LIFE

LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE ARE BUSY DOING OTHER THINGS

SPIRITUALITY : Spirituality is the movement of our own prison of self-blame and self-preoccupation to an inclusive and open engagement with all of life. In many ways a spiritual path is about connection- a deep connection to our inherent capacity for wisdom and love no matter what; a connection to a bigger picture of life no matter what. We can easily go from dawn to dusk disconnected, not only from genuine contact from others, but also from fundamental and loving aspects of our own hearts.

Spiritual practices of mindfulness, generosity, service and loving-kindness not only turn this tendency around towards genuine connection, they also become the manifestation of a free mind. Spiritual life is a place where the means and the end are the same..

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a healthy yes to your adventure. The longest journey is the journey inward; for those who have chosen their destiny have started on the quest for the source of their beginning. Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible Sun within us. True wisdom springs only from the calm heart’s clarity which follows the elimination of the ego by inward search and finding out that the search for self is a futile endeavor.

Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique. If there had been someone like them in the world, there would have been no need for them to be born.’ Martin Buber

Transformation is a journey without a final destination. Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul’s individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life, than succeed at someone else’s. All journeys have a secret destination of which the traveler is unaware. Solitude is the place of purification

Be content with what you have. Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you. He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them- that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow in whatever way they like.’ Lao Tzu

TAO: ‘THE WAY’: ‘In our culture we are not so familiar with the notion of ways or paths. It is a concept that comes from China. The ‘Way’ is known as ‘Tao’. It provides refuge from the chaos of modern society. The Tao, or simply ‘the way’ is the world unfolding according to its own laws. Nothing is done or forced, everything just comes about. To live in accord with the Tao is to understand non-doing and non-striving. Your life is already itself.’ Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘So the challenge is whether you can see in this way and live in accordance with the way things are; to come into harmony with all things and all moments. This is the path of insight, of wisdom, and of healing. It is the path of healing. It’s the path of the mind-body looking deeply into itself and knowing itself. It is the art of conscious living.

‘This is the art of conscious living, of knowing your inner resources and your outer resources and knowing that fundamentally there is no inner or outer. There is little of this in Western education. Schools do not emphasize being. We are left to sort that one out by ourselves. It is ‘doing’ that is the currency of modern education. Jon Kabat Zinn

Sadly though, it is a fragmented doing for the most part; divorced as it is from any emphasis on who is doing the doing (or why) and from what we might learn from the domain of ‘being’.

‘So often the doing is done with the pressure of time, as if we were being pushed through the world, without the luxury of stopping and taking our bearings, of knowing who is doing the doing. Awareness itself is not highly valued nor are we taught the richness of it and how to nurture it and use it.’ Jon Kabat-Zinn

A LIFE OF MEANING: SERVING A PURPOSE GREATER THAN OURSELVES

The major source of our suffering and fear is our self-preoccupation. So, working for a cause that helps others can be a great source of inner peace and joy. And it reduces our fear.

To be afraid all the time, is to be alone all the time, stuck in your head telling stories. When we spend all of our time trapped in the past and the future, we are only telling stories. In loving-kindness meditation there is only Silence and Love.

‘A hero or heroine is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.’ Joseph Campbell

‘By having reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. The purpose of life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.’ Albert Schweitzer

‘Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the light of the candle will not be diminished. Happiness never decreases by being shared.’ The Buddha

‘Life is an exciting business and most exciting when it is lived for others. True happiness is not attained from self-gratification, but comes through fidelity to a worthy purpose. We all can find meaning by working for a worthy purpose and trying to help others. This is where the true gold in life is to be found.’ Helen Keller

‘There is no greater gift than that of giving one’s time and energy to helping others without expecting anything in return. What counts is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.’ Nelson Mandela

‘Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my wealth, my power, and my strength. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence, as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness’ Erich Fromm

WHAT IS MINDFULNESS: Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that. Compassion and kindness towards ourselves are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and loving attention.

Mindfulness practice can be practiced without any prior knowledge of the concepts and tenets of Buddhism. Buddhism or simply a secular mindfulness is Kindness and Silence.

I, myself, choose the tenets of Zen Buddhism, because it gives me a ground to stand on: to wake up, live in the present moment, practice gratitude for the myriad of miracles inside us and in the world, and finally arriving at the liberation of knowing that there is no difference between inside and outside, between myself and the world that I live in. Then it makes it easier to try to have compassion for all living beings.

Awareness is like an elder brother or sister; gentle, attentive, who are there to guide you. It is tolerant and lucid, never violent or discriminatory. Meditation does not mean to fight with a problem. Meditation is to observe.

HAVING THE COURAGE TO SIT : The problem about coming back and landing in the present moment is what we find when we get there. Do you think that is why we avoid it so much? As soon as we come back to our body and close our eyes, we discover we’re full of everything we’ve been experiencing and all the images, sounds, and feelings that come with it. If the world feels broken already, why would we want to encounter it; we want to resist.

And still, I don’t think we can truly meet ourselves until we face the world as it is: cruel, unjust, endlessly aching. It’s a lifelong act of discernment; to hold space for suffering while remaining tenderly attuned to the sanctity of our existence. It may seem that there is a paradox here: on the one hand, the Zen Masters tell us to breathe and accept the situation, but on the other hand, they say we must seek to change it. The way out is to do both. How can we hope to change something if we have not yet understood how it came to be?

How can we listen and understand what’s going on outside if we can’t hear and understand what’s going on inside? Twenty or thirty minutes of taking care of the world, its suffering is reflected in our own body and feelings. It takes a lot of courage. ‘We train to encounter ourselves with gentleness and without judging or reacting. We don’t sit to become a buddha or to be someone else, someone better or someone different. We just sit to be ourselves, sitting. Creating a window of fifteen minutes of freedom to be ourselves every day is already something.

There’s an art to sitting. It’s not about adding up the minutes, holding a certain posture, or escaping somewhere other than right where we are. There’s an ease and naturalness and an aimlessness to just being there, alive, fascinated by the miracle of breathing and sensing the world.’ We listen deeply to the imprint of the world in our body and feelings; we dissolve the restlessness, soothe the anxiety. If necessary, we cry the tears. We don’t meditate to touch peace; we meditate to recognize and embrace, and transform everything we find that is blocking the way between us and peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh says, ‘You’re allowed to cry, just don’t forget to breathe.’

We embrace our tears with the energy of mindfulness. In sitting, we need the compassion and creativity of an artist, the stillness of a meditator, and the discipline of a warrior.

Have you ever wondered why tears are salty? Tears have a purpose. They are what we carry of the ocean, and perhaps we must become the sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to become transformed. I hold the line. I’ll hold the line

Your life doesn’t begin when you become ‘enlightened’ or after death. It’s happening right now. You don’t need to put your happiness on hold, waiting for someone to arrive and give you permission to fully live. You are the permission.

So stop sitting in the waiting room of your own life. Get up. Step in. Own it.

INVEST IN YOURSELF : All that energy you normally pour out of yourself; that you are not worthy of love, of compassion. The antidote to that is helping others. You are deserving of love. You matter. Unfortunately, as a society we have become more and more isolated from other people.

Redirect it inward. You are your greatest project, and it’s time to act like it. Take the class, learn the skill, lift the weights, go to therapy. Unpack your past. Challenge your patterns. Build a life that excites you, not one that’s just waiting for someone else to complete it.

Your growth is worth every ounce of effort you put in. Period!

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

‘When one door of happiness closes, another one opens. But usually we spend so much time looking at the closed door, we don’t see the one that has opened.’ Helen Keller

So stop sitting in the waiting room of your own life. Get up. Step in. Own it. Start making choices that light you up, that make you feel alive, that remind you who you are.

‘Almost every successful person begins with two assumptions: the future can be better than the present and they have the power to make it so. Much of our life is about failure, whether we acknowledge it or not. Your destiny is profoundly shaped by how effectively you learn from and adapt to failure. ‘ David Brooks

BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY: We all have to make space to build the connections that truly matter. Strengthen your friendships. Show up for your family. Find your community. Surround yourself with people who see you, who challenge you, who celebrate you—not just the ones who text you when they’re bored. Relationships are essential for spiritual growth and help us find meaning and purpose in our lives. Spiritual growth means an aspiration and an intention to improve the quality of our own lives as well as the lives of others. We who live on this planet Earth share a common ancestry and a common destiny. We already live together; we need to learn to not only live together, but to work together for our common good and the good of our home: Mother Earth. We need to learn to love others-even those who we don’t like or are our sworn enemies.

Hang out with optimistic people. When our relationships are superficial, we feel as though we are living superficial lives.’ However, when our relationships with others and ourselves, reflect our deeper commitments and aspirations, we feel as if we are traveling on the right path.

‘Develop and bolster relationships. Building strong social connections with family or friends enhances feelings of self-worth and long-term studies show that strong social connections are associated with better health and longevity.’ Dr. Stepehn Southwick

‘The key is to keep company only with people that uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.’ Epictetus

‘Optimism is easily dismissed by the more ‘realistic’ or ‘cynical’ people in the world. While it may sound trivial, positive thinking and surrounding yourself with positive people really does help relieve stress and build resilience.’ Dr. Stephen Southwick

Study after study has shown that having commitments is actually healthy, especially if those commitments reflect the values that we have chosen to care about. The promise of a spiritual life is that we can heal our feelings through love and an experiential understanding of the essential interconnectedness of all beings.

‘The message of the summoned life is that you don’t need to panic if you don’t yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourself into circumstances where the summons will come. Success is earned externally by being better than other people. But character, that sort of authentic goodness, is earned by being better than you used to be. And it’s about self-confrontation and humility.’ David Brooks

Volunteer. Be intentional about your relationships, and your life will never feel empty.

CHALLENGE THE BULLSHIT NARRATIVE: Life is like a theater. You are assigned a role. If you don’t like the role, keep in mind that you have the power to recreate the role you want: the role of the original mind of basic goodness. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

So rewrite the script. Your life isn’t a placeholder. It’s not almost. It’s now.

We were born to realize our own potential. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our Presence may liberate others. We have what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us. Your heart will lead the way to fulfillment.

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Life itself can’t give you joy unless you really want it!. Life just gives us time and space. High self-esteem and personal effectiveness are available to anyone willing to take the time to pursue it. Our perceptions are so crucial. Do we count our blessings or our shortcomings, our failures.

We can think about all the things that we don’t have or we can think about and be grateful for all the things that we do have.

The latter will change your life.

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‘Action without vision is only passing time, vision without action is merely daydreaming, but vision with action can change the world. There is no easy walk to freedom. ‘When people are determined, they can overcome anything.’ Nelson Mandela

There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.’ Nelson Mandela

A winner is a dreamer who never gives up. Where you stand depends on where you sit.

One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others. Appearances matter — and remember to smile.’ Nelson Mandela

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Life itself can’t give you joy unless you really want it!. Life just gives us time and space. High self-esteem and personal effectiveness are available to anyone willing to take the time to pursue it. Our perceptions are so crucial. Do we count our blessings or our shortcomings, our failures.

We can think about all the things that we don’t have or we can think about and be grateful for all the things that we do have.

The latter will change your life.

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that others will not feel insecure around you. We were born to realize our potential. If we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. Our presence liberates others.

Life is a miracle. We, ourselves are a miracle. Miraculous here does not refer to extraordinary phenomena but to the commonplace, for absolutely anything can evoke this special awareness provided that close attention is paid to it. Once perception is disengaged from the domination of preconception and personal interests, it is free to experience the world as it is and to behold its inherent magnificence. We are The Universe looking at Itself!

I have found something that allows me to continue to try to make a difference in this world and that something I can’t explain or articulate, because it resides in far too private a chamber of personal experiences to be shared easily. To have faith in a foundation I have discovered in life, and which, though it is difficult to describe, even to myself, I refuse to relinquish

Some people are nihilistic and say it’s all too much, there is nothing we can do. I could just shut down and shut myself off from the news, from those I love, from everyone. I call this burnout ‘compassion fatigue’. We are all experiencing it. We tell ourselves, ‘It’s all too much! What difference can I make?”

‘We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place- or not to bother. You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one must take responsibility for their lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.’ Jane Goodall

REFLECT, GROW AND REPEAT : FOLLOW YOUR HEART

Appreciate the fact that life is complex. Abandon the urge to simplify everything; to look for formulas and easy answers, and begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life. We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often ‘life’ is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

‘ Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to never stop questioning. You, yourself, as much as anyone deserves your affection. Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.’ Einstein

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If we can control our own mind, we can find the way to wisdom and virtue will naturally come to us. No one can save us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

‘Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.’ Goethe

‘All sorts of things occur to help that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one’s favour all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. ‘ Wolfgang von Goethe

When others tell you what you want to do is impossible, don’t listen to them and follow your own heart and dreams. Even if you fail, you will learn valuable lessons, and become stronger and ever closer to your goal.

SET GOALS AND GO GET THEM:

This is your time. What do you want to build, a charity, a new career, a stronger body, a deeper understanding of yourself? Most people feel stuck. They have given up on dreaming and setting new goals. They will stay in shitty jobs, and in toxic or even abusive relationships. In the end, they prefer suffering that is familiar to them, rather than the suffering needed to make the difficult decisions and actions to fulfil their own potential.

Set the goals. Break them down. Take the steps. Stop waiting for ‘the right time’ because this is the right time. You can say, ‘when’ I feel more confident, ‘then’ I will go out there in the big bad world and do something that you are afraid to do. It simply does not work that way. You will be playing the ‘when’ and ‘then’ game for the rest of your natural born life.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is feeling the fear but doing it anyway. The confidence comes after you have gone out there and accomplished something that you were afraid to do. Humans also have a tendency to underestimate their own resilience.

‘Some things cannot be spoken of or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for a while. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way. Eventually, we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. ‘

Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking. David Whyte

“When you are in doubt, be still and wait. When doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still, be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists, as it surely will- then, act with courage. Chief White Eagle Ponca

‘To the wise person who truly understands the nature of reality, there is no place for complacency or arrogance. There is no time for that! The wise person lives with utmost humility and gratitude, and in constant awe and wonder at the miracle of existence. Life is full of miracles. Tao guides along the way and accepts that all life is a mystery.’ Zhuang Zhou

Embrace the mystery of life. Be silent and look around and pay attention and you will begin to experience the utmost gratitude and humility for the gift of life and live in a sense of awe and wonder.’ Lao Tzu

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen! It answers: ‘I have made this place for you. If you leave it, you may come back, staying here.’ I don’t know how nature can restore us and bring us back to life.

It had been decades since I had felt that way, and it was such a distant memory with so many wounds in my heart and my soul, but there were the silent stirrings of some primordial instinct of freedom and life and beauty that had defined much of my childhood.

PRACTICE GRATITUDE

Gratitude is an appreciation of all that sustains us; an acknowledgement of blessings great and small. It is confidence in life itself and confidence in ourselves and our ability to manage our own lives. The same force that causes all things to grow on this planet are within us.

What is given to us is to tend the intentions of the heart and plant beautiful seeds with our deeds. Do not doubt that your good actions will bear fruit, and that change for the better can arise from your life. Praise and blame, obstacles and triumph will come and go. It is not given to us to know how our life will affect the world.

JEWELS: When we are born, we are given a bag of jewels. This becomes confusing for most of us. We believe that we are to collect, in one way or another, come hell or high water, to fill the bag by acquiring more and more jewels, so that your bag is stuffed so full that it starts to overflow. Then we simply acquire a bigger bag and try to fill that bag with more and more jewels.

When you die you will be left with a big bag of jewels. As we are dying, we may question the value of having more jewels than most.

However, the real goal in life is to give away your jewels to help others in need, so that when you leave this world your bag is empty. And as we move on and fade away, our hearts will be filled not with fear, but at the satisfaction that throughout your life, you helped others and that your life meant something.

‘Thank-you is the best prayer that anyone can say. I say that a lot. Thank-you expresses gratitude, humility and understanding. In nature nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.’ Alice Walker

‘Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them. It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.’ Seneca

Be content with what you have. Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you. He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them- that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.’ Lao Tzu

‘If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give into it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and often not very kind and much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibilities left.’

‘Perhaps this is the way of fighting back; that sometimes, something happens that is better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very often you notice it in the instant when love begins. Whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its’ plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.’ Mary Oliver

STOP WAITING : START LIVING

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. Proust

The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed around them. They represent a struggle and a victory.’ Marcel Proust

And suddenly you know. It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings. Only those who dared to let go, can dare to reenter.’ Wolfgang Von Goethe

To drop into ‘being’ means to recognize your interconnectedness with all life, and with being itself. Your very nature is being part of larger and larger spheres of wholeness.

Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think that your soul can go it alone. A dedicated life is worth living. You must give with your whole heart. We must learn or remember how to live. There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

You can spend your days focusing on what you don’t have, or you can train yourself to see everything you do. The latter will change your life. Every day, name three things you’re grateful for. A quiet morning. A strong coffee. A belly laugh with a friend. The peace of being able to choose yourself. Count your blessings

You don’t have to compromise. You don’t have to check in. You don’t have to dull yourself down to fit someone else’s expectations. You get to do whatever or wherever you want. Freedom isn’t loneliness. It’s an opportunity. Use it.

It’s a gift to be alive, and although there is pain and suffering inside and outside of ourselves, there are many miracles there for us to see as well. However, we cannot experience the miraculous, unless we are aware: living in the present moment.

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

‘When one door of happiness closes, another one opens. But usually we spend so much time looking at the closed door, we don’t see the one that has opened.’ Helen Keller

THE MOUNTAIN: The Spiritual Path is much like climbing a mountain. The climb is tough. But each time we stop to look around, the view becomes more spectacular. We see a greater expanse and the ‘flaws’ of the world below disappear as we see more and more of the whole, giving us a whole new perspective on life in general.

‘The birds have vanished into the sky and now the last clouds drain away. We sit together, the mountain and me until only the mountain remains. ‘Li-Po

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

‘And if these mountains had eyes, they would wake to find two strangers in their fences, standing in admiration as breathing red pours its tinge upon earth’s shore. These mountains, which have seen untold sunrises, long to thunder praise but stand reverent, silent so that man’s weak praise should be given God’s attention.’ Henry Melville

When we are young we think that we can plan and arrange our lives so that the consummation of all of our aspirations is laid out before us in a clear path that we do not lose sight of; that the path from here to there is clear with no obstacles in our way.’ David Whyte

The only environment in the natural world where this would hold true is in an arid desert, devoid of all life. So the path disappears again and again from view. There will be many times when we simply do not know how to proceed, where to go. Again, these are the times when we push through despite the fact that we do not know where the path will lead us.’ David Whyte

As we climb higher, we can become more detached from the weight of the world and we experience a greater sense of freedom. We feel lighter and are lifted higher by the increasing beauty we see. If we follow the spiritual path, we begin to change our perspective of ‘self’.

Our limited, impoverished sense of self becomes much larger than a small, separate entity disconnected from the world and others and we can begin to experience more of a ‘non-self’ attitude toward life. From this vantage point we become more compassionate as well. We all have an innate inner goodness, which we have lost along our path through life.

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner

To be loved, and to love, needs courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern—and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values. The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.

The journey upward is not always a steady climb. We may climb, then stop and rest, and regroup. So too, with the spiritual journey. No path through life takes a straight trajectory.

These are the times on the journey of life where all we can reasonably do is to simply stand in the ground of our own life, our own being, without trying to abstract ourselves into a ‘better’ strategic future so that we don’t have to deal with the heartbreak of our lives; a vain attempt to escape the reality of our life.

The spiritual journey is a path where our lives take on a deeper meaning beyond our own egocentric concerns and perspective and we dedicate ourselves to first improving our own lives, and then working towards helping others; of the joy of serving a worthy or noble purpose that is greater than ourselves.

Life is complex. Each of us must make his or her own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another. The journey of life is not paved or brightly lit and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. But, if we know exactly where we are going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we’ll see along the way, we won’t learn anything.

When we wake up to our potential power, our first instinct is to ‘grab it all quick’. The more we grab, the more it seems to elude us. This is the same concept as ‘grasping’ and according to Buddhism one of the key sources of suffering. So often when we are discouraged, thinking that we are learning nothing from all our efforts, changes are really taking place within us.

We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes. We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

The biggest pitfall as you make your way through life is impatience. Being impatient is simply a way of punishing yourself. It creates stress, dissatisfaction, and fear. Moreover, impatience is caused by our inability to pay attention to what life has to offer us now, in the present moment.

Just say, ‘What’s the rush? Life goes on despite my temporary, impermanent feelings and mood swings. When I am ready to move forward, I will. I am incorporating new information, developing new habits and learning.’

Patience means trusting that we are growing; that what we wish from life will happen and giving it time to happen. It requires a certain trust in our own capabilities and resilience. There are only two experiences in life: those that stem from our basic goodness and those that have something to teach us. We recognize the first as joy and the latter as struggle. But the times of struggle help us to grow in Wisdom, Integrity, and Compassion.

We can trust our intuition and listen to what our emotions are telling us; both negative and positive. Negative emotions such as depression and anxiety are very good indicators of where we are on our path and if we examine our lives closely, we will learn when to change directions or to simply stay the course or to rest and let it be. If the path we are on isn’t providing us with joy, satisfaction, creativity, love, and caring, that isn’t it and it’s time to try another path or approach.

Again, it is essential that we don’t push away difficult emotions, but rather observe them without judgement and learn what they have to tell us. Negative emotions serve as signposts on our individual paths. Also, putting off painful decisions is counter-productive to our growth. Sometimes the uncomfortable path is the one that leads us to greater happiness. As a great Stoic once said, ‘Easy decisions; difficult life. Hard decisions, easy life.

‘The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.’ Scott Peck

Each time we confront some intense difficulty, we know that there is something that we have not learned yet, and that we have been given an opportunity to learn. ‘What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step towards something better.’ Wendell Phillips

We need to examine our own lives and decide what it is that we wish to do with the time left remaining to us. However, even if we are not certain what the proper course of action is, there are times when we must simply take a leap of faith. We must act.

‘I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk has not ended. ‘ Nelson Mandela

Being human is difficult. To be a decent human being, can be even more difficult until you reach the point where you say to yourself, and to the world ‘THIS IS WHERE I MAKE A STAND!