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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Living in the Present Moment

In both the book of Matthew, Chapter 6 and the book of Luke, Chapter 12, Jesus asks why the people feel so anxious. In truth, he says to them, they have everything they could ever want already present within their own hearts, where dwells the kingdom of God. Consider the lilies of the field, he tells them. Watch how the flowers accept the light of the sun, the falling rain, the wind that blows across the land, receiving all of it as a gift of life.

The passage speaks to us still. We often live as if time is escaping us, and our sense of worry and fretfulness overtakes us, sometimes along with or because of fear and anxiety. These are the things that consume far too many hours in our day, when what we need to do is stop, if even for only a moment, and enter the quiet place within.

Allowing Ourselves Time to Just Be

The least helpful advice anyone can give us is to tell us to be practical, to think ahead, to shape up and get it together. We know all that. What we need to hear instead are words reminding us that we are sent here by God to have this human experience, to feel the precious and exquisite pattern of the days. It is in this camouflage three-dimensional reality that we apprehend the essence of our spiritual selves through how we feel while we live within the barriers of time, and discover they open our consciousness after all into far deeper recognitions. T.S. Eliot wrote these lines about just that in The Four Quartets, in “Burnt Norton”:

“Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.”

Nothing is ever solved by the feeling of anxiety. Let it go. In its place allow trust, like the lilies of the field, the kind of trust that senses all is well, no matter how it seems otherwise. Because it is.

And seek not ye what ye shall eat, and what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind.
For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: but your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.
Yet seek ye his kingdom, and these things shall be added unto you.