Awakening - Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Discussion in 'Your Religion & Spiritual Center' started by CarolineJ., Jan 1, 2011.

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  1. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    I received this book for Christmas that has a reading for each day of the year and as I had mentioned before I want to post each days reading for anyone who is interested. (I will try to post daily but some days I might have to play catch-up)

    I just want to start with the disclaimer that I have not vetted this book beforehand because I do not want to read ahead on the days but take them as they come with all of you so I don't know what is coming.

    I hope that nothing is offensive to anybody.

    I am a reporter here and not the one who compiled these or thought them up so please feel free to comment or discuss your thoughts on anything that is written among yourselves.

    I hope this is a good thing for everyone. ;D
     
  2. Aliza

    Aliza I'm still standing, alone but upright

    Sounds interesting! You'll have my attention! :)
     
  3. lulu48

    lulu48 New Member

    That sounds great Caroline and how very sweet of you to share it with all of us. :-*
     
  4. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    January 1 - Precious Human Birth

    ~Of all the things that exist, we breathe and wake and turn it into song.~

    "There is a Buddhist precept that asks us to be mindful of how rare it is to find ourselves in human form on Earth. It is really a beautiful view of life that offers us the chance to feel enormous appreciation for the fact that we are here as individual spirits filled with consciousness, drinking water and chopping wood.

    It asks us to look about at the ant and antelope, at the worm and the butterfly, at the dog and the castrated bull, at the hawk and the wild lonely tiger, at the hundred-year-old oak and the thousand-year-old patch of ocean. It asks us to understand that no other life form has the consciousness of being that we are privilege to. It asks us to recognize that of all the endless species of plants and animals and minerals that make up the Earth, a very small portion of life has the wakefulness of spirit that we call "being human."

    That I can rise from some depth of awareness to express this to you and that you can receive me in this instant is part of our precious human birth. You could have been an ant. I could have been an anteater. You could have been rain. I could have been a lick of salt. But we were blessed - in this time, in this place - to be human beings, alive in rare ways we often take for granted.

    All of this to say, this precious human birth is unrepeatable. So what will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the Earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? What will you ask and of whom?

    Tomorrow you could die and become an ant, and someone will be setting traps for you. But today you are precious and rare and awake. It ushers us into grateful living. It makes hesitation useless. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now."
     
  5. June-

    June- New Member

    thank you
     
  6. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    January 2 - All Fall Down

    ~Lead us from the unreal to the real.~ - Hindu Invocation

    "It was a snowy night, and Robert was recalling the time two springs ago when he was determined to paint the family room. Up early, he was out the door, to the hardware store gathering the gallons of red, the wooden mixing sticks, the drop cloths, and the one-time brushes that always harden, no matter what you soak them in.

    He mixed the paint outside and waddled to the door with a gallon in each hand, the drop cloth under his arm, and a wide brush in his mouth. He began to chuckle in telling what happened, "I teetered there for minutes, trying to open the door, not wanting to put anything down. I was so stubborn. I had the door almost open when I lost my grip, stumbled backward, and wound up on the ground, red gallons all over me."

    At this point, he laughed at himself, as he has done many times, and we watched the snow fall in silence. I thought of his little story the whole way home. Amazingly, we all do this, whether with groceries or paint or with the stories we feel determined to share, We do this with our love, with our sense of truth, even with our pain. It's such a sinple thing, but in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the dooor. Time and time again, we are offered the chance to truly learn this: We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside.

    It is a basic human sequence: gather, prepare, put down, enter. But failing as we do, we always have that second chance: to learn how to fall, get up , and laugh."
     
  7. lulu48

    lulu48 New Member

    I love these Caroline. Thank you so much for sharing them with all of us. I really like "We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside." That says to me it is time to let go of the baggage and move forward without letting it drag you down. So very true. :)
     
  8. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    I could see myself in that reading both literally and figuratively. I am always attempting that kind of manoeuver with my arms full and then on the other side where it talks about ego, our truth and pain and needing to act on that instead of leaving it at the door.

    Your baggage analogy is a good one and I agree that this is what it is telling us. To leave that baggage at the door.

    I also thought of us Dumbasses and being able to laugh at ourselves.
     
  9. hollymm

    hollymm Me, 'in' a tree.

    This is gonna generate a lot of talk. Good talk. This is what you were talking about in the "Spence" thread right? I like the anaologies. On the last... You really can't take it with you.
     
  10. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    Yes Holly, this is the one I mentioned on Spence's thread.

    It will be interesting because to each one of us it will have a different meaning.

    I am looking forward to how it all unfolds.
     
  11. June-

    June- New Member

    Another nice one!
     
  12. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    I am really glad that you are enjoying them June. ;D
     
  13. egross

    egross New Member

    This is wonderful stuff Caroline. Definitely for me. Letting go of all the excess dragging me down. Sometimes it's hard to let go of that baggage though. It is for me. I keep trying, and it keeps coming back. I'll keep practicing. Thanks. Great reminders. Re-Minders.
     
  14. dizzysheba01

    dizzysheba01 New Member

    Thank you Caroline. I am enjoying these and look forward to more.
     
  15. hollymm

    hollymm Me, 'in' a tree.

    ...and we can't argue cause the subject always changes! Such an excellent idea!
     
  16. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    I am so glad that you are all enjoying this... it is so nice for me to be able to share these with others as I read them each day, so much nicer than just going it on my own.
     
  17. CarolineJ.

    CarolineJ. New Member

    January 3 - Unlearning Back to God

    ~The coming to consciousness is not a discovery of some new thing; it is a long and painful return to that which has always been ~ - Helen Luke

    Each person is born with a unencumbered spot - free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry - an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.

    To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

    When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of satori, as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full intergity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education.

    Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that origianl center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God.
     
  18. lulu48

    lulu48 New Member

    I think this is such a difficult issue to overcome. Being able to say I am a child of God first and not I am a doctor or a lawyer etc. Being able to get back to the very core of WHO we are not WHAT we are.

    Excellent Caroline. I am really enjoying these. Thank you.
     
  19. June-

    June- New Member

    I'm still enjoying these. Thank you.
     
  20. Maxine

    Maxine New Member

    This is my first post. I"m home from work today - first day of school - with a sudden Vertigo attack. I've been symptom free for months. This has been a MOST stressful year, culminating in a MOST stressful New Year outing. The picture I'd painted is running and turning, as it does, into muddy puddles, good for nothing better than painting pictures of potting soil. Feeling discouraged, disallusioned and depressed, I stumbled out of bed to do a little Menier's reading. Found this sight. Found your exerpts from "Having the Life..." and knew that I'd been guided to this place on this morning. Just a few minutes ago, I was considering how to die and wondering who should find me. I think I'll wait a bit and see what comes next. Is depression a result of the disease, or a cause?
     

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