Embracing Life

March 13, 2019

JEREMIAH STEPHEN (HeartSphere): “Voices”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Life teems with choice and decision. Some are difficult, while others are easy. Some test the loom upon which the very fabric of our lives is woven. And upon the precipice of choice we may also find resounding voices–those that are not our own.

We all come to these critical points as we dwell within the many spheres that visit our lives.

All decisions affect not only our life, but the lives of others as well. The choice of food that we nourish our bodies with has consequences that can be witnessed in minutes, and others that may not be seen for many years. Our choice of words can immediately defeat or uplift a stranger, a loved one or a friend. And our choice of actions may alter the course of world history, or at the very least, our own personal history.

But many of these choices are made almost involuntarily, influenced by thoughts that do not belong to our hearts.

I used to be worried about every move that I ever made, about every word that I would utter and every action that I took. I wasn’t worried about the causal outcome of my words or actions, but of the response from those around me. In doing this, I placed myself into a protective shell that grew dense over many years. And many of us are familiar with this.

I was called shy, withdrawn, reserved, introverted and anti-social. But this was never who I truly was. I felt comfortable being quiet, so I stayed where I found comfort.

But the day came when I no longer visited those thoughts that brought me worry. I found strength in my own hands, through creative pleasure and my own God-given gifts. I realized that I only worried over my perception of another person’s perception. It was my own thoughts that worried me, and nothing else.

Then I realized one beautiful truth…

Don’t believe everything that you think.

Today, I embrace who I am. I speak my deepest thoughts, and am not afraid to share my life with anyone. Of course I’m still full of cynicism, sarcasm and a host of other idiosyncrasies, but who isn’t?

I’ve made countless choices that have taught me great truth, and if anyone asked me to correct anything in my past, I can honestly say the thought itself is impossible.

Because everything that I’ve done has brought me here, to this moment.

Had I not decided to move to a new place instead of staying home, I may not have a daughter. Had I chosen to stay just one day longer in Colorado, I may not have a son. So revisiting my perceived past “what-if’s” or otherwise “difficult” choices brings me to knowing that my options were on my path for a reason.

As is everything… And everyone.

We should be wise to not give our choices up to the resounding doubt that speaks to us from the dark corners of the mind. We should never step out of our own light to appease the shadows of a crowd, or to play it safe and stay comfortable in a hardened shell made of our own mind’s treachery.

These are lessons that I’ve learned, and though I am where I am in life because of choices I’ve made from these metrics, I’ve come far from the mist that once covered the hidden garden. I now choose wisely, and listen to my heart as it softly speaks.

I wish all to hear their true voice, and to be sound and content in speaking their own truth as it should be done by one’s own accord.

Life is full of Choices…

And full of Voices…

So, choose wisely.

And Speak your Own.

 

~via TheHeartSphere.com

January 20, 2019

FRACTAL ENLIGHTENMENT: “5 Signs You are Complicating Your Life”

Life is complicated. Relationships are complicated. Friendships are complicated. Life choices are complicated. Or are they? Is it possible that our excessive need to complicate life is just merely giving us something to do?

In our utter and complete fear of being bored are we perhaps overcomplicating every single thing in our life for the mere fact that it just gives us something to think about incessantly, or to complain about to our friends, or to distract ourselves from ourselves?

Could it be that our fragile little egos claim they want happiness, and inner peace, and simplicity from life situations but deep down are deathly afraid of this because in order to have true happiness and simple joy and uncomplicated relationships with others would mean the death of a majority of the jibber-jabber mind chatter that our ego spews out all day long?

Without over-thinking, worrying, complaining, and complicating everything to the point that we overanalyze every single situation the ego would lose 90% of its hold on us.

Our true self thrives in simplicity, in fact it is simplicity. It knows that anything outside of simplicity is merely our ego or false self begging for our attention.

As long as it has our attention we won’t pay attention to what is real and true… which is that we don’t need to spend so much time thinking about how we can go about achieving happiness. We already are happiness. We don’t need to spend all our time trying to get love from another person, we already are love.

As long as the ego can overcomplicate every situation to the point that we don’t see that all is well and perfect, it has already won. But the reality of the situation is, it doesn’t have to be this way.

As Confucius said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Here are five ways you may be making your life more complicated than it needs to be:

1) You live in your head too much

Our minds are constantly trying to make sense of everything. They are going over every single “what if?”, “why did they do that?”, “what does this all mean?” so much so that they forget that all of life is happening in the present moment.

Literally only this present moment exists. So mulling over past conversations, or stressing about future events literally just drives us mad. We spend hours playing out scenarios in our head that have never happened and may or may not ever happen. We overthink everything that we are completely disconnected from what is real and the beauty of experiencing the present moment when it actually happens… in the present moment.

2) You want to make everyone happy all the time

Trying to please everyone might work every once in a while, but most of the time it will be an impossible feat. In order to please one person, it is inevitable that you will upset another person to some extent.

There will be times when everyone in your life is going to have their own opinion on how you should live yours, so trying to satisfy them all would be undoable. How about you just do what makes you happy?

Yes some people will have something to say, or may be disappointed, but this is your life right? Once people in your life catch on that you have made yourself your first priority, they will be less inclined to ask you to go out of your way just to please them.

Also, they won’t be so shocked when you tell them “no” instead of desperately trying to prevent them from being upset by just doing exactly what they tell you to.

3) You believe your perception of life is the absolute truth

Here’s a secret: Your perception does not equal truth, it only means just that… YOUR perception. So the cashier at the store isn’t necessarily a rude witch, just because you perceived her that way. Did it occur to you that maybe she is dealing with a problem in her personal life? And the girl/guy you went on a date with isn’t necessarily an insensitive jerk.

Maybe they’ve had a really difficult childhood and they don’t know how to open up to people very easily. Regardless of the situation, we must realize that there are always two sides to every coin.

When we stop convincing ourselves and others that we know exactly what is going on in other people’s heads and why they act the way they do, we stop wasting so much time judging, complaining and criticizing others.

We simply see things and people as they are, without imposing our own little story on them which may or may not be anywhere near the actual truth.

4) You don’t trust that there is a higher intelligence at work

Whether you call it the universe, or God, or Source, or the all that is, there is a force that is working behind the scenes in every single aspect of our lives. There is never a moment that we are separate from its presence because in all actuality we come from it, meaning we ARE it, just a tiny little slice of it.

Our feeble little minds can’t comprehend this, so because of that we try to make our own plans and agendas on how things in our life will go. News flash: things rarely go the way we thought they would, right?

This is because the higher intelligence knows what’s best for us, even though we are convinced we know. The higher intelligence sees a bigger picture, it knows the reason your car wouldn’t start today was because there was going to be huge collision on the highway right when you would have been driving on it.

Accept and surrender to whatever it brings to you or brings you to. It is always giving you exactly what you need in any given moment, your only assignment is to: TRUST

5) You’re not honest with yourself

This is a big one and actually a lot harder than it seems mainly because so many of us hide ourselves from ourselves so much that we don’t even know what the truth is anymore. Believe it or not a lot of people are comfortable in their misery. They have become so accustomed to it that the mere thought of not having something to be miserable about sounds like the scariest thing ever. So they fool themselves.
admire the simple beauty in life
They rationalize, justify, and make excuses of why they still need to work at the job that they feel sucks the soul out of them, or they need to continue to cling on to an addiction of whatever the object of their desire is.

As long as they can evade actually being honest with themselves, which 9 times out of 10 is that they are afraid, they can stay comfortably unhappy. This for some reason sounds better than simply admitting that whoever or whatever or wherever is never going to bring them any closer to the happiness they claim they want.

Life really doesn’t need to be hard. In fact, when we start to simplify it we realize that the simple life is where true joy and happiness actually lives. We take things and people at face value. We trust the process of life and don’t overanalyze everyone and everything. So, if you do anything, do this… keep it simple.

 

~via FractalEnlightenment.com

June 18, 2018

MELISA WANDREI: “The Art of Pain — Why the Dark Times Make Life Beautiful”

“But fullness — that is deep in our soul. When we have that, it never leaves. Fullness encompasses everything. It’s what allows us to be fully human in all the raw, real ways.”

~Melisa Wandrei

 

Happiness, and the quest for it, is not all it’s cracked up to be. What I mean is that I think we’re making a mistake in reaching only for happiness, lightness, good days, and good moods.

I think that we’re restricting ourselves.

We’re fishing in an ocean of emotions, looking to only reel in one or two kinds, throwing back the ones we don’t want without even noticing how shockingly beautiful they can be in their strange, confusing way, much like the fascinatingly mysterious fish of the deep sea.

There was a long time in my life when I wanted happiness, so I avoided pain. I wanted to call myself brave, so I didn’t admit I was afraid.

In my search for joy, I pushed away the other emotions I didn’t like, thinking I’d be left with only happiness.

But something was still wrong. I wasn’t full. By denying myself the plethora of emotions and feelings we, as human beings, are supposed to experience, I was only connecting with myself on a surface level.

I spent many of my days trying to achieve a persistent state of peace and happiness, and I wasn’t being honest with myself.

How could I just be happy when my heart was broken in two? When my own dad wouldn’t talk to me anymore? When I was uncertain and afraid of the future and the path I decided to take.

Yet all I wanted was happiness, and I kept pushing away anything else I felt that wasn’t “good.”

It took me a while to realize that I didn’t feel like myself anymore. And that was because I wasn’t. I was pretending to be a flat placard of peace and joy, which isn’t very real, is it?

I realized I was robbing my soul of all the emotions and feelings and desires it should have.

Every feeling and all the changes we go through become precious when we realize they are all necessary, and they create contrasting beauty in our lives.

Would you rather be happy, or would you rather be full inside?

Happiness is fleeting. It flits in and out of our days like a bird, singing a beautiful song that we want to revel in all our life, for one moment while the sky is blue, not to be found on the days with dark clouds on the horizon, heavy winds, and gray skies.

But fullness — that is deep in our soul. When we have that, it never leaves. Fullness encompasses everything. It’s what allows us to be fully human in all the raw, real ways.

We need the contrasts that fullness, not just happiness, provides us. How else can we know true joy if we have never known sorrow? How can we feel and trust the deepest kind of love if we have never felt heartbreak?

In art, this is called chiaroscuro. It’s the play of light and dark within a picture, the idea that you need dark shading on one side in order to notice where the light is supposed to hit on the other.

I believe that art reflects life.

I think that by suppressing emotions we don’t like, such as fear and uncertainty and pain, we are taking away the shading of our own image. We’re denying ourselves the beautiful picture that needs the contrasts and shadows in order to be complete.

Sometimes, two seemingly conflicting emotions can fit together and coexist. Have you ever felt that? Maybe you have pain inside you that you suppressed, and suddenly another person finds a way to gently bring it to the surface.

That person and their kind eyes bring warmth to your heart, even while the pain is being laid bare.

Happiness can fill your chest and sadness can well in your eyes until they are entwined in a beautifully poignant harmony. This is chiaroscuro in its most desired form — the shadow contrasting with the brilliant light, creating a depth and fullness that couldn’t be reached any other way.

Don’t ever think that being so paralyzed by fear you don’t know how to take a step, or feeling angry and betrayed, or sobbing while your heart is in shreds, or feeling lonely or confused or uncertain or whatever you feel, is wrong or not good.

It’s your shading, your shadows, making up the complete, beautifully exquisite image of your soul and your life.

 

 

~via TinyBuddha.com