8 Sep
https://pixabay.com/users/MichaelGaida-652234/
.
.
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.”
.
.
8 Jun
https://pixabay.com/users/cocoparisienne-127419/
.
.
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?
.
.
7 Jun
Mother Teresa in Paris in 1965.
.
.
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?
.
.
24 Apr
https://pixabay.com/users/qimono-1962238/
.
.
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.
.
.
6 Apr
https://pixabay.com/users/ashleyamos-1234274/
.
.
“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.”
.
.
.
25 Feb
https://pixabay.com/users/maria-anne-595075/
.
.
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.
.
.
9 Feb
https://pixabay.com/users/bknis-2559320/
.
.
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.
.
.
18 Dec
https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/
.
.
Mine has changed drastically as I have aged. Fame and fortune blinded my early years.
Childhood trauma stole years from my mid 20’s until mid 50’s.
Lost and suffering clouded any purpose I had.
Healing and meditating brought clarity and a clear purpose, to be happy.
Matthew Ricard says our purpose in life is to be “Happy”.
Happiness takes surrendering to your fears, stockpiling enormous amounts of gratitude, then helping others less fortunate on this path.
Happiness comes to humble, aware souls who let the “Egos” selfishness fade with a lack of attention.
Happiness has nothing to do with achievement, adulation, success or approval.
Can you imagine being happy in stressful, awkward situations.
Accepting life’s challenges is the fork in the road we need to choose.
As long as I show up enthusiastic and give all out effort, the results do not matter.
Behaving like this gives us the best chance for success anyway.
.
.
28 Nov
Our first snow enjoyed by Mr. Brighton
.
.
Thanksgiving is an hourly practice, not a once a year novelty.
Gratitude grows giving, then giving returns the favor.
When my compassion center opened, gratitude and giving increased.
If you want your life to count, then be grateful and give freely.
Of all my accomplishments, giving has lasted, the trophies are tarnished and dusty, long forgotten.
Sadness and depression do not visit grateful givers as often, I know.
On this day, realize we are on this journey together.
Good deeds travel, possesssions are left behind when we depart this earth.
.
.
27 Nov
Pixabay: GraphicMama-team
.
.
Thanksgiving, the ultimate gratitude experience for Americans.
This is the one day we feel obligated to feed the homeless, that would be great if hunger only happened on one day a year.
It must seem weird to the homeless, to see people get involved for a day.
I would recommend we spend an hour a day growing gratitude and giving as much as possible.
It’s winter, that old warm coat in the closet would bring some degree of comfort to a needy soul.
That act of giving will change you. You will feel something, someone in need, right now.
His/Her existence can be influenced by our kindness and acts of giving.
Great way to teach your children compassion for others.
If you ignore the needy, your kids most likely will not care either.
Be humble, give thanks for all you have.
.
.
