says:

Live the Life you Love

And that’s an admirable aspiration…isnt’ it?

…Except that it is a little ambiguous, isn’t it? It rather depends how you read it, doesn’t it?

If you read it as a spur to a different life, then you are back to the dissatisfaction. I want to live a life like that, but this is the life I have and I can’t see how to get there, except, maybe, many years from now and once I’ve won the lottery…

Hmmmmmm.

Wouldn’t it be preferable to Live the Life you Have? This is my life, and if it never altered, if it never got any ‘better’, never changed in any way, would I do anything differently?

I think we would. I think we would begin to really live it. Instead of waiting for it to be different, better, more this, less that, we’d actually live it. We’d be here. Now. Present. Making the most of it, instead of trying to skim through it to get to the next, or better, bit…

After all, what’s happening while we’re waiting to get to the ‘good bit’? Our children are growing up, we’re getting older, this life that we have is passing us by… Isn’t that crazy? This one shot at this life, and we’re wasting it waiting for it to be ‘perfect’!

I should add, of course, that I’m not suggesting for a second that we should ‘accept our lot’, resign ourselves to a life that feels ‘less than’. It is always within our power to make changes, to set other wheels in motion, to move towards and aspire to a life that feels better / healthier / more satisfying. But the point is not to forget to live *now*, to make the most of what we have *here*.

We will, of course,  always be thrown challenges that threaten to rock our equilibrium, some will feel insurmountable, but each one can be assimilated and used to advance our understanding of life, of our fellow travellers, of ourselves. If we respond with integrity, we cannot be destroyed by them. The best course of action is to understand that they will, like everything else, pass.

Tomorrow may never come and yesterday is already just a memory. But today! Today is what we have. Grab it with both hands and live it.

There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.
Buddha

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February 9, 2012

The root of all evil…

By Alice

It isn’t money.

Sure, money can ruin a person, just as it can improve their lives – and the lives of those they love – immeasurably. I don’t believe it is the root of all evil.

What I believe is the root of all evil is Victim Consciousness.

I have mentioned this before, having first been switched onto this idea by David Hawkins, and then had it further explained by Lynne Forrest, whose book you will find in my recommended reading (she explains it very well). But until quite recently I hadn’t appreciated just how fundamental Victim Consciousness is in the day-to-day happiness of our lives and interpersonal relationships.

Before I go any further, I want to explain one thing, since it was an enormous stumbling block for me when I first grappled with this subject. There is a chasm of difference between victim and Victim. What I am talking about here is Victim – with a capital V. The Victim that defines us, labels us, becomes our story. There is no denying that most of us fall victim (with a small v) to one event / person / life circumstance or another from time to time, and sometimes many times in the course of our lives and that can create enormous difficulty for us. Usually emotional difficulty, often material or financial difficulty, sometimes psychological difficulty. And if we are fortunate, we have a support network of family or friends there to bolster us, to help us to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start again (as the song goes), a little wiser for the experience.

But if we are more fortunate, or diligent, or even rigorous in our thinking and our consciousness, we do not allow ourselves to indulge or fall into the trap of Victim Consciousness. And boy! It takes effort sometimes. It is so easy to say “Poor me!”, to start recounting your story in your head, the one you plan to tell someone at the school gates, or call a friend to retell, or save up for the next person you meet… Sound familiar? How often has something irritating, upsetting or hurtful happened to you and you find yourself almost rehearsing the way you’re going to relate it when you get home / to your friend’s house / on the phone?

Why?

For the juice. For the attention, sympathy… the payback. The “Poor you”s…

What has become increasingly obvious to me is how ultimately damaging it is. All our endless retelling of our story (our Victim Consciousness) does, its only real function, is to keep us locked in the cycle of past, hurt and damage. From there we cannot progress at all.

“Progress”? Yes. Progress. Be happy. Move on. Because to be a Victim, we allow something or someone to have power over our lives, over our own happiness. Why in the name of all that is good would we want to do that?? Allowing ourselves to be a victim, we give away our power, we disallow the possibility of living our lives to the fullest extent we can imagine. Following our hearts. Creating our dreams. Creating our realities.

Because that, with your thoughts and your beliefs, is precisely what you do. The story you tell yourself is the reality you create. It is truly that simple. If you tell yourself you are unhappy, you are unhappy. If you tell yourself you are happy… well… you get it! If you look at things from the perspective of negativity, hardship, difficulty, then life is negative, stark, difficult. But if you look at it from the opposing perspective, the sun shines even when it’s raining.

We have so many platitudes that we repeat endlessly without ever having given them much thought at all.

“Count your blessings!” we are told as children. The problem is, we are usually told this when we are steeped in a vat of Victim Consciousness, feeling sorry for ourselves that she got the doll we really wanted for Christmas, and we just got this lousy book; or he gets to stay up late and watch television and we just have to go to bed and listen to the joy downstairs… oh… you know the score! And our elders and betters say to us “Count your blessings!”. Do we then skip up to bed and make a mental list of all the fabulous things we do have in our lives? All the great things we can do? Pah! We scowl and sink further into our pit of self-pity.

See? So the “Count your blessings!” mantra has been transformed into a reprimand to counter our complaints of unfairness.

But the problem is, it’s true.

If you look at any problem in your life, there is always a ‘Way of Acceptance’. Always. Without exception. I am not suggesting for a minute that it is easy to get there. Sometimes it seems an impossible task. But nothing is impossible. (Something else we are told and allow to enter one ear and exit swiftly through the other). But it isn’t.

Nothing is impossible.

You create your reality, regardless of the material circumstances of your life. Each thought, each belief, everything you allow yourself to believe, you have made a choice to believe. And if it isn’t beneficial to your overall well-being, you can make a choice to change it.

Angry? Make a choice to let it go.

Hurt? Make a choice to let it go.

Disappointed? Make a choice to let it go.

Hard done-by? Make a choice to let it go.

If you can accept that you create your reality, why on earth (or anywhere else) would you want to create one that made or kept you miserable?

Don’t feel sorry for yourself. :) Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.

With love.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Acceptance, Buddhism, Love, Lynne Forrest, Mindfulness, Personal Responsibility, Right Motherhood, Victim Consciousness

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