Posts Tagged ‘giving’

Helping Others Help Us DISTANCE FROM THE EGO!

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Writing this blog is overwhelmingly positive.

It helps me and others improve, and feel connected.

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https://unsplash.com/@rosiesun

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It is a special action shared by both participants.

Volunteering is precious.

Giving is divine and a blow to our PTSD.

I think giving unconditionally, that is without regard for reward or recognition, is as far away from our Ego as we can get consciously.

That is a great thing, a healing, safe place for us to thrive.

We need this positive energy, this connection to balance the negativity of trauma.

Taking action is critical for our well-being.

I hike five days a week, rain or shine, I am a grinder and find solace in energetic action.

That is a highly coveted place for PTSD sufferers.

Our Ego wants to control whether it helps or hurts our wellbeing.

Limit the Egos’ power, he/she is for identity, not governance.

Find a spot where you can volunteer, and give in a way that is meaningful to you.

Special benefits are waiting for us.

We are on this path in unity, traveling together, not in competition.

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https://unsplash.com/@a_kehmeier

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Helping others without concern for recognition or reward brings a special soothing, healing energy.

We heal in increments, this is a powerful one.
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updated: A Path in sequence: ..Awareness, Acceptance, Surrender, Gratitude, Giving, Healing and then Happiness

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Sands of Time: Photograph by Bonnie Flamer
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Awareness: We have to see reality, the real world, how we fit in. Attention is placed on how our mind functions, how it interacts with our body mechanisms. We need to see ourselves without the bias of the “Ego’s” judgments. With 60,000 thoughts passing through our consciousness daily, awareness is key for perspective and proper navigation.
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Acceptance: Optimum acceptance would have us accepting everything about us right here, right now. There is nothing we can attain, accomplish or possess in the future that has any permanence or connection with happiness. We are complete, whole, capable of experiencing enormous happiness right now. Everything we need is available in this next breath.
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Surrender: Acceptance always had some resistance for me, some residual fear that kept parts of me closed off. Surrender is me opening my arms out wide opening my chest, my heart to catch what I fear. Surrender presents us vulnerable to our trauma fears. Once you have learned acceptance take the next step, surrender. It takes courage, guts to surrender.

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Gratitude: When our spirit fills with enough gratitude, desires deflate into proper perspective. Unless we can let go of the need for approval, the need for status and the need for importance, gratitude will wither. Awareness illuminates the path, acceptance frees the soul, and gratitude opens the door to our expansive side.
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Giving: I believe giving altruistically without regard for reward, distances the “ego” farthest from our consciousness. Giving allows us to escape the ego’s grasp and go deeper into our spiritual journey. Giving melts unworthiness and fear, moves the frozen with ease into action. In my opinion, giving is connected directly with happiness.
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Healing: On this journey, healing has been slowly underway, however at the giving stage, healing is accelerated, emotionally and physically. Focus on the breath while letting go of what scares you, liberates the mind, frees the spirit,, and expands consciousness.
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Happiness: Happiness, real happiness endures, it is a peace of mind we carry with us. It exists when difficulty, stress,,loss, joy and positive experiences unfold. In my experience, happy lives where thought does not exist, where the ego is dormant, where self fades for this moment.
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Can you identify where you are on the healing path?

Realtors make a difference in Eugene

Girl Scout volunteers including my granddaughter at the old house.

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A realtor husband and wife with the help of other realtors in the company purchased this old 9 apartment house near the University of Oregon. An adult resident from https://www.lookingglass.us will live in one of the apartments. (Incredible organization)

Unlike our billionaires throwing millions away for a ten-minute jolly ride, these people did this for homeless teenagers.

One homeless teenage girl living in a tent with a baby is moving in Monday.

This has to bring emotion out, what a gift these people have created.

In a world of such greed, it is refreshing to see such compassion for others.

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What a great lesson for the Girl Scouts. Teach your kids to give and care about those less fortunate.

I find this giving to be special. While others buy expensive toys, boats, cars, jewelry, etc., these people give back in a personal way. Not a check to a charity, a tangible gift.

I hope it will inspire others to give back.

It is part of happiness.

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May I be at Peace

https://pixabay.com/users/MichaelGaida-652234/

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Living with your Heart Wide Open:

“May I open to great self-compassion.

May I open to deep reconciliation of my past with the wise understanding that all of my past has led me to this moment.

May I hold myself gently, with mercy, kindness, and levity.

May I accept my imperfections and see that I am imperfectly perfect just as I am.

May I be as healthy as I can be.

May I have ease in body and mind.

May I be at peace.”

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In America all kids should have Opportunity

https://pixabay.com/users/cocoparisienne-127419/

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In the so-called greatest country in the world, The United States, all children should have opportunity. My opinion.

Birth is the ultimate lottery of life.

If birth has dealt you abusive parents, maybe no parents, a dark skin tone or abstract poverty, suffering ensues.

In America, every kid should have opportunity.

Opportunity consists of security, shelter, food, support, equal schools and teachers.

Mindfulness (happiness) is not about accumulating wealth and isolating from the undesirables, it is about giving to others in need.

To see kids go hungry, to suffer in abject poverty and crime, tears at my soul now.

If we truly cared, protests would not be needed.

Our energy could be used to help our kids.

Thoughts?

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Sunday Wishes for America

Mother Teresa in Paris in 1965.
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I wish hate and racism would be replaced with compassion and kindness.


I wish the color of our skin or belonging to one political party or the other did not cause turmoil or hate.


Realize we are on this journey together, tasked with helping those less fortunate.

 

Giving and gratitude are present in the life of a happy person, hate or racism is not.


I wish people would realize happiness only arrives with an open heart, giving to others.


We need more acts of kindness and compassion.


Compassion and gratitude are available to all of us, in an unlimited quantity.


Can you tolerate feeling what the other person of color experiences?


Can you be empathetic and non judgmental?

 

Can you take your “I” (Ego) out of the equation for a minute.


Are you a compassion person?


Thoughts?
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Healed, a word I refrain from using!

https://pixabay.com/users/qimono-1962238/

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To many connotations around healed, healing, to use that word. I thought I was completely healed at one time and then PTSD erupted around a stressful situation.

Healing is different for each of us, I will never be happy go lucky with all the healing in the world. My abuse during childhood damaged me, isolated me from attachments with others.

A loner was the only thing my father allowed me to be. Crowds have never felt safe for me.

Trust, not something I am very familiar with. My happiness is not carved out of the things, normal people think constitutes happiness.

My needs are much different than others. Now, they are minimal and that solves many issues.

It was mandatory for me to know my inner world if I wanted to heal.

PTSD has led me down a path, a spiritual journey, a daily meditation practice, a life with gratitude, giving and kindness.

Changes abound.

Approval is needed in small amounts now.

Negative thoughts die from a lack of attention.

I can stay neutral, focused, for days while my trauma wants an audience to power up.

I just do not spend time worrying about my worthiness or unworthiness, anymore.

My life has 90% less worry, doubt and fear. There must be some happiness in so much alleviation of suffering.

However you classify me, healed, still messed up or better, I have taken my life back.

The past finally is the past and my feeling is, I have gained strengths from surviving.

I have wasted enough time on trauma and refuse to waste another breath.

It takes a daily practice to change a 24/7 disorder like Complex PTSD.

The biggest change, I am not a victim, my father has no power over me, I am free and content with me.

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Helping Others to Help Ourselves from “The Undefeated Mind” by Alex Lickerman

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“Research now shows what many of us know from experience to be true: taking action to alleviate the suffering of others helps us better manage our own.

 

In one study by researchers Carolyn Schwartz and Meir Sendor, patients with multiple sclerosis who were asked to call other patients with multiple sclerosis each month for a year to offer their support in any way they could reported significantly higher levels of adaptability, confidence, tolerance, and self-esteem than the patients they were calling.

 

Something about trying to help others, they said, made them feel better able to manage problems themselves.

 

Why might this be? One possibility, suggest Schwartz and Sendor, is that focusing on the problems of others alters the way we see ourselves in relation to our own.

 

Thinking about a problem we have in the context of someone else’s life, divorced from how it impacts us, may open up avenues of creative thinking and produce ideas about managing it that would otherwise have remained obscured by our emotional reluctance to apply that same creative thinking to ourselves.

 

Further, the better we feel, according to the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion, the more resourceful, and therefore the more resilient, we become.

 

And helping others has clearly and repeatedly been shown to possess an almost-unequaled ability to make us feel good:

 

according to Schwartz and Sendor, the patients making the calls were found to experience more than a sevenfold increase in well-being than the patients receiving them.”

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The CONTRAST before and after HEALING !!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://pixabay.com/users/maria-anne-595075/

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Severe childhood abuse impacted how my mind wired together, besides filling my amygdala with trauma laced implicit memories.

Even after healing, remnants exist in the recesses of my mind.

Before I healed, suffering was compounded by thoughts that were endless, intrusive and completely unworthy in nature.

Severely abused kids carry the damage not only in the mind but throughout our bodies.

Hard to describe an upside down nervous system erupting double digit times everyday.

Healing was long, arduous and painful for me.

The contrast before and after healing, Startling.

Just the elimination of intrusive thoughts seemed Euphoric.

The absence of suffering can be considered Exhilarating on its own.

The cessation of never feeling good enough Ecstatic.

This concept like PTSD can not be described by words but experienced in real life.

Beyond the euphoric and ecstatic, the ability to let the noise go and enter this moment unencumbered by unworthy thought, seems miraculous at first.

Yes, I came back to earth after a while.

Learning to accept and not question or resent my childhood abuse was not easy.

Moving forward, my childhood still can be awakened and unleashed.

This lives a short existence now, but I admit, yearning for happy go lucky moments, still overtakes my desires.

I guess we all wish for things we will never experience.

That desire is not a need and fades as quickly as unwanted thought, now.

Moral of the story: Never give up, never give in, fight for your wellbeing.

It is the journey we need to improve, not the destination.

The destination is always death, so enjoy the ride as much as possible.

That does not mean chasing pleasure but have enormous gratitude and be a world class giver for a start.

Have a good journey today.

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Mindfulness versus Selfishness

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A mindful existence resembles a giver, a person with a healthy list of things he/she is grateful for. A selfish existence brings a sense of lack, a takers mentality.

Kindness, compassion and empathy are other traits a mindful person strives to incorporate into daily life.

Selfishness could be considered as the antithesis of mindfulness.

Mindfulness strives to do no harm, first to ourselves, then to all we meet.

Selfishness leads to suffering, a heightened sense of lack haunts us.

Happiness is not found out there, that sense of lack is created by our unworthy “Ego”.

Change your behavior, be kind instead of selfish, be a giver not a taker, use compassion, be a helper instead of a harsh critic.

Possessions, status, and power are fleeting, kindness to others, giving, lasts beyond our death.

We are on this journey together, not in competition.

There is plenty for all of us, realize happiness is tied to how we treat those less fortunate.

Release that sense of lack, increase your awareness of the gratitude before you.

Smile, be kind, be compassionate, give and be happy.

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