Soulshine

There are many endings in life. We all experience the end of days, the end of relationships, the end of careers, the end of years. And of course there’s the really big one that each of us will eventually face: The end of this life as we know it. Today we will all experience the end of the last day of 2011; the end of an entire year. In doing so, I think it’s important that we ask ourselves this question: “Did I love well?” I take this question from Jack Kornfield’s book A Path With Heart . And I think it is probably the most essential question we can ever ask ourselves; because when this life is over, our Higher Power isn’t going to ask us if we ate well, or if we shopped well, or if we made lots of money, or if we accomplished great tasks. God will ask us only one question: “Did you love well?” You see, those who love well live well. People who love well appreciate every aspect of life. They value themselves and thus all people, they value the earth and all creation, they value the

“Frame your own life events in a way that helps people  understand what to make of you.” Anonymous It’s Christmas Eve and the greatest gift we can give and receive is love. Forget the other stuff. Love last forever. In order for people to love us, however, they have to understand us. To understand us they need to know us. We have to be vulnerable enough to open up our hearts, look inside and come to understand ourselves. We can then paint an authentic portrait of who we are and frame ourselves in such a way that our lives make sense to us and others. Those who like the authentic portrait we paint of ourselves and those who understand the way in which we have framed our lives, will grow to love us just as we are. These are the people we want to add to the portrait that we savor as family and friends. These are the people who matter. These are the people we want to spend our days with, especially our Holidays.  Spend some good time with yourself on this Christmas Eve

Rainy day—no problem. Snowy day—no problem. Simply a grey day—no problem. Your sunshine is inside of you. Many people are totally unaware that the weather cannot make them happy. They live for sunny days and choose to be gloomy when the sky fills with clouds. If you’re living for a sunny day, you’re giving your power away. And if you give your power away to the weather, you most likely give your power away to everything and everyone. As long as you are happy inside yourself, as long as you turn inside yourself for spiritual and emotional nourishment, you will provide internal-eternal sunshine to your life. Of course, sometimes we have to allow it to rain inside our souls. We have to throw open the shutters and allow healing tears to wash over us and renew us as a means of regenerating sunshine from within. But this is OK. It’s all in our hands and the hands of our Higher Power, who will always help us find inner-balance and joy. What’s really important here, is that we are hol

Everyone has a need to belong. We all have a need for others, for a sense of kinship and for the comfort of being acceptable just as we are. This is very different from having a need for approval. The need for approval from others is a cancer of the heart and mind. It destroys your soul. The need for approval places you at the mercy of others. It gives other people total power over your happiness, well-being and, essentially, every aspect of your life. If you have a deep need for the approval of others, if you believe you need others to decide for you whether or not you are OK, then you need to rewire your thinking. You already have the approval of your Maker. The only other approval you need is your own. Take back your power by approving of yourself. It's nobody else's responsibility to decide if you are OK or not. And no one has the right to criticize you, or belittle you as "not good enough" unless you give them that power. Seek your own approval, claim y

“Don’t fight it. Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it… Stop hidin.’ Love is a mystery. Let’s get excited.” Ronan Keating Rollercoasters evoke a great deal of fear in many people, but then, so does life itself. Fear is humanity’s second greatest enemy and it often works hand-in-hand with humanity’s Public Enemy No. 1: Shame. Fear and shame are the great cripplers of human life. They paralyze people in their tracks and rob them of their lives. If you’ve spent much of your life being too fearful to stick your neck out into the real world and say “Life’s a fact, so face it” then you know what I’m talking about. Fear can keep us from climbing aboard a rollercoaster and having the thrill of our day. It can also keep us from stepping out into the real world and having the thrill of our lives. We all know that shit happens. We’ve been hit in the face with it time and again. Some of us wipe the residue of life from our faces and move forward, while others of us flee an

All I want for Christmas is self-respect, and it’s a gift that seems to be coming to me more and more each day. Truth is, when you have enough self-love to respect yourself you see the whole world awash in new, brighter colors. You feel like you finally fit-in. You find your space and you walk your path with new vigor. Inside there’s a new feeling and it sings to you and the world around you: “Nothing can stop me now!” Everyone is your equal and you are everyone’s equal. No one can put you down without embarrassing themselves. You own and retain your power regardless of what anyone else says, does, believes or wants. Suddenly you realize that you have become your own best friend. Your body feels comfortable to you no matter what size you are, what color you are or how old or young you are. Your personality bubbles up and spills all over everything and everyone around you—and you love it—even in the face of detractors. You need no one to complete you or make you OK. You’ve disc

There’s a reason why the term “Angel Eyes” has been popular for many years. When you look into the eyes of another person, you see through to their soul, to the angel inside of them. As you peer into the eyes of another, you touch their divine humanness. And in doing so, you allow them to touch your own soul as you open up your inner-angel to them. It takes a great deal of honest, naked vulnerability to look someone deeply in their angel eyes. And it takes loads of courage to keep your eyes focused on theirs as they look you right back in your angel eyes. Sadly, many of us fail to have such courage or naked vulnerability. We’ve been taught to refrain from looking people in the eyes for fear that we will somehow make too much, or too deep of a connection. The supposed fear is that we will then owe the other something, but I think the real fear is that we will have to acknowledge their sacredness as a human being. It’s easier to treat a person like they are a disposable obje

“I’m sick of people worryin’ about what I do.” Mae West, I’m No Angel It’s easy to say “Amen!” to this superb quote from Mae West. We all know what it feels like to have people watching, worrying and judging our every move. It gets tiresome when others are always overstepping their boundaries by focusing their attention on our lives and our behavior. And it doesn’t take long for us to build-up tremendous resentments over having people constantly taking our inventory. Now here’s the catch: Most of us spend just as much time focusing on other people’s lives and on taking their inventories as well. We are every bit as guilty—if not more so—of the same crime. Think about it. While we’re resenting the fact that a certain coworker keeps count of every second we’re away from our desk on a break, we are equally guilty of keeping a mental log of how often this same coworker is late for work in the morning. We do unto others what we despise having done to us, and yet we often are

Many codependents believe their purpose in life is to live for others. Unfortunately. It’s easy for us to believe this since we really don’t want to live for ourselves. We’d rather escape from our own selves—and our own lives—by focusing on the lives of others. So, instead of being responsible for our own well-being and happiness, we make ourselves responsible for everyone else’s. In doing so, we self-promote ourselves into being the architects for the lives of our spouses, children, parents, friends or anyone who will volunteer themselves into our hands. We work extra hard to please these people and to ensure their every ounce of happiness. We wipe away tears, make excuses for their behavior, comfort away their fears, pay their bills, match-make their romances and remember their birthdays. Day and night we are mentally and emotionally “on-call” for fear that someone may need us at any moment; and for fear that they may turn to someone else, who could eventually end up taking our plac

So many people fail to make the connection between addictive behavior and lack of self-love. Addictions are a symptom. They are not THE problem. Addictions are symptoms of a deeper problem. And that problem is "I don't love who I am." When we feel we are unworthy, less-than and unlovable, we open up the door for addictive behavior. We can only handle the bad feelings of self-loathing for so long before we need to have a release: Something, anything, to help us alter our bad feelings about ourselves. And addictions provide that much needed temporary relief; even though they do so at a deep personal cost. The deep personal cost is that addictions lead to further self-loathing. They add to the problem instead of solving it. No amount of alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, sex, etc., can help us to love the person that God created us to be. The more we drink, eat, shop or gamble, the more we think we are worthless failures. It becomes a nightmare cycle of self-loathing--- se

Your outside world is almost always a projection of your inside world. Everything that's restlessly  churning inside of us ends up spilling into our outer reality. It paints a picture of the world that is flawed by the way we feel about ourselves. For some of us, it ends up being a pretty gruesome portrait of an inner-outer world rife with  drama and disappointment. The only way to see the outer world as it truly is-- without our inner-turmoil coloring it-- is through building a new relationship with ourselves and our past. See yourself through new eyes, see the true beauty of who you are, and you will see the world with the same true beauty. You will then begin to color your outer-world with the inner peaceful, love-filled projections of your inner-world. And both worlds will be much better places to live and thrive in. (P.S.-- I haven't written much lately because I've been on holiday, but I'm also beginning to believe that this blog may have outlived it's pur

As a film buff, I’ve come to really love Mae West. She was someone who really knew how to own her personal power and no one—absolutely no one—could take it away from her. In her 1935 film Goin’ to Town , West exclaims “ Yeah, for a long time I was ashamed of the way I lived.” When questioned about whether she changed herself to please others she says “No, I got over being ashamed.” Seems many of us could take a good lesson or two from Mae West in learning how to get over being ashamed of who we are. No one can shame us unless we allow them to do so. No one can make us feel worthless unless we believe deep down inside that we are worthless. And no one can make a doormat out of us unless we voluntarily lay down for them. It’s time we all learned to get over being ashamed. We can start by realizing that we’re good enough just the way we are. Let’s focus on the inside instead of the outside: Affirm our own goodness. Let’s also care only about what we think of ourselves, an

The only way to live life is with your heart wide open. This is the only way that you fully experience the rain, sunshine, colors, textures and flavors of life. It's also the only way you really hear the soundtrack to your life.  A heart wide open brings the fullness of life to the surface of your every moment, your every breath, your every dream. And a heart wide open helps you to love all that you are, all that life is, all that other people are and all that God is.  A heart wide open allows you to shoot for the moon every day, and on those days when you can't quite reach the moon, it helps you to remember that you still have the stars. Shoot for the moon today.

Sometimes we are the victims of emotional abuse and sometimes we are the perpetrators. Anyone who was emotionally abused by a parent learned that parent’s abusive patterns of behavior. We then learned to use the same patterns of behavior against others as a means of controlling and manipulating them in the same way that we were controlled and manipulated. Beverly Engle, in her book The Emotionally Abusive Relationship , defines emotional abuse as “any nonphysical behavior that is designed to control, intimidate, subjugate, demean, punish or isolate another person through the use of degradation, humiliation or fear.” Examples of such behavior can be judging and criticizing others, discounting or negating a person, accusing or blaming someone, placing unreasonable expectations on others or using the silent treatment. She goes on to say that emotional abuse includes negative attitudes and symbiotic violence. Negative attitudes include believing people should do whatever we say,

Sometimes we’re just tired. We’re tired of life. We’re tired of the same old daily grind. We’re tired of falling back into the same old patterns of behavior that rekindle our misery. And we’re tired of feeling frustrated, marginalized and hopeless. We find ourselves emotionally crawling on our knees, wondering why life isn’t getting better. When we get into this sort of funk, we know it’s time for an emotional cleansing. We’ve been holding-in all of our feelings, we’ve been feeding off their toxicity and we are on the brink of spiritual death. At times like this we need to let it all out. There’s no point in trying to control it or hold it in any longer. So we scream, beat our hands against the floor and feel the full rush of our frigging bottled-up pain. As it explodes out of our system, we curse our Higher Power and divorce ourselves from it. We need a fresh start. We need to divorce ourselves from everything and every pattern of behavior we’ve relied upon—and we need to

Who are you responsible for rescuing in this life? NO ONE except yourself. Unless you are a firefighter, a police officer, an emergency medical worker or a hazmat worker, you are not responsible—or capable—of rescuing anyone from any tragedy or life-threatening situation. So get over the fact that you are not a superhero. God never made you responsible for saving everyone in your little world. Somehow, some way you made yourself into the savior of the world. And you can relinquish the title at any time to its rightful owner: God. Any compulsion you have to rescue your significant other, your children, siblings, parents, friends, coworkers—or anyone—from themselves or their problems is a misguided illusion. Surrender them all to God and allow God to do for them what you have absolutely no ability to do—rescue them. Listen to them, validate their feelings and help them to feel loved, but don’t dawn your superhero cape. Don’t make their problems your problems. Don’t bail

Fear is a major motivating factor in the behavior of many people. We have fears layered upon fears, and many of us are not aware that our surface fears are signposts. They tell us we need to do some inner-digging. We need to go deeper inside ourselves to undercover the primary fear that drives our belief system, and thus all we say and do. Last year, I mentioned the 1944 movie “Mr. Skeffington,” starring Bette Davis, in one of my daily posts. And today I’m going to revisit the character of Fanny Trellis-Skeffington. On the surface, Fanny seems like an extremely vain and plastic person. But Fanny’s obsession with her physical appearance is not driven by vanity. It’s driven by fear. If we begin to examine Fanny’s fears, we first come to see that she is fearful of aging. She’s unhappy to learn that she is pregnant. Why? Because it means she can no longer be a child herself. Worse yet, her baby will grow-up and as it gets older, so will Fanny. Underneath her fear of growing ol

Everything in the universe has a natural flow. We are part of that flow. Like every other element or living thing within the universe, we have our intended place and purpose. So then why is it that we humans spend more time struggling with life than we do flowing with it? We often choose to make our day, and life, a struggle. It doesn’t have to be. We can take conscious, positive control of our day and we can ask our Higher Power to govern our subconscious input each day. Each morning, pray to your Higher Power and ask for the guidance to flow with the universe. Pray that God keep you naturally within your place and focused on your purpose for each given day. Let go, stop struggling and allow yourself to flow. In doing so, you may find yourself more frustrated than usual at first. Why? Because you will still be hell-bent on having things your way. That stubborn little need to control the uncontrollable will still be present. Let’s call it withdrawal. So you might find

It’s pretty foreign for an active (non-recovering) codependent to focus on their own personal problems. Active codependents have been trained to focus outside of themselves. So an active codependent often lives to solve the problems of other people. In this way active codependents live vicariously through the lives of others. It’s how they (the codependent) avoid taking responsibility for living their own lives. Typically, if someone, say a friend, comes to an active codependent with problems, the codependent will immediately feel the need to “own” their friend’s issues. And they (the codependent) will do just that. He or she will take on their friend's problems as if they were his or hers to solve. For example, a friend comes to you with money problems. He’s completely overextended himself financially and he’s in a panic. He can’t pay his mortgage this month, he’s in arrears on his credit card payments, his utilities have been cut-off and he’s now being hounded by collec

Sometimes it’s difficult learning to stand up for ourselves. We are so used to backing-off because we feel like we don’t really count in this world. Everyone else has a right to their beliefs, opinions and needs—but not us. So we stand silently by and give our power away. We stuff our feelings and lay down like doormats for others. Then, once we’re alone, we allow our feelings to explode all over us. We replay the situation through our heads over and over, we get angry, mad as hell and revengeful. As we replay the scene again and again, we punish ourselves. We may be angry with the other person(s), but we’re mostly angry with ourselves. Well, it’s time to stop laying down and rolling over before others. It’s time to start owning our power by believing that we are good enough, equal with everyone and that our wants and needs DO COUNT. I belong to an MP3 service that charges my account every month for $20. I found out the hard way that if I don’t buy $20 worth of MP3s in a give