Remember your life is not supposed to be stress-free. I think we all have ideals we are dreaming of: “Everything will be great when….” Fill in the blank: “…when I find ‘the one,'” “…when I get a new job,” “…when I retire.” It’s the time when it feels like you’ll just be able to kick up your feet and relax for the rest of your life, when you’ve finally “made it.” I’m not saying we ...
Believe it or not, your self-hatred is the vehicle to finding love. This goes against some common wisdom which says you should really learn to see your own value. I mean sure, you have some nice things about you, but as you examine yourself, you will undoubtedly find some things that are lacking – even just by your own standards. It is impossible to produce love in yourself since you try to do so by some standardized merit system: “if you do and are such and such, you’re ...
In order to love and accept our life and those around us as they are, we must learn to grieve what we thought they would be. Without doing that, we will always love our ideals more than we love the actual thing. This does not mean we have to stop wishing for things, for hope is a good thing. In fact, if we do not do this sort of grieving, we will not be able to hope. We will only have depression – the kind that follows when we do not get what we thought we should have. Everyone goes through ...
In order to truly love someone else, you must surrender your rigid beliefs about what you yourself “should be”. Most of us travel around with these inner archetypes by which we judge ourselves and others lovable or unlovable. As long as you are holding onto yours and hoping that you measure up, you will also use it to deem others valuable or not. Our deepest fear and dilemma is that we do not even measure up to our own created archetypes. The gift is to know that although we do ...
I wonder what the world would be like if we did not work so hard to avoid everything. So much in our lives exists to help deaden our senses: not only drugs and drink, but electronics and countless other diversions. If we really felt everything there is to feel, I wonder if we would fall apart. The world seems like it would drastically change if we just accepted and encountered the pain of our circumstances head on, as it is. But we do not. We anesthetize in order to avoid feeling too much.
If we allowed ourselves to feel the pain in the world, I believe we may move on to better things. We would have to change things. We would not be able to bear things the way they are.Someone gave me this bit of wisdom once: she said, “the pain tells me that I am alive.” She was battling cancer and all the pain and agony that go along with that, and she stopped taking her pain medication almost altogether. She is a brave soul. She said when the meds covered all of the pain, she would wake up and not know if she was alive or dead. Her illness had progressed to a point where she could go any time, and she didn’t want to be in a drug-induced stupor. She wanted ...