This is a hard one. But Eleanor Roosevelt knew what she was talking about. The former First Lady ranked in the top nine most widely admired people of the twentieth century. Her legacy, one among many, was to tell us “The choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” Yet her life was far from an easy one. Her experiences led her also to tell us this: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ “

How Others Can Make Us Feel

Perhaps the most frequent, and psychologically damaging, event we can experience is to have other people try to make us feel inferior to them. Parents, teachers, friends, and our peers have enormous  influence on our state of happiness–if we let them. We can feel good about ourselves and the careless disparaging or mocking words of someone else can change our state immediately for the worse–if we let them. We can feel genuine and deserved excitement at our achievements and yet the words of critics can sink our enthusiasm–if we let them.

Why?

The foundation of why we let other people affect our state of mind and heart lies in our willingness to forfeit our own life to theirs, symbolically, at least. We worry so much about being accepted that we are often willing to pay a high price for that approval. Sometimes we are aware of doing this. Many times we are not, until some event or crisis changes our perception.

In truth, our concern about what others think and feel toward us occupies way too much of our time. That kind of worry is like living a half life for the duration we spend immersed in it. It yields nothing for us–except distraction. It solves no problem. It does not enhance our life, or move us forward.

Others Have No Power Over Us

If we were aliens come to earth to study the species, how would we see this negative behavior in which earthlings spent time making others feel less important, less significant, less valued? Step back and imagine you are the observer, not the participant. The first, the most primary question you would ask is why people put up with it.

It’s a good question. We don’t have to. We cannot always stop others from careless or even cruel behavior, but we can stop ourselves from reacting to it.

A Way Into Freedom

Weakness is not being less–no one is “less” than anyone else–weakness is reacting with negative emotion to whatever is going on. We don’t have to do that.

When we understand this, we are free. Exactly what these very powerful words of Eleanor Roosevelt are telling us.

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It is said that you experience your most authentic nature–your truest self–when you follow a path that matches your earliest traits and inclinations. Why? As children we are close to God, free of the limitations that come upon us all too fast later on as we try to fit in with the rules and behaviors both our families and our society desire and intend for us. Because of this, as children we are able to let our creative power express itself effortlessly. And what draws our attention most is always something that resonates not only with our soul purpose in life, but also within our heart.

All Too Often the Wrong Message Shuts Down Creativity

Many years ago a journalist wrote a story about his daughter, who was in first-grade. She  had brought home a drawing she had done in school. He wasn’t sure what it was, for it consisted of wide sweeping streaks of blue and green and in the center a patch of white, but looking at it he felt joy run through him, a lightness of being. To his chagrin, though, he had to ask his daughter what it was, and she just laughed and said “Why, it’s a sailboat in the wind!”

The next day he looked for the drawing to show to a friend but it wasn’t on the refrigerator door.

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We spend a great amount of time comparing ourselves with others. It is a habit that can strangle our motivation, our optimism, our belief in who we are, our feelings of self-worth. And it is a habit to ditch—NOW.

Why?

Not only will no good come of it, no advantage or progress forward, but more to the point, comparing yourself with others is a sign you have given away your personal power.

What Exactly Does That Mean?

When you meet other people or spend time with them, you may express your thoughts, beliefs, and ideas—or you may not. How do you know if that is a matter of personal choice and preference, or if you are giving up your true identity, where your power lives? You are relinquishing personal power if you:

• Say things in order to please someone else when the words do not match your own values and opinions.

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In this link to a marvelous video, a crowd of golden retrievers has just been dropped off at the local swimming hole.

13 Golden Retrievers + 1 River = 46 Seconds Of Absolute Zen 

It is impossible not to smile watching them play in the water. What do they know that we don’t?

They have three things going for them: they really like to have fun, they love the water, and they don’t have a quarrel with each other. Plenty of room for everybody. It doesn’t occur to them not to like each other–that’s not in their nature. A more loving dog doesn’t exist on the planet–I’d take that to court.

It’s also impossible after the video ends not to wish we–humans, specifically–could do the same thing. We step fast into ego, not out of it, somewhere around the age of six years. Before then, we’re golden retriever material.

After age six we spend most of our life coping with that ego, and we usually let it rule–after all, we’re here to win, succeed, achieve, make lots of money (or try to), and make sure the other guy or gal doesn’t get there first. OR we use that ego to manipulate others in an active-passive way. OR we spend an inordinate amount of time self-absorbed. We make friends, but too often have conditions attached. We can get carried away by–and feed on–our own grievances. We can hold on to negative memories with a tenacity long after the events have ended.

You have to wonder why. Why let that ego rule? Self-defense? Self-doubt? It definitely isn’t because we’re sure of much.

Back to the golden retrievers. They smile with their whole body, mind, and spirit. They can’t help it. There’s no self-consciousness, no one-upmanship, no desperation, no competition. Just a sheer exuberance for living, and for being here on this earth.

Here’s a thought. Spend one hour sometime this week letting yourself feel only exuberance for life, nothing else. Think of it as a gift to yourself. If an hour seems too long, try it for fifteen minutes. If you do, leave a comment–tell the outcome. It just might make someone smile…

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Infinite Variation

If we do not look for the infinite variation that surrounds us, we are closing ourselves off from illuminations of spirit that can bring the awareness we are never alone, or separate, or lost. The truth is that we are always being given guidance and we are always being loved by All That Is.

Evidence of this lies in our unique selfhood, which in its vitality illuminates our days and has been offered to us as a gift. It is confirmed when we allow ourselves to feel compassion toward the unique vitality of each other and of all the creatures of the earth.

Allowing Grace

Our being here is no accident, and our life purpose is no mystery. Our job is simple–allowing God’s grace into our life however it shows up, and letting it work in us and through us.

Some believe we must do remarkable things to be of value, reach some kind of celebrity in our field, as if that way we know we are significant. It isn’t so. Every day there is a reason we exist, something only we can do, and the hard part is often allowing ourselves to enter that path. What if it ends in obscurity? 

But there is no obscurity in a child of God. Not ever. Our human perception can merge with divine perception on the spin of a dime. We only have to say yes.

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Life is a blessed journey that appears in a series of moments, for the NOW is all there is. We dwell on the past, but in truth, there is only the present moment that is lived, and it is our point of power. Try to hold time for an instant, feel and experience all sight and sound and nuance of sensation and perception for one moment, consciously, by giving it your complete and utter attention—focus, concentrate on this—and the act of doing so sings you into the present fully, and for a fleeting fraction of your experience you know you are eternal in manifestation. Poets call it epiphany. It is what Wordsworth is describing in his poem “Intimations of Immortality.”

Matthew 26:40

On the night Jesus entered the garden of Gethsemane he fell to the ground and prayed to God to be free of the terrible events that were about to take place. His fear was great, and the burden immense. Yet in the same breath he also said “Thy will be done.” His was not a passive acceptance of fate. He did not want to die. His own agony was overwhelming. Yet in the same breath he accepted what was to come if it was God’s will, saying “if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.”

Three times Jesus went further into the darkness of Gethsemane alone to pray, asking three of his disciples to wait and pray for him, too. Each time he returned, he found them all asleep. And he said to Peter,

What, could ye not watch with me one hour?

He knew he would be betrayed, not only by Judas Iscariot, but by Peter and the others. They would deny knowing him, afraid of the consequences. Yet he showed them no bitterness, and no judgment.

I wonder what I would have done—stayed awake for that hour, or slept? Would I have denied knowing Jesus if asked, to save myself, denied his vision of love and peace as one I shared? The question is not only whether I would have had enough courage to speak the truth. More, the question is whether I would have had enough love in my heart to know it was the only way.

Photo source: www.garmaonhealth.com

In his book The Biology of Belief, cell biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton describes how in the first six years of life, children perceive their world in the theta frequency. After that they move to beta, which is our normal day-to-day operating procedure. Theta is also that period of time when we are just conscious between waking and sleeping. This has been studied by many scientists, psychologists, and medical personnel. The theta state is like a sponge–we absorb tremendous amounts of information in that frequency. The early childhood years require the absorption of billions of details to learn how to function in the physical and emotional worlds. We never again learn as much as we do in those first years. We are effectively storing more information than the largest supercomputer.

Too many of us doubt we are of value in the world. We view those who have achieved so much and wonder what we are doing here, having done far less. Or so we believe. It is always a matter of belief. We tell ourselves negative stories, and most of the stories seem absolutely true, about our life’s experiences and our personal worth. It is a form of self-hypnosis. The thing is, we all have gifts that are essential to life’s evolving purpose, and Timothy’s words are God’s message to each one of us—it matters that you do not neglect the gift that is in you.

The road into peaceful well-being is unique to you. No one else follows the same path. Your road can be one of hardship or one of relative ease, though most often it is somewhere in-between. It may involve a spiritual crisis, or you may never experience self-doubt. Whatever happens, though, it is the soul’s journey. Your human self is living out the blueprint of your soul. The gift to yourself is to let it become and transform, in whatever way is—again—unique to you and no other.

The mysteries and revelations life brings so often surprise us. We have beliefs about our expectations, too, most often when we do not listen to our inner voice. You know this. You feel in a palpable way those things that fulfill you and those that do not.

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