Love and wealth

In despair you moan "Why bother trying to find anything better in my life? There's no way I'll ever find someone to share it with."

Having money is a typical desire expressed. Do not confuse wealth with money. 

Do not confuse love with companionship. 

A better life, wealth, and love belong to anyone who has the vision to accept them. They surround you as they have in any age past. The 'primitive' living with no comforts knew love in a way that no one in the wildest party in Manhattan will ever find. The wealth found through the plundering of a thousand Spanish galleons would never be comparable to what one contented person can find by watching a flower bloom. 

As far as that special someone who will share your new-found wealth, remember that likes attract. If you don't like who you are with, remember that this is what your deepest beliefs have brought to you.

Change yourself and others who are like-spirited will find you as you will find them. 

Nobody else can make you happy

So now you say, "If I had my soulmate, then true happiness would be ours."

You are deceived if you believe anyone else can make you happy. 

Find happiness and then share it.

and when you pray...

"... and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us."

This prayer is truly a statement of fact, not about God above, but about God within. 

We can only become accepting and forgiving of ourselves when we learn to accept and forgive others. 

We will receive peace within only when we release our judgemental nature toward our fellow travellers. 

Worlds to explore

The idea of being bored with a soulmate is like being bored with music, or poetry, or art, or any of the other worlds to explore. 

When boredom exists, a condition of love is not truly in force. 

This has me wondering about the difference between boredom and so many other conditions that might seem similar, often caused by temporary distractions. Sometimes we are simply too exhausted to devote time to something or someone we love. That does not mean love does not exist. 

Who is my soulmate?

The true landscape of the human journey is the divided kingdom of the human entity.

We explore the mind. We explore the body. 

This duality corresponds to our search for learning and fun, for the mind and psyche are centres of learning and the body a source of pleasure. 

To be truly human means to become fully familiar with the whole territory. 

The joy of living comes through the exploration. 

We ask, "who is my soulmate?" Any fellow traveller might be one. Do not expect to find many fellow travellers. Our society frowns on such frivolity.

... Perhaps your soulmate will be the entity who will want to guide you into their territory and at the same time enter yours without judgement, fear, or guilt of any sort. 

Imagine the incredible joy, spending one lifetime after another sharing experiences with such an entity. 

The battle against gravity

Run as fast as you can from prophets of doom and gloom. 

Nothing will pull you down faster than believing you are on a slippery slope. 

If you feel you're starting to slide, grab hold of a passing 'balloon' and ride with them until the terrain improves. 

As soon as you can, become a balloon yourself, so you can make a quick escape, and hopefully help others from losing the battle against 'gravity'. 

Accumulated baggage

When we fail to live fully in the present, acting on our best feelings of the moment, we begin a life of burden. The burden is the 'baggage' of the past - "if only I had...". 

This baggage gets in the way of our relationships with others and ourselves. 

You don't have to understand

Sometimes the drama that others build into their lives is hard for anyone else to believe. It is like walking into the middle of a horror movie. Taken out of context it is too horrible to rationalize. Try to remember that:
a) in context, it makes sense, and

b) no one ever dies.

Young and playful

Teenagers spend their time 'trying on' personalities and looks. We have this potential for change all our lives even though we restrain ourselves. 

Playfulness is our true nature. Its suppression must be very hard on our psyche. 

As a child

As a child we act out our scenarios. 

Toward adulthood we internalize our scenario-building. It continues nevertheless. 

Sometimes we cannot believe our good fortune when 'coincidence' allows our dreams to come true. 

We do make our own reality.

Know Thyself

The best that anyone can try to do is to please themselves. If that pleases others, so be it. Your pleasure might be to see someone you care for laugh. If so, enjoy yourself. 

Your pleasure might be the life of a drunk ... you have probably denied yourself so much else that this is all you think you have left. 

Stop limiting yourself. Find what you really love and "go for it".

When reading this, it is very hard to imagine that I had no idea that the life of the drunk was potential foreshadowing of an alternate universe in which that is exactly who I am right now. It could be that in that universe I am already dead from the effects of those choices. 

Beware the altruist!

If someone says their main goal in life is to avoid hurting others, watch out.

In order to avoid hurting others, this person has to be constantly judging the worthiness of his fellows, otherwise how would he know it was right or wrong to ignore the feelings of someone whose main goal was to run other people off the road, or rape a twelve-year-old girl!?

"Please let me have sex with your daughter. I need it so badly."

You will never know if your feelings are worthy of his concern. 

You get what you believe

To believe that no spirit exists, denying your own immortality, is to say that life is meaningless and beyond our control. 

When people determine that this is their reality, they get it, and then they moan and groan that life is a terrible joke. 

"Life is hell, then you die"

What did they expect?

Boredom

“Boredom between two people doesn't come from being together physically. It comes from being apart mentally and spiritually.”
― Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

A person who considers themselves to be boring is probably feeling out of touch with the spiritual world around them. 

Remember, you are never truly alone. If no other spirit touches you, let your own do the job. 

Carpe momentum

Disappointment can only result from living in the future and the past. 

If you had no expectations from a situation, you could not find disappointment in it. 

Try to live in and enjoy the moment. 

Check your assumptions

If your life is filled with contradiction you must check your assumptions.

Conversely, when you find a philosophy of life without contradiction, no matter how improbable it seems, it gains your acceptance. 

Personal Freedom

Abraham Lincoln spoke on freedom. This was his basic concept: 

"Even as I would not be a slave, I would not be a master."

Personal freedom is the same. If I choose to fall in love, it does not enslave me, for if that love is not returned in some measure, it is a result of the freedom of another, and that can only cause me hurt if I desire to be hurt. 

Remember the vampire.* To give to another out of fear they might be hurt is to enslave yourself. 

Only please others when it pleases you to do so.

*In the book "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah", Richard Bach had his 'Richard' character suggest "We are all free to do whatever we want to do, as long as we don't hurt somebody else." At that time a stranger appeared and when asked "Can we help you at all?" the creature replied "Yes, you can help me. I need this very much or I would not ask. May I drink your blood? Just some? It is my food, I need human blood... " With that, Richard realized that by saying no to this vampire, he would be "hurting somebody else" and therefore violating his suggested rule.

We are all free to do whatever we want to do

Judge not, lest ye be judged

One man's* perversion is another's path to greater self-concept. 

Do not confuse your path with "the path". There is no such thing.

*Clearly written in a time before I became sensitive to inclusive language.

Distraction from what?

Most people have rejected their own power to direct their lives. 

They opt for a lifestyle which models themselves after others. 

They watch television and read fashion magazines to see how they should act. When their soul tries to communicate, they drown it out with noise (loud music) or television, or other distracting activities. 

What is it they are afraid of?

An individual's highest values

are reflected in their sexuality. Even so, a society's values are reflected in their need to censure the sexuality of others. 

Dogmatism takes many forms. An atmosphere where guilt predominates is not likely to be filled with love of self or others. 

Decisions, decisions

Trust your feelings to guide your actions. 

No one can know how long such a decision will be valid. It is made by the inner being that has complete knowledge of now. 

Do not judge your decisions of the past based on present conditions. 

Above all, remember why you are in a body.

Learn and teach and have a good time. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to use you. They have forgotten why they came, or they are teaching you in their own way. 

You have learned their lesson when you walk away. 

Short and Sweet

Allow others ownership of their problems.

~

Only when you are prepared for failure

 should you take risks.

Objectivism

There is a philosophy that claims that if all people were truly selfish (honest but assured selfishness in which a person recognizes and strives for the satisfaction of their deepest desires), then the whole race would benefit. It is objectivism.* 

Combined with a fully-rational knowledge of the psyche or soul; such a philosophy, I believe, could send us into a peaceful era. An individual who understands their place in the universe, and the power that this implies, and uses that knowledge to further their own desires will naturally strive for peace and harmony. 

Love of self and love of others go together without outside pressure. 

*Objectivism is a philosophy created by Ayn Rand, and espoused in her books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

The Price of Conformity

The individual of low self-esteem, confronted by an inability to conform in their heart to the general values and belief systems of their society, reacts in despair. The self-confident individual tends to display anti-social tendencies that are misinterpreted as a symptom of some disease or maladjustment. 

This puts increased pressure upon the individual's self-image. Most people in these circumstances eventually break down and lose these values. 

Society thus loses a possible source of enrichment. 

Diversity

Human insight must come from experiences and beliefs that are different from those of others. 

Diversity of experience and belief should be the goal of any forward-looking society. 

Why then do we spend so much energy making others conform to our beliefs? We must celebrate diversity. 

Perhaps the further evolution of humanity awaits that time when diversity is embraced and non-judgemental attitudes prevail toward self as well as others. 

Garbled messages of spirit

Cultural bias away from mainstream religion would seem to be positive by its rejection of dogma. A certain drawback of this rejection is the matching elimination of such concepts as the soul, godhood, etc. 

When we reject the concept of divinity, we also shunt aside our own immortality. What a sadness that Christianity has been so badly garbled in transmission. 

Accept your truth

Of all human qualities, honesty is one that is most undervalued. Honest people seem to be unpopular. Perhaps this results from the low self-image most people carry and their consequent inability to stand criticism of any sort. 

More likely, this reaction is the inner being's rebellion against judgement by anyone, even the self. 

What is honesty then? Should we stop lying by becoming accepting of our own truths?

This could spell the end of judgementalism and dogma as well! 

Recognize your unlimited spirit

When we are born, we are "without sin". We love all, we want to know everything; we seek to be loved in return. 

As we grow, somehow this all changes. 

Maybe we are too anxious to belong to our society, so we believe and accept a lower standard; love few, trust few, keep to yourself - worst of all we learn how bad we are. 

What a price to pay to belong to this sad, sad society. 

What a limited outlook for a truly unlimited spirit to accept!

The need for quiet reflective thought

In our culture we are encouraged to rely upon one another. We are surrounded by the "agents of distraction" from birth. 

Because of this, we are discouraged from self-examination, from reflective meditation. 

This is a disservice. The only hope for true love and happiness in life is acceptance and knowledge of self, which can be achieved only through quiet reflective thought.