When sailing across a body of water,
you don’t make a straight line
from start to finish.
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You tack.
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First you set sail in the general direction.
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Then, you zig one way and zag another.
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This is the way of life…
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Once you have pondered, reflected, and considered various courses of action,
it is time to make a choice and act.
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Life’s path is unfathomable.
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Be prepared to alter your course.
I recently came across something I wrote some time ago. I can’t really remember when or even who the artist is that I was referring to. I thought you might like to see it:
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A successful artist once advised: “Stick to your core offering.”
My ‘core offering’ follows:
• No compromising the message of true spirituality for any reason.
• No dogma
• No quick fix.
• No bubble gum
• No emotional hysteria
• No simplistic notions
• No magic tricks
• No hype
• No manipulation
• No compromise for fame or monetary or any other gain
~
Only the pure, straight, honest, unadulterated truth. Tell it like it is with love, compassion and understanding; but without compromise of purity, honesty, integrity, and truth.
On its deepest level, personal development becomes synonymous with human evolution. This kind of personal development is the foundation of true, lasting, and fulfilling growth.
Give your conflicts time and space. In so doing, wisdom is given the opportunity to emerge from within you. Thereby, you will gain others’ respect.
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Where there is mutual respect, relationships flourish. Where there is disrespect, little can be achieved. With time and space, the situation is given the opportunity to come back into balance. Where there is balance, there is respect.
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Show respect even for the disrespectful yet without disrespecting yourself.
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The are only three elements (gunas) involved in all of your life: you, the ‘object’ lying outside of you, and the relationship between the two. One defines the other. Like three balls being juggled in the air, there is no bottom line upon which the three rest in place. The ever changing dynamic defines the realities… defines the view each has of the other.
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Your life is all about your relationship with people. Nothing and no one within the dynamic can be defined absolutely. Each reality has its own perspective. Yet so many seek the bottom line upon which they feel life will finally find perfect balance.
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Perfect lies only in the abstraction of the transcendental… beyond the grasp of anything within space and time… just as balance is not found within the balls being juggled. Instead balance lies within the juggler who eternally remains behind the scene, beyond the control of all three balls.
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Do not lose yourself within the three gunas. See beyond relativity, while still juggling within the relativities of life.
Imagine that you’re angry. You feel it with all of your being. Every fiber of your being says you want to lash out. This expression of anger is justified in some self-help and New Age circles with, “This is my truth. I’m speaking my truth.”
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Your truth is not something that lives on the surface of your being. Your truth lies quietly at the depth of your being. It is your eternal quest in the name of your own self-unfoldment and psychodynamic health to pursue your truth. Like the pursuit of the silver chalice, you’ll never grab on to your truth, but the eternal quest for it brings you to greater and greater levels of mental health. So I’ve talked about the first response: your gut level knee-jerk reaction.
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Your second response is something that you come to through reflection, pondering, questioning, thinking, waiting, feeling, and perhaps coming back into balance. Then the idea is to come up with, not the second response, but a second response. And not something that you decide, “Oh okay, I looked at this for 15 minutes or 2 days, and now I know my second response.” You found a truth (not the one ultimate truth) that lies deeper than your knee-jerk conditioning.
Everything is profound,
~
yet everything is profoundly simple.
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The key to life
~
lies in your relationship with it.
We live in a time when people are enslaved by identity. They are either clinging fervently to an identity or frantically searching for one, believing that somewhere out there an identity exists that will answer all their needs and fulfill all aspects of their life. A healthy relationship with identity starts with knowing there is no such thing as a perfect identity. The field of identity is the field of imperfection.
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Fulfillment is a state of physiology that lies beyond the grasp of identity. Religions talk about it. All of humanity longs for it. But very few understand it.
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Essential to a healthy life is a healthy relationship with identity. You function through identity, but are not lost to it. As a great saint once said:
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The trick is to have the boat in the water, but not have the water in the boat.
Love is a feeling, not a rulebook.
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‘Conditional love’ is often thought of as terms you must live by in order to be loved by another. However, we often impose terms upon our own feelings toward someone: “If I love them, then it should look this and that particular way.”
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There is no parameter by which we can judge our love for another.
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Love lies deeper than superficial regulations. It is an abstraction. It has no edge.
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Love reaches out beyond the furthest limits of the universe – beyond space and time- to a place where rules and terms cease to exist.
Someone sent in a Michael Douglas line from a movie:
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“If you don’t have the guts to love someone with all you’ve got, you don’t have the guts to live.”
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I liked it and responded that it also works reversed:
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If you don’t have the guts to LIVE, you don’t have the guts to love someone with all you’ve got.
Self-improvement
generally focuses on manipulation of your personality.
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However, personality is superficial.
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True self-improvement
frees something deeper,
a central source of harmony that emanates,
transforming your personality,
your body,
and your soul.
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It is the natural process of
harmonizing with your true nature.
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read more in Look Deeper, Live Better
The Truth about Religion and Flatlining
