Achieving Peace and Serenity

I was reminded today that my experience is that it is not possible to skip over the unpleasant emotions like shame, guilt or hurt, often associated with past events, and move straight to peace and serenity.  It is clear to me that in order to achieve higher levels of communion and deeper levels of peace, it is necessary to completely resolve and integrate those feelings first.  For me, the first step in the process of resolving my past issues was breaking down my denial and becoming aware that I was carrying around feelings of hurt, guilt and shame, an unpleasant realization.  The next step(s) involved several years of shedding light on those feelings, understanding where they came from and recognizing the truth about them, that they were lies or misunderstandings.  The final result has been a sense of freedom I did not know was possible and a deeper love for myself and others.

Joy in Simple Things

One of my friends has a “special needs child”.  She is profoundly disabled and has a lot of pain.  She also finds great joy in the simple things in life, as do I.  Pain and disability has a way of stripping away a commonly held grasping toward the unimportant things in life, transient things like material possessions, money, power and prestige.  It then becomes more possible to see and feel joy in simple, basic things, like feeling a breeze, being with family or a hug.  In general, children have not yet gotten lost in the meaningless aspects of our culture.  They can teach us much, if we adults can listen.

Looking for Love

During the recovery meeting tonight the speaker mentioned what he described as a very strong and indefinable and powerful feeling in his home group that he found very comforting and supportive.  The others, including me, in the meeting believed what he was describing to be love and connectedness.  There was a general acceptance of its importance in recovery, a recognition that we are all seeking that feeling.

Love and Faith

A day of rest.  I did my exercises, paid some bills, went to a movie and relaxed.  The movie, “The Croods”, was all about the consequences of a life based on fear versus a life based on love and faith, very touching.  I cried several times due to the truth expressed in the movie about the confining nature of a fear based life versus the freedom and power of a love and faith based life.
Two things that I practice on a daily basis are gratitude for my life and staying within my physical limits.  The fact is that because of my age and disability, I have relatively little endurance.  I try, successfully, to be grateful and not do very much and, as a result, I end up tired, but not exhausted, at the end of each day.  Recently, I also became aware that any resistance I had to experiencing the events of my life also made me tired, any resistance to “what is”.

Pure Love

As far as I can tell, there is only one kind of love, a strong feeling of an intense willingness and desire to exert oneself for someone else’s spiritual and emotional growth or welfare.  That love comes from the force/power known as God.  In its pure form love is totally selfless and totally directed at the growth and welfare of the other entity.  I feel it all the time for everything and everyone else and I also feel it directed at me, most powerfully from God but also from everything and everyone, since we are all connected and all of us have a portion of that power/force within us.  I find it to be quite amazing to live my life so immersed and surrounded by love.
In my past, love was mixed up with fear and co-dependency, not totally selfless and experienced as feelings of infatuation, being “in love” and lust.  There is nothing at all wrong with those feelings, they are fun and intense to experience, they are simply not purely love.  For example, when my wife and I met, thirty-two years ago, there were strong feelings of being in love and the lust that, in my case, comes with a touch of fear mixed with love.  It was very human and wonderful to experience those feelings.  We have now been married for thirty one years and we feel an enduring love for each other, also wonderful to experience.

A Day of Connection and Love

A day of connection and love.  I worked with several individual clients and one family today, using the guidance I received plus my own intuition.  I felt very much like a simple conduit, a tool responding to outside forces.  My job was to remain neutral, love the people I was working with at that moment, listen and take action according to input from the people at one end and God at the other.  I was in the middle, responding to both sides.  As long as I stay neutral and keep my own ego out of it, the results are quite magical and totally enjoyable, for everyone.
The people and family I worked with are all at different stages of their own growth.  One of the clients and his family are preparing to move on to the next stage of recovery, so I have to keep in mind that my job is to make myself obsolete.  One of the others is at the beginning of his journey with me and with him I need to keep in mind that I am just a part of that journey.  The others are in between.  All in all, a very fulfilling mixture!

Rising Early

At my recovery meeting tonight the speaker spoke of waking at 1:00 AM, unintentionally, and the benefits of the “quiet time” during the early morning hours.  I spoke with him after the meeting and let him know that I get out of bed between 1:30 and 2:00 AM intentionally and referred to it as “magic time”.  The fact is that the hours between 2:00 and 6:00 are my time to be with God, to pray and meditate.  For some reason, during this time each day, I can focus on and immerse myself in the feeling of love, I know to be God.  I also receive guidance and directions for working with the people and families during the coming day.
For me the procedure of waking up early and asking for guidance during the morning hours, began many years ago, when I was still working full time.  At that time, I would awaken at 5:00 AM and also take a break from my early morning routine on the weekends.  In 2005 I began partial retirement, due to my disability and age.  The time of my arising kept getting earlier after partial retirement.  The time has been at 1:30-2:00 for a couple of years now and I have stopped taking breaks on weekends, I do it every day.  I set no alarm and look forward to it.

The Power of Conventional and Holistic Activity

A good solid day of exercise and household activities and, as always, a good deal of prayer, meditation and contemplation.  I am impressed by how much my balance, strength, coordination and endurance have improved over the years, especially considering the various predictions of the doctors.
My progress has required a lot of discipline, perseverance, love and healing visualizations, a very powerful combination of holistic and conventional activities.  I have wondered which activity was the most important, but I think it best to just let that go.  The fact is using that combination, I have overcome a number of “incurable” conditions or conditions that would normally require surgery.  I have also shown the techniques to others, with similar results.

Life's Riches

The comment I made the other day about having very little “by American standards”, has been on my mind, since by world standards, I have a great deal.  I do have a house, some land, a ten year old car, good food, plenty of water, enough income, some furniture, an oldish computer, etc.  My point is, that stuff is a great deal more than I need and not at all necessary for my happiness.  I enjoy having that stuff but if it were not there my life would be different, at least on the surface, and I would be fine, even with my physical challenges and advancing age.  I can envision living in a trailer in the desert, being dead or having others in my “tribe” taking care of me and not being physically able, either would be fine with me.  In any case, my life would have the richness I gave it.

Increasing the Love

The father of a very close friend of mine almost died, was unconscious and on life support for several days.  People who were close to the father, or had been, came to his bedside from all over the world to be close and express their love for him.  The father then regained consciousness and is experiencing some degree of recovery.  In my case I also almost died a while back resulting in a great deal of love expressed and felt by the local recovery community and several others around the country whose lives I had touched.  Each instance served to increase the amount of love in the world, going along with the idea that the purpose of life is to “learn to give and receive love (Mother Teresa).