9 Kinds of Buddies You Will Come Across in Life

Every guy knows these kind of 9 guys in their lives who in all probability could be present in their gang of buddies. After reading this piece you will surely identify most or all of them from among your friends.

1. The cheap dude
This guy will never be seen reaching for his wallet and looks in the other direction or goes to the loo when the bill arrives. He is always borrowing cash from here and there and owes his pals money. However, the endearing way in which he does this seems to balance his debts.

2. The hit on all girls buddy
You are sure to have a buddy who seems to like any girl who is even slightly decent or pretty. He has new crushes every week and hits hard on them, but never really succeeds. Poor guy.

3. The childhood friend
He has seen you through your growing years and you both have been buddies since time immemorial. He knows your family well and you know his.

4. The player
The player or Casanova is the kind of guy of whom most guys are jealous of. He somehow always has an arm candy, maybe because of his dashing looks, abundant money or appealing personality. He also helps his buddies get set up with his girl’s friends or sisters.

5. The woman slave
He is a taken guy who is always at the beck and call of his wife or girlfriend. In fact, even if he isn’t taken, he rues about his ex and wants to be taken back by her. You people, his friends are always telling him to grow a spine and man up, but fail in front of the charms of his woman who manages to dominate him.

6. The joker
He is the most fun guy you will come across. It’s great to find a buddy like him who has a great sense of humor and is always goofing around. He makes his buddies smile and laugh no matter what. Tensions, if any, in the group are reduced because of his ability to lighten any situation.

7. The cribber
This guy is always ruing about something or the other that is wrong in his life. He is hard to pacify and even after his wishes are fulfilled, he will find some fault with another thing. Be it his love life, work, the government or even God, his cribbing is a constant.

8. The party guy
This guy is always available to party. He may not be of much help as a friend, but the moment you mention party, he is ready with exclusive passes for entries to the best clubs in town and is ever ready to get sloshed.

9. The fitness freak
We all know this one quite well. He is the kind who is obsessed with some kind of sport or goes regularly to the gym. He can’t do without his protein shakes and dispenses fitness tips at the drop of a hat.

You could in fact be any of these guys and your friends could be a combination of any of these guys. However they are, friends are for life and they all have their pros that outweigh their cons, hence they are called buddies.

Résuméabuiyad

Gratitude: It Starts With a List

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. ~Epictetus

The most common and ancient advice you hear about developing a practice of gratitude is the idea of counting your blessings.  Every positivity book I have ever laid my hands on has a section that encourages making regular, even daily lists of the blessings in your life. Taken to the next step, this daily listing lives in a gratitude journal.

I have had an approach/avoidance relationship to my own little pink gratitude journal that is decorated with a paisley yellow bird. I chose it in one of my inspired moments with gratitude, determined to fill it up with what I promised myself would be my new consciousness of the blessings that fill my life. It is a small, pocket sized book that I began writing in February.

I feel a little embarrassed that there are still so many pages to fill in such a small book.  My original plan was to carry it with me in my purse, thinking I would stop throughout my day to jot down moments of gratitude.   Lately it sits on my night stand where I recollect feelings of gratitude before I sleep. The book is filling up more regularly now but as I move into this gratitude challenge, I know there is a real and important difference between listing the things I am grateful for and actually feeling them.

Learning how to recollect and experience the felt sense of moments of gratitude takes my full attention in a way that listing my blessings doesn’t. Tapping the soft space inside, where my heart holds the memory of being loved, of loving, of feeling well in myself is akin to feeling deeply blessed, which I think is where gratitude and love are one in the same.

Still, on the many moments when I have no idea how to get to that tender hearted place where I feel in every cell the blessings of my life- making a list is a noble start. It is the mental practice,  the promise kept of leaning towards the goodness that we all have in our lives.  Aldous Huxley  accurately noted that, “most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

Making a commitment to a gratitude journal or even just scratching notes on the evening paper about our own good is how we begin to overcome this most common human deficiency that keeps us ever looking out there for what must be found inside.   If you have never done it before, try today to list five, or heck, even ten things that bless you. It can be as small as finding a parking place or as big as the beauty of an evening sunset. It can be a cold drink on a hot, sticky day or a moment of tenderness with someone you are trying to love. Do this one thing: write it down and acknowledge it.

Résuméabuiyad

Relax Into Relating

There is more to life than increasing its speed.”  ~Mohandas K. Gandhi

“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time….”  James Taylor’s voice crooned in my head.  This is a chorus that I am thankful to hear over and over again. In fact the older I get, the more that this simple truth has meaning. There really is no where that we are getting to and no arriving at a destination that defines us.  Our lives are like arrows on a trajectory of our intentions and learning to savor the moments that make up our daily experience is the foundation for loving yourself and others.

It is a relief to realize that relaxing into life is really how to succeed at it. It is probably also the best advice for how to treat our most intimate relationships.

The biggest life-changing relaxation method you can cultivate is letting things be as they are.  When we embrace ourselves with all of our imperfections, we have an internal barometer and capacity to offer that to the people we love. Probably the single most consistent destroyer of relationships is the tension that builds by demanding it to be what you think it should be, rather than learning to love what it is. There are millions of ways that this non-acceptance plays itself out in every relationship. It often begins within us.

We allow the wounded parts of ourselves to take our relationships hostage every time we expect that our partner or our relationship can fix what is hurt inside of us. Most of the striving and over achieving we push ourselves towards is motivated by this same internal damage. Try this for one day- relax with the broken places inside of you. Give the hurt permission to breathe, stop hating these places in yourself or your lover because they won’t change on your command. Loving someone in a relaxed way lets them be who they are. We change and grow best under conditions that allow us to be relaxed.

Focus on the joy and fun in your life. Filter your calendar decisions by whether you will have a laugh or not. Many recent studies show that increasing the number of sweet moments of fun and celebration in your loving relationships actually creates more connection and intimacy over time than showing up in the hard times. The deepest rut that most relationships suffer from is when we place more attention on getting things done rather than enjoying a moment together.

Again, as disarmingly simple as this seems to be on the surface, most relationships these days rarely have a moment of enjoyment to themselves. It is impossible to be really present with someone when you are texting three other people at the same time. Our technological capabilities have far exceeded our fledgling ability to relate. Often we don’t even see the damage that our constantly shifting attention wreaks on our relationships. Leave the phone at home and spend an hour uninterrupted listening to someone you love, or to yourself. Experience how deeply relaxing it can be to be fully present and how it feeds your feeling of being loved.

Giving yourself permission to rest, physically and mentally is a prerequisite for relaxing into your relationship. Without beating a dead drum it is worth repeating what most of us already know: We are one of the most exhausted cultures of all time- so much for all the leisure time that our new information age/economy was going to provide. Celebrate the gift of rest and how incredible it feels to wake up refreshed. The world really does look different through fresh eyes and so does your relationship. Although I have never been very good at the art of doing nothing, I am now devoted to practicing the art of leisure. Relating to someone you love in nature’s time- lying together in the summer’s tall grass, listening to birds or water moving or watching a cloud float across the sky may just breathe some space into your relationship that was there all along, but just needed a little reminder.

Résuméabuiyad

The Magic of Release...

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be….To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go.  -Lao Tzu

There might not be another word in the English language that evokes as much opening, tenderness and possibility as release. On an emotional level,  the ability to let go is the essence of what real intimacy is made from. Our human longing to hold onto those we love must mature if it is to survive into emotional release. The experience of release is found in all of the tiny, daily acts of forgiveness that most relationships demand. It grows in the trust that offers both partners the encouragement and freedom to follow one’s own heart with no fear of abandoning someone else, or being abandoned. Developing the courage to let go and release is the way to peace in ourselves and in our relationships.

Release is also a physical discipline and its practice offers one of the most healing and rewarding paths to living in a body.  Mastering the ability to physically release the tension and stress the body accumulates is tantamount to graceful aging. Even more profoundly, the practice of release opens us to the mysterious and compelling territory of experiencing sexual pleasure. Our willingness to let go of our control and slide down into the unknown territories of our sexuality opens the door to one of the most satisfying release mechanisms available: the human orgasm. There is little that compares to the scintillating and exquisite release that accompanies the orgasm’s climactic heights.

Aspiring toward release is in fact a tenet of many spiritual disciplines. Every moment that we focus our attention on our capacity to let go,  we lean into our current reality and rediscover the satisfying freedom to let things be as they are. This is where our willingness to release becomes a gateway to love, forgiveness and the courage to try again.

It is easy to be misled in this culture into believing that it is what we accumulate that defines our life. In actuality, the richest lives most often belongs to the people who strive for it’s opposite. Our ability to release and let go leaves room for what matters most, not the least of which is our ability to become more of ourselves. Release teaches that sometimes there is a more powerful force than our trying. Effort and aspiration are balanced by having the courage and insight to let go. As Lao Tzu reminds us, “By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.” Right now, think of what you can let go of and don’t try, just open your hands.

Résuméabuiyad

Do We Really Need A Guru?

Awake. Be the witness of your thoughts. You are what observes, not what you observe. — The Buddha

We come from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean and couldn’t be more different if we tried. Ed is from an over-crowded apartment in the Bronx who became a NYC dance champion; Deb was at a boarding school in the English countryside and was then an art student in London. Yet we both began the spiritual journey at the same time in the late 1960s. When Ed was in India being initiated as a Swami – a yogic monk — Deb was becoming a Buddhist. So on our honeymoon it was obvious that we should go to India to meet with our respective gurus.

We have previously written about how we can be addicted to a guru, therapist, healer or movie star and how an ego-driven guru can take advantage of his devotees to boost their power and create a “gurudom” or kingdom. But that was only one side of the story. To put it into perspective we want to share the beauty of what it means to have a guru, someone whose sole purpose in our life is to show us the confusion within ourselves until we wake up and realize our radiant selves.

Who is a guru and what does a guru mean? Simply, it means a teacher, and nowadays is a term used for multiple reasons. According to Wikipedia it is: “one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others.” This can be a business leader as much as a schoolteacher, as long as each is an expert in their field and able to impart their understanding. The traditional meaning of the word in yoga refers to a Satguru, who is not ego-driven but is one who removes ignorance and darkness and leads the disciple to self-realization.

Due to our chaotic minds it can be difficult to see ourselves clearly — just as it is difficult to see our own face unless we look in a mirror — so a genuine guru is a mirror reflecting our inner self. In particular, such a guru can see through our often subtle, mischievous and trickster egos, how we get stuck wading in mentally murky water, caught up in delusions either of grandeur or of insecurity and self-doubt.

The path of personal development never goes in a straight line, there are many detours and it is easy to go astray or even get lost. The deluded ego leads us into believing we are way special and enlightened. The guru has been down this road before us, they’ve already done the work and got the T-shirt and can, therefore, help us to navigate the path more easily.

Spiritual gurus are not all the same – some are like loving mothers or fathers, others are like military captains (we have experienced both) – but each, in their own way, is there to help us open our minds and hearts as they see in us what we cannot see in ourselves, particularly our potential and true nature. The guru reflects a skillful and awakened mind and reveals the same in us. They show us that if one person can do it so can we. As the Dalai Lama said to us when we met with him at his residence, “We are all equal here.”

One of India’s greatest holy men, Ramana Mahashi, always said that the role of the guru is to push the student from the outside in order to see the guru within – as the true guru is within each and every one of us. However, this does not mean that we must have a guru, particularly as these days they appear to be in relative short supply. The good news is that Ramana was self-realized, without a guru.

Ultimately, as the guru is our true nature and is hidden within each and every one of us, we simply need to deeply trust ourselves. Only from within can we awaken – it is not something someone else can do for us. Through meditation and insight we come to see clearly, beyond a mind that can be as distracted like a monkey bitten by a scorpion, leaping from one thought or drama to the next, to a place of clarity and wisdom. We take responsibility for our actions, recognizing the interdependent and impermanent nature of all things. Life is a precious gift and nothing in this world will make us forever happy, but when we look within we find a radiant reality. The greatest gift is our own wonderful selves.

Résuméabuiyad

if you are still suffering… then you are still the problem !!!

In May, I wrote about how You Are The Problem and today I am writing to say that if you are still suffering… then you are still the problem. Charming, right?

At first, this might seem like quite a blow. I understand. Feel free to take a moment to catch your breath… and put down that hammer you were going to throw at me. Like last time, I am not saying that you are the only problem – certainly spouses sometimes suck, children occasionally act like they were raised by beasts, coworkers do once in a while revert into petty thirteen-year-old versions of themselves, politicians drop the ball now and again, and even perfect strangers will toss a wrench in the machine of your daily life if given a chance. When that happens, it certainly feels like they are the problem, but they are not.

You are the problem.

You are the problem because that is the only way that you can become the solution you need.

While I appreciate the desire one might have to control the world, the ability to make everyone else act right so that one’s life can run like the well-oiled machine one fancies it is. Bad News Alert: It’s not going to happen. Of course, as I wrote that it’s not going to happen, I remembered that I don’t know everything. So, instead, let’s go with this:

Regarding superpowers, gaining the ability to make everyone on the planet act right… well, it hasn’t happened yet. At least as far as I know, it hasn’t happened yet. If it has, I want to talk to the slacker who inherited this gift about their priorities (Note to self: Tea Party, Focus on the Family, Home Owner’s Association, Bank of America, People who don’t spay and neuter their pets… ). 

There are things going on every single day in the 9 Environments of You that suck. Those things have the potential to turn your life into a less awesome place to live… some of them, a straight up painful place to live. Luckily, you have some choices about how to deal with those things’ suck potential:

1. Stand by and watch while those things suck the life out of your life. (see also: victim)
2. Fight all of the things so they learn who’s boss. (see also: conflict)
3. Subtly manipulate all of those things into giving you a false sense of control. (see codependency)
4. Try to orchestrate the just right bump to the head with the hope that it will result in aforementioned superpower. (see also: self-destruction, delusion, wasting of time)
5. Quit screwing around… and take back your power.

If your heart is set on Choices 1, 2, 3, or 4, I have nothing for you. Working with Seeds & Weeds Coaching won’t help you one bit. I am what some might call vehemently opposed to playing with you and your bullshit “Poor me. I’m being victimized by (insert today’s excuse)” drama… even if you throw good money at me. My clients count on me to tell them like it is… and these kinds aren’t usually into that, which dramatically reduces the possibility of making a change. I only want to make change.

If the rest of you are ready to quit screwing around and take back your power, it is my desire to support you with that. This means dealing with the YOU side of aforementioned Things That Suck… because YOU is all that we have access to while we work together. Your spouse, children, coworkers, politicians, and strangers aren’t reading this blog, and neither are your parents, for that matter. You want the change. You have the power to change the situation by changing you.

Once more for clarity: You can only control you. Period. That makes you the solution to your problems, even when others are involved.

It’s time to stop spending your precious life resources – energy, time, money, sanity, etc. – on the other party (or parties) involved in the Things That Suck in your life. We have to look into these Things That Suck and find your power position. What are your needs? How can you get your needs met? This is how we take the suck out of Things That Suck.

For example, my wife recently pointed out that I sometimes lose my cool with other drivers while operating my motor vehicle. I was (honestly) surprised to recognize that when I’m running late, driving my car turns into one of the “Things That Suck” in my life. After leaving on time for an appointment, I have had my timeliness prohibited by the piercing screech of a low fuel warning, humans without the desire to drive the speed limit, emergency vehicles, forgotten items that had to be retrieved, school zones,  Black Friday, getting lost, and on and on.

All of the sudden, I’m bitching at people who can’t hear me and riding tailgates of cars my insurance company would rather not purchase. My emotions surge when I don’t get my way and I HATE being late… like really, truly, deeply loathe it, so I end up driving carelessly and torturing the people who are trapped in the car with me. All of this, over things that I can’t change (see a partial list in the previous paragraph). I had to find a way to stop giving away my power to circumstances that are beyond my control.

So far, I’ve come up with two solutions: 1.) Release the need to be on time. 2.) Add some extra time for “surprise” delays to my commute. To be honest, I think that being late is disrespectful and it is important to be to be on time. I am, however, willing to release the need to be timely in the rare situation where something truly exceptional happens – ice storm, childbirth, zombies.

Yes, that means I had to add surprise time to my commute. How do you like these big girl pants?

At first this was a burden. I was annoyed. Why can’t people just act right? Why? Why? Why? Then, I heard the echo of myself screaming why and why me and realized that it sounds a great deal like that sounds a baby makes (waaaaaah)… and I decided to get over myself.

The truth is that I live on a magnificent planet that I am blessed to share with other human beings and that means even sharing my life with them, even the roads. If I “should” be able to get from one place to the next in 40 minutes without incident, then I’m setting myself up to be powerless every single time I get on the road with only 40 minutes to spare. The world is full of someones somewhere having “incidents” that impact my life, for better or worse, and I have to allow for that to keep my power.

My commute drama is just one example. It’s almost back to school time which brings morning drama to lots of households. For others, it’s the clutter. What other battles, conflicts, or chaos are you dealing with on a regular basis? What are the Things That Suck in your life?

Résuméabuiyad

The Ego’s Mantra: It’s All About Me!

We’ve been seeing a lot of ego-centered attitudes flying around Washington in the deficit battle, the confusing GOP presidential race, and in London with the Murdoch fiasco. Seems like the more power one has, the more the ego dominates: me and my opinions are more important than the needs of others. There is no limit to the damage a powerful ego can cause, from the arrogant conviction that our own opinions are only right ones and everyone should be made to agree, to wielding and abusing responsibility and authority at the expense of other people’s lives and freedoms.

The ego could be the least understood of all our human qualities. It’s the “me” bit that gives us our sense of ourselves. This is not necessarily good or bad, except when selfishness dominates our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. A positive sense of self gives us confidence and purpose, but a more negative and self-centered ego makes us unconcerned with other people’s feelings; it thrives on the idea of me-first and impels us to cry out, “What about me? What about my feelings?”

The purpose of the ego is to be in control and so it keeps us focused in the realm of me-ness. It makes us believe we are the cleverest, best informed and most important, as easily as it makes us feel unworthy, unlovable, and certainly not good enough to be happy. It is this misguided sense of self that is the root cause of so much distress, both in our own lives and in the world: wars are fought, families split, and friends forgotten due to this misunderstanding.

Fostering the delusion that only ‘I’ is important, that me and mine must come before us and ours, the ego makes us believe we are something, that this something is different, special and unique, and that we are separate from everything and everyone else. When we become aware of our essential unity and oneness with all beings then the ego becomes redundant and loses its job. It will, therefore, do whatever it has to in order to perpetuate its employment.

Creating the illusion that we are the dust on the mirror, the ego ensures that we believe we could never be so beautiful as the radiant reflection beneath the surface. Yet how extraordinary to believe that we cannot be free when freedom is our true nature!

Hypothetically, all we need to do is to let go of the focus on “me,” of our sense of separateness, our need for distinction, the grasping and clinging to our story. But this is far easier said than done! In India the ego is represented by a coconut as this is the hardest nut to crack. Traditionally, the coconut is offered to the guru or teacher as a sign of the student’s willingness to surrender his or her ego and let go of self-obsession. Such a symbolic gesture shows that the ego is considered to be a great obstacle on the spiritual path and an even greater impediment to developing true kindness and compassion.

As we evolve in consciousness we move from the animal-like state of preservation and survival to developing our own identity as a separate individual. In the process we become more self-centered. The next step is the development of the true individual—one who experiences no separation between self and other and awakens loving kindness. We always remind ourselves what the Dalai Lama said to us when we met with him: We are all equal here. The depth of this statement always connects us to our humility.

The need to reach the top of the mountain, to accomplish our desires and be successful, is the natural impulse to move toward experiencing greater happiness. The difficulty lies in believing that success means being all-powerful; we forget that there is a difference between being powerful in the sense of being egotistic and controlling, and being powerful meaning full of loving kindness and compassion. True power is not corruptive or abusive, as we are seeing in Washington and London; it transcends greed and serves for the benefit of all.

Meditation cultivates awareness so we are able to see the ego at play, how manipulative and self-serving it can be, and how it easily dominates our behavior. Such a reflective practice gives us the experience of no separation and reveals genuine compassion.

Résuméabuiyad

Meet Your Inner Pilot Light !!!

If you’re a patient of mine, if you’ve been reading my blog, if you’re a student of the Get Out Of Your Own Way e-course, or if you read The Daily Flame, you’ve probably heard me frequently referencing your “Inner Pilot Light.” But someone who doesn’t know me well asked me flat out the other day, “Lissa, what’s an Inner Pilot Light?” And I realized I’d never really written a post about something that has become part of my everyday vernacular. So if you’ve ever been curious and you’d like to know more about this vital part of every single one of us, this post is for you.

Introducing Your Inner Pilot Light

Your Inner Pilot Light is that ever-radiant, always-sparkly, 100% authentic, totally effervescent spark that lies at the core of you. Call it your essential self, your divine spark, your Christ consciousness, your Buddha nature, your higher self, your soul, your wise self, your intuition, or your inner healer. The minute sperm met egg, this part of you ignited, and it’s been glowing away ever since.

This part of you always knows which choice to choose, how to heal yourself when you’re sick, and whether to trust someone or not. Your Inner Pilot Light knows exactly what you like, loves boundlessly but selectively, discriminates between what is and isn’t authentic to your inner nature, and has the 411 on how to connect straight to Source. Your Inner Pilot Light guides the path, lights the way, navigates the journey, and asks only that you trust the process.

Your Inner Pilot Light is the essence of who you really are. It’s that part that wants to wear purple peasant skirts, dance to Lady Gaga, ignore the phone when it’s judgmental ol’ Aunt Gertrude, laugh in the middle of church, and burp loudly at the Junior League luncheon. Your Inner Pilot Light isn’t always well-behaved, because this is the part of you who hasn’t been socialized to be any certain way. Your Inner Pilot Light is a bit of a wild stallion, hard to tame, but easy to ignore if you’re not ready to face the truth about yourself.

You May Not Listen

You may worry that your Inner Pilot Light will get you in trouble. After all, if you listen to your Inner Pilot Light, you might wind up doing something crazy, like leaving that soul-sucking job you despise or ditching your unfaithful husband or moving to Hawaii or becoming a full time artist. Your Inner Pilot Light might instruct you to dance on bartops, play the accordion, write a tell-all memoir, or liquidate your retirement account so you can renovate a villa in the south of France.

You may worry that your Inner Pilot Light can’t be trusted. But this is where you’re misguided, my love.

Your Inner Pilot Light Is The Secret Sauce

The truth is that your Inner Pilot Light knows all the secrets, not just to who you really are, but to how to help you live a happy, healthy, whole life full of mojo. Your Inner Pilot Light (can we just call it your IPL? My fingers are getting tired!) knows what you’re called to do on this earth. Your IPL will recognize your soulmate when the two of you meet. Your IPL knows when you’re in the wrong job, and can feel it when you’ve found the right one. Your IPL can even heal what ails you. Your IPL can see beyond the masks other people wear so you can witness the IPL of someone else, and therein lies true intimacy.

When you tap into the healing wisdom of your IPL, your health will improve, you’ll find the compassion and love that can heal or release toxic relationships, your business will thrive, your creativity will explode, and you’ll feel more connected to The Universe than ever before.

Your IPL is the foundation upon which the rest of you must build in order to live a whole, vital life. In order to be wholly healthy, all the facets of what makes you whole – your work/ life purpose, relationships, creativity, spirituality, sexuality, environment, finances, mental health, and physical health – must all be tapped into your IPL. Otherwise, things get out of balance, and you wind up living a disconnected, inauthentic life that’s not in touch with who you really are at your core.

When Your Inner Pilot Light Grows Dim

Your IPL never ever burns out, even at the darkest times of your life, but it can grow dim, and when it does, you may forget it’s even there. You may feel out of touch with this essential part of who you are. You may doubt your IPL still shines – but it does.

I know there are times in your life when the light seems very, very far away. Maybe you’ve lost a loved one, you’ve been unfaithful, you’ve committed a crime, your heart got broken, you lost your job, your child cut you off, or you’re having a crisis of faith. Times like this can make you question whether your IPL even still exists. But I can promise you that light is never extinguished. It always lies within you, waiting for you to fan the flames so the core beauty within you can light the path.

If you feel out of touch with your Inner Pilot Light, sign up here for the free Daily Flame: Messages from your Inner Pilot Light to you.

And just tap in. Remember, you already have all that you need to have all that you want. The light shines with you. Spirit is there to guide you. Your inner healer is there to tend your wounds and mend your heart. Always have faith, my love.

Walking with you, IPL to IPL,

Résuméabuiyad

Measuring Spiritual Success

When considering how you can measure success in your spiritual life, the answer seems obvious. I meet many young men and women from well-to-do families whose lives are spiritual wrecks because their family defines success as accumulating more and more material things.

Once a young man walked into my office and said, “My father ruined my life.” I asked him what he did to ruin it and he answered, “He gave me a million dollars when I was twenty one.” I told him there were many people in the waiting room who would love his problem. I asked, “How did it ruin your life?” “I had to be a success.”

When you experience love

He came to understand that being a success does not make you happy and he needed to learn that being happy makes you a success. When you seek security, while fearing challenges, you will not find peace on a mental or spiritual level because you will never find your authentic life or way of serving your love to the world. The entire reason for life is so that we can experience love. That is my opinion. And when you experience love you are a spiritual success.

The imperfect world is what makes our love necessary and meaningful. To quote God, “A perfect world is a magic trick and not creation. You are here to live and learn. Just as there is no darkness or cold there is no true evil. Darkness is simply an absence of light while cold is an absence of heat and evil is the failure to express My love through your actions. Just as a graduation is a commencement, and not a termination, and the Bible ends in a revelation and not a conclusion your life is about beginnings. When you experience change, be it loss or gain, you must begin to use the change to redirect your life and create something new that will benefit the world and its inhabitants, all of whom are the same color inside and so of one family, and continue the process of creation.”

Now compare that young man’s spiritual problem with mine. One of our sons called me and asked for money to pay his college tuition bill. I reminded him that when my father died he received $60,000 from my father’s estate for him to use for towards education. He responded, “I gave it to a friend I met in Nepal so he could come to this country for an education and then go home and help his people.” Now which son would you prefer? The one who turns a million into many millions or the son who gave away $60,000 and is asking you for money?

How to be a spiritual success

At the time of the phone call I wasn’t so enlightened, but I have learned from this son about how to be a spiritual success. He used what he had to help others to survive and thrive. The message is that we are here to offer our bodies and our property to benefit others. Only then do we become a spiritual success and immortal in the only way one can become immortal, through love, which is the only thing of permanence.

Résuméabuiyad

An Open Letter To Anyone Who Doesn’t Like How I Live My Life !!!

I’m not the type to cut people off. Yes, relationships grow apart. Sacred contracts end. But I don’t ditch you if you piss me off or hurt my feelings. I initiate open communication. I tell you I’m hurt. But I don’t build the Great Wall of China between us or block your phone calls.

I’m not suggesting that every relationship should be mended. Some are probably better left torn apart. But if you – like me – feel saddened by someone who has cut you out of their life, then you’ll get where I’m coming from. This letter is for anyone who disagrees with how I live my life enough to cut me out. (You know who you are.) And it’s for anyone else who doesn’t like how you live your life too. Feel free to pass it on. . .

Dear You,

I don’t expect you to agree with how I live my life. I know I live out loud. I say 4-letter words on the internet. I talk openly about my sex life in my book. I share my views on everything from abortion to my grab bag religion to Osama Bin Laden to orgasms, and everything in between.  Maybe you wish I spoke my mind less. Maybe you wish I was more modest. Maybe you’d prefer I donned an apron and knew my place. I won’t venture to guess exactly what I’ve done that made you decide you’ve had enough and you’re better off without me.

But I do have a few things I want to say, even if you’re not listening.

I may not expect you to agree with me. I honor your right to have different thoughts on faith, sexuality, politics, or the terrorism in Norway.  I respect your right to live a more private life than I do or to express yourself in a different way.  I don’t mind if you think I’m being too narcissistic or too selfish or too “out there” or too whatever. You have a right to your opinion, just like I have a right to mine.

What I am upset about is that you won’t talk to me about how you’re feeling. You’ve completely eliminated all contact, without any explanation. You’ve left me second guessing myself, wondering which one thing pushed you over the edge and made you decide you’ve hit your wall. Not that I’d do anything differently, because honestly, I’m just doing the best I can, and I can’t recall anything I’ve done that might have hurt you. And if I did do something, love, it was unintentional, without intended malice. Usually, the ways in which I hurt people are errors of omission, accidental oversights, which can happen because I can be clueless sometimes without meaning to be.

This relationship is important to me. I’d be willing to see a counselor with you in order to mediate whatever has happened. I don’t give up on those I love easily, and I hope you won’t either. Let’s talk about this in a mutually respectful way. I will honor your feelings and validate your right to your opinion without getting defensive, as long as you refrain from lashing out, being unnecessarily belligerent, or treating me with blatant disrespect. I have my boundaries, and I don’t deserve to be treated that way (neither do you). So if you can’t honor that request, I will ask you nicely to stop, and if you can’t, I will walk out/hang up/press delete/not listen.  Because I respect myself too much to let you try to squash me like a bug. I may long for reconciliation, but not at any cost. If I have to choose between a toxic relationship with you and no relationship, I choose nothing. I love you and I value our history, but life’s simply too short for toxic relationships.

Here’s what I have to offer you. I will love and respect you and all your differing values, beliefs, and life choices. I will communicate with you, open my heart to you, and give you permission to break my heart, because that’s the only way two people can truly love each other. I will cherish the process of getting to know all the nooks and crannies of your heart and soul, even the things you might be afraid to show me for fear of rejection. It will be these very things that will draw us closer.

Around me, you can also brag about what’s awesome in your life. You can call me when something fabulous happens. I will revel with you in your triumphs and lift you up when you’re flying high.

I will also lift you up when you feel like you’re falling.  You can tell me your dark secrets. You can show me how you’ve been hurt. You can reveal what made you the way you are today. I will hold what you share sacred. I will never use these things against you. You can trust me to protect your heart.

But I can’t do these things if you cut me out. We have to be able to talk when things get tough. You have to trust that I can hear you out without having a hissy fit. I won’t. Not as long as you deliver your truth with love and respect. If you insist upon spewing vicious poison at me – and you can’t trust yourself not to do so – then yes, you’re probably right. We’re probably better off with only our memories.

I trust your heart. Only you know what’s right for you. But I believe in your capacity to expand your heart big enough to fit both of us in it – if you want to.

I also trust the process. I know that all relationships are sacred contracts, and some sacred contracts end. Perhaps we’ve reached the end of ours, and that’s okay. I will release you with love and wish you well, but I wanted to make one more attempt to repair what is broken between us.

If you’d like to talk, I’m here for you. If you’d prefer to write, take your time. If having a counselor to help us mediate a live conversation would be best, I’ll pick up the tab. You can even pick the therapist. Or I will. I’m open to whatever works best.

But the ball is in your court.

I’m here. I love you. If I’ve done anything to hurt you, I’m sincerely sorry. Let’s make contact. Let’s remember why we’re in a relationship to begin with. Let’s forgive each other and fill our hearts with compassion and tenderness. Let’s prioritize peace and reconciliation. Life is short – and unpredictable. Something could happen to one of us tomorrow. Let’s live knowing that, if one of us died tomorrow, we would have no regrets.

All ears,

Résuméabuiyad

Forgiveness: Food for Health & Happiness !!!

My common sense says that the anger, resentment and blame that many people hold on to, often for years, account for a lot of health problems, and learning how to forgive could prove to be curative and preventative.

“Forgiving and releasing old hurts from your system is like taking a mental and emotional bath,” says HeartMath founder and stress researcher Doc Childre. “Notice how people bathe their bodies on a regular basis, yet they will store negative, toxic junk in their mental and emotional natures for years without a cleanup.”

Negative emotions, such as anger, resentment and blame, can cause stress to build up in the body; where there is excessive stress, there is the potential for all sorts of physical, mental and emotional problems. Most notably, elevated stress levels can impair the body’s immune system, putting you at risk for heart disease, chronic pain and depression, among many other debilitating conditions

A Philadelphia-based nonprofit believes the failure to forgive, what it calls “unforgiveness,” is a major problem in the world today. “We believe that unforgiveness is one of the most destructive problems of our day,” the organization, Release!, states on its website, www.releasenow.org. “Unforgiveness can ruin our relationships, rob us of our happiness, and even impact our physical health. Unfortunately, unforgiveness is also one of the problems that is most likely to be ignored and dismissed.

“It is a problem, however, that people have the power to solve, by learning to forgive,” Doc Childre said, stressing that, “it is not something you can learn overnight.”

I have found in my life that to forgive, people need to dislodge their judgments, even before they fully understand why things happened. But most people want to understand why someone “wronged” them before they forgive. It’s a Catch-22 situation. This is what makes forgiveness so difficult and why people so often fail at it. After a while it seems easier to live in a state of pout, disdain, or resentment than to try the forgiveness process again.

But we can’t approach forgiveness as some sort of obligation. Forgiveness as an act of duty is not effective. It can leave you feeling as if you’ve done some good, but can mask over the resentment, rather than release it. Telling yourself, “I know I should forgive,” is not the same as forgiving. If there is no genuine feeling behind it, then your forgiveness lacks the sincere heart intent and commitment to release someone cleanly at mental, emotional, and cellular levels.

Nor can we approach forgiveness with the attitude of doing someone a favor. It’s important to remember that you’re the one who comes out the most by releasing the emotional baggage. Forgiveness upgrades your mental, emotional and physical well-being by reducing the neurochemicals that drain and debilitate your system.

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” ~ Mark Twain

The following exercise created by Doc Childre can help you discover a deeper level of your heart power, where feelings such as compassion, tolerance, understanding and forgiveness reside.

Forgiveness Exercise

• Think of a person or situation you have resented and want to forgive completely.
• Send all of the thoughts and emotions that come up in your head about the person or situation – “this includes past associations, memories, anger, hurt, resentments, etc.” – gently to the heart. As often as these thoughts or feelings pop up in your head again, simply send them to your heart, which is the clearinghouse for your emotions.
• At the same time, try to feel and send heart energy, love, compassion and forgiveness to the person or situation.

Special Notes about the Exercise:

• You may have to practice this exercise a few times to bring the old head thoughts under heart management. With heart management, you are actually contacting a different level of intelligence within, known as heart intelligence. Heart intelligence has the power to quickly release old resentments and hurts, change your perceptions and bring you to a satisfying understanding of the situation.
• Forgiving yourself can be the hardest thing to do. Often people feel that they must remember their wrongdoings and beat themselves up for it, or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true.
• Often people feel that they are doing “good” by sustaining self-guilt. This is not true and creates a steady running stress deficit within their system. As you practice forgiveness from the heart, not just the mind, you clear the energy drains and reset your system for a fresh start. Sustaining guilt translates into increased aging which moves fast enough on its own

It’s understandable that it’s hard to forgive yourself or others at times, yet practicing this exercise and making a genuine effort to do so from the heart really can help things work out better for all concerned. I’ve found this to be true in my life and would love to hear your stories of forgiveness.

For more tools and techniques, Sign Up for the Free Institute of HeartMath Newsletter. You will also receive access to our free subscriber downloads to PDFs, MP4 and audio programs, and receive latest scientific research.

Résuméabuiyad

These Are the Startling Consequences of Childhood Bullying

Bullying, it turns out, causes so much more than hurt feelings. In fact, as new research is showing, it can have dramatic consequences well into adulthood. And it’s not just for the victims of bullying, either; bullies themselves, as well as children who are both bully and are bullied, also have similar lifelong problems.

The study, co-authored by Duke University School of Medicine associate professor William Copeland and Dieter Wolke, tracked 1,273 students from 1993, when they were 9 to 13 years old, until they reached 24 to 26 years old. The children who were involved in bullying in any way, roughly 1/3 of the participants, were more likely to have poor health, face financial difficulties, and have trouble in the workplace, school, and even in social relationships. And this just adds to the research published last year by the same team, which found that bullied children were more likely to suffer from mental illnesses as adults.

Even when researchers removed underlying circumstances, such as pre-existing family issues and psychiatric illnesses, the results  stayed the same. Though victims were far more likely to face negative consequences as adults, bullies themselves do not fare as well as adults who had no involvement in bullying whatsoever.

Bullying, the authors wrote, is so much more than, “a harmless, almost inevitable, part of growing up.” Wolke stresses that the ideas about bullying need to be changed because, “the effects are long-lasting and significant.”

So what are these startling consequences of bullying? Click to the next page for a breakdown of the study’s findings.

Health.

Victims of bullying are 6 times as likely to have a serious illness, like cancer or diabetes, and develop a serious psychiatric illness. Victims are much more likely to be at risk for suicide, too.

Risky Behavior.

Victims of bullying are six times as likely to smoke cigarettes as adults, four times as likely to have been charged with a felony, and more likely to smoke marijuana. Adults involved in bullying at all as children are also more likely to drop out of school and be obese.

Money & Work.

Children involved in bullying in any way are two times as likely to have difficulty maintaining a job and commit to saving money. Thus, they’re more likely to experience poverty in early adulthood.

Relationships.

Children involved in bullying in any way are more likely to have a harder time maintaining good ties with their parents or carrying on long friendships. Researchers did not find any impact on the likeliehood of getting married or having children, however.

Résuméabuiyad

Gratefully Giving Up My Opinion !!!

For having lived long, I have experiences many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.  -Benjamin Franklin

One lesson that I didn’t expect to learn from focusing on receiving is how little opinions actually matter. This is surprising, as I have long relied on my early discovery  that I could find my ground by learning how to express what I thought.  For dozens of years, I learned and understood my thoughts by talking about them. I grew up trusting that a well-constructed argument was enough to change minds or at least policies.  It wasn’t just well-chosen words, but recognizing the power of speaking them to the right person that increased my belief in the power of my point of view.

Yet the success that I experienced in knowing and expressing my point of view out in the consumer world or in school systems did not hold up among relationships with family and friends. Especially  with my growing children, the idea that my opinion would/should/could matter or change their own choices was short-lived and served as the context of family battle- grounds for several uncomfortable years. It wasn’t about who was right, although it often ended up with the feeling that someone had to be wrong.

It took many years, decades even, for me to realize that you can’t tell anyone anything, unless they are asking for and looking at how they think themselves. In most any discussion, the leverage point is not in speaking, although I did for years cling to the over talking, repeating methods of trying to change someone else’s point of view. In actuality, the fulcrum of a conversation is in the listening, because other people shift their perspective not from hearing your point of view, but their own.

We are all often blinded by our own point of view to the larger and more expansive reality we live in. Giving up your own point of view even briefly enables you to have an authentic vision of the situation. Reflecting on what is without the bias of your own point of view is a communication from the heart. This happens when people take a courageous stand as well. When we speak from this larger vision, we reflect a point of view, which includes everyone’s needs.

This kind of communication expands far beyond any individual point of view. It takes no convincing when we bear witness to the truth of the moment. We resonate with the truth, regardless of our personal opinion.  I am grateful to be giving up my own opinion in exchange for the capacity to see. What generally comes through is the best of everyone, having nothing to do with their opinions.

Résuméabuiyad

When Mom Brings Out The Worst In You !!!

My daughter Siena and I spent much of the summer at my mother’s lake house in Ohio. It was the longest I had lived in my mother’s house since I was in college. And to make it even weirder, Ohio was not my home. (My parents are the only people I know who sold their beach house in Florida to retire in Ohio.) So I felt a bit like a fish out of water in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong. This summer was a lovely mélange of swimming holes and kayaking and Slip ‘n’ Slides and fairy villages and long lazy mornings. But it wasn’t easy to move back in with Mom, even when you have the world’s best mommy like I do.

Meet Lissa, The Brat

Here’s an exchange from my time there, when Mom was throwing a luau to show me off to her friends.

Mom: Honey, go put on a nametag.

Me : (envisioning the “Hi, my name is…” paper stickies with the red borders)  No way in hell, why do we need nametags? That’s so cheesy.

Mom: Because lots of people here don’t know each other. So please, just wear a nametag.

Me: No.

Siena: (Looking at her Nana) Why won’t Mommy wear a nametag?

Mom: ‘Cause she’s being stubborn.

Me: You can’t make me.

Mom: No, I can’t make you wear a nametag. But I’d really appreciate it if you would.

Me: Okay, fine. I’ll wear a nametag that says “Hi, my name is Mildred.”

Siena: (confused) But that’s not your name Mommy.

Me: (rallying my 5 year old daughter and my 11 year old nephew onto my team): In fact, that’ll be fun! Why don’t we all make up new names and put them on our nametags! What name will you be, Siena?

Siena: Hi, my name is Siena.

Me: Okay, fine, don’t play. But my name is Mildred.

Mom: But you can’t put Mildred on your nametag. Everyone already knows your name is Lissa.

Me: THEN WHY THE F*CK DO I NEED A NAMETAG?

Yes, I did finally give in. And yes, I wrote “Lissa” on my nametag. And you couldn’t even see it because it was covered up by my white plastic lei and the tiki torches barely provided enough light to read nametags anyway, but Mom tilted her head and smiled when she saw it, and that made it worth the humiliation of having to wear a nametag to a backyard barbecue.

Mom Brings Out The Worst In Me

I don’t know about you, but I find myself exhibiting my very worst behavior when my mother is around. I mean who does shit like this? How hard is it to just put on a nametag? And yet, it’s like I can’t help myself. Here I am – 42 years old – and it’s like I’m still asserting my independence, proving that I’m a grown-up, demonstrating on a daily basis that I am no longer breast-feeding off her tit.

And my poor mom doesn’t deserve this kind of behavior. She tries so hard to make me happy. And then I wind up nit-picking every little thing she does. Like “Wow, Mom. You eat a lot of sugar. Ever thought of cutting back?” And “Jeez, Mom, this salad dressing has eleven ingredients I can’t pronounce. How hard is it to make a fresh salad dressing?” And “Cupcake Wars? There’s a TV show called Cupcake Wars? Is your life so boring that you find it thrilling to watch two bakers competing for who gets to make cupcakes for Dodger Stadium?”

I mean that’s how much of a bitch I can be! I don’t treat my husband or my best friend or anybody else like this. So why do I torture my beloved mother, who I love as much as I love anybody in this whole wide world? I mean I adore this woman.  So why does she bring out the worst in me?

The Safety of Unconditional Love

I’ve been pondering this question this summer, as I beat myself up about how badly I treat my mother sometimes. And I realized in a flash of insight that my bad behavior is probably just a testament to my mother’s unconditional love for me. I don’t have faith that my husband would stick around if I treated him this way. And friends would probably say “Sayonara.” But deep in my heart, I know that my mother will love me, no matter how much I screw up, no matter how poorly I treat her, no matter how much I regress into behaving like a naughty 12 year old.

Maybe sometimes my inner brat just needs to act out and be witnessed – and still be loved – so I can behave like a grown up the rest of the time. Or maybe this IS the real me and Mom gets to see a completely unfiltered version of myself, the version I don’t trust anybody else to see.

Or maybe I’m just a brat and deserve a good spanking.  I wouldn’t blame Mom if she decided that was in order. In fact, maybe I should have brought her the fly swatter and just dropped trou.

Or maybe I should apologize.

Perhaps if I felt insecure in my mother’s love of me, I would behave better, going to great lengths to try to earn her love. Perhaps if she had abused me or neglected me or abandoned me, I’d be falling over myself trying to please her. Maybe Mom should take my bratty behavior as proof that she did a great job raising me (even though this may seem counterintuitive.) After all, it means I know I am loved. I know my mother isn’t going anywhere. I know I can do anything, be anyone, risk everything – even fail – and my mother will still love me.

So what’s a little nametag rebellion?

Does Mom Bring Out The Worst In You?

What do you think? Do you find yourself behaving badly when you’re around your parents?  How do you keep your inner brat under control?

Please share your tips and stories with me, before I drive my poor mother batty.

No longer slamming doors,

Résuméabuiyad