Soulshine

As I open my heart to goodness and acceptance, I experience a new kind of love. It is unconditional and ever-present. It flows freely. I aspire to be loving in this way and I surrender myself to this all-embracing Love. I choose to be loving, gentle and kind toward myself instead of being critical, cruel and controlling. I am deserving of love. I will work at identifying the messages within my head that tell me I am not lovable. They are rooted deep within me and are my primary means of self-condemnation and self-sabotage. Throughout my life I have willfully, though often unintentionally, destroyed relationships, career opportunities, social activities and my own personal happiness by falsely believing I was unlovable. Today I believe I am lovable, and I will use my new-found awareness to nourish the love I give to myself and the love that others give to me. I sometimes still have difficulty in feeling lovable, but by God’s grace-- and by practicing kindness toward myself-- I am gra

I have written my life story since the moment I made my first choice. My life story is all about choices. As a small child I began to make choices: red as my favorite color, pizza as my favorite food, the Wizard of Oz as my favorite movie, the Beatles as my favorite musical group. Some of my choices were influenced by my grandmother. She introduced me to her generation of favorites, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Cab Calloway and Perry Como. As a result, I gained an unusual appreciation for classic movies and Swing-era music. Some choices were naturally mine, like choosing red over green, or chocolate over strawberry. But more difficult choices were over-shadowed by third party influences. I may be the primary author of my life story, but there have been many editors who shaped my thinking and behavior. I look back with regret over many of the choices I’ve made based in the beliefs, fears and behaviors of others. For many years, my mother was the primary editor of my story. Th

  Happiness begins with me. I am the author of my life story. I have power over my own life and I make choices that determine my personal happiness, or personal misery. The key to my happiness is within me; it is as simple and as difficult as self-acceptance: If I am happy with myself, I am happy with life. I am complete in myself and all of life compliments my completeness and happiness. No person or thing, no accomplishment or event makes me happy. They all compliment my happiness. I cannot be happy, however, If I am not happy with myself. And, if I’m not happy with being me, it’s not likely that I will look inside myself to find the key to my happiness. When I do not like myself, I look outside to find happiness. I depend on persons, places and things to make me happy. I am not responsible for my own personal happiness-- everyone else is. I mistakenly believe my parents, children, friends and lovers are responsible for making me happy. Yet, even when they assure me that they lov

“My sin is always before me...I have done evil in your sight.” Psalm 51, Book of Psalms Some of us live with our sins “always before” us. And we experience God as Darth Vader. Our God-Vader is perpetually invading our privacy. He forever spies on us; watching for every lustful thought, every harsh word, every sign of selfishness, every possible screw-up. We believe God-Vader is out to get us. We feel unsafe. We are anxious. We have a devil on one side, ready to take us sin-tripping, and God-Vader on the other side, waiting to punish us for it. Every day is a dark escapade of fearfully feeling lost and never feeling found. Life is an endless war. Our thoughts race with constant self-condemnation. Desperation becomes our constant companion. We are trapped in the parallel universe of scrupulosity. Scrupulous people tend to believe that everything they think, say or do is a sin. If they even breathe in the wrong way, or utter a prayer without giving it their undivided attention, they a

Codependency is so encompassing and baffling that it’s hard to define in words. We can visualize it in our minds, however: Just think “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Codependency causes people to focus on the lives of others, usually one person in particular. The codependent person obsesses about this person, takes on all of his or her problems, likes and dislikes, and essentially begins to live the life of the person they have attached themselves to. In this sense, codependency really is like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” A codependent person takes on the life of the other person, and leaves their own life behind. They think and breathe the life of their hostage. The old joke in recovery circles is that codependents don’t make friends, they take hostages; and it’s really true. The codependent has so little self-worth that they actually loose themselves in the other person. They attach to the other person, cling to that person and eventually suck the life out of the person.

“Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.” Nick Smith , Metropolitan Nick Smith is a character from the 1990 movie Metropolitan , and he makes a good point: Toxic people are always attractive. Why is that? Well, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that so many of us in our society are raised by toxic people; and what we know, we gravitate toward. Many of us grew up in households where addiction was a problem. Dad was an alcoholic and mom was codependent on his addiction, or vice versa. We watched and we learned. Addictive behaviors became the norm for us. We didn’t like them, but they became familiar and comfortable. The older we got, the more we learned we could hide behind addictive behaviors and we gradually developed our own addictive personalities. As we grew toward adulthood, we subconsciously recognized the signs

“Emotions are like the clouds across the sky. They’re to be noticed, accepted, acknowledged and allowed to flow on.” Stephen C. Paul, Illuminations Life flows forward beautifully when we allow it. Important to the flow of life is the flow of emotions. Unfortunately, we humans tend to like to control both the flow of our emotions and the overall flow of life. Yes, we build lots of dams to block the natural flow of God’s plan for our individual lives and our collective life together as one people. Most of our need to control life is subconscious and began when we were children. Many of us learned from adults that overflowing feelings were bad, and that we needed to build dams to hold the floodwaters of our emotions from spilling out onto others. I remember an evening when my mother was going through the family photo album. I was eight or nine years old. She was looking at a picture of my little brother. He was probably two years old in the picture and there was a little girl with him.

“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince Humans tend to be overly rational. Maybe we’re trying to prove that we aren’t really monkeys; or maybe we do have an innate need for factual, rational proof of most everything; or maybe we’re simply avoiding the emotional messiness of the heart by spending so much time in our heads. Whatever the cause, we believe that we can only see rationally with our eyes and only understand rationally with our brains. We believe our hearts are false to us and irrational. After all, we like to say that love did us wrong, or let us down, and so we often refuse to trust our feelings. We easily sweep our feelings under the carpet and rarely do we find time to shake that carpet out. Well, today’s the day: Grab that emotional carpet and shake it hard. It’s filled with an abundance of heart wisdom. And Antoine de Saint-Exupery was exactly right: Only the heart sees what is

“Ultimately I learned that I had to love and approve of myself. If I was happy and content, most of the time my dad and I got along fine. I began to realize this was true in most of my relationships.” David Elliott, Healing Many people think that approval is something they need from others. At the same time, it never occurs to them that they need approval first and foremost from themselves. Once we love, accept and approve of ourselves we become whole people. We value who we are and we see ourselves as equal to all others. We become happy and content with ourselves and life. We walk with purpose and gain an overall sense of well-being. Life suddenly suits us and we look good wearing it. As we wear life well, we notice that our relationships also fit us better. Why? Because we are more fully present in all of our relationships. We are no longer feeling inferior and thus emotionally needy. We no longer use relationships as a means of garnering approval from others because we no longe

"Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart." Kahil Gibran   Frog Wisdom, Part Two: The collective conscious of the world has defined physical beauty: Height, flowing hair, slenderness, high cheek bones, large expressive eyes, and small lips are part of a winning beauty formula for women. Beauty in a man follows a similar formula: Height, thick hair, V-shaped from shoulders to waist, high cheek bones, brooding eyes and tight abs paint a portrait of the ideal man. Yet these portrayals of ideal men and women rarely fit the average person. Most everyone comes up short, especially when other false beauty or desirability factors are woven into the formula, such as name, title, money, overall social standing, et al. The over-emphasis on physical beauty in this world reveals the fact that so many of us are spiritually depraved, because it eclipses the essential importance of inner-beauty. Ever wonder why so many “beautiful people” end up married to

"I don't think about you." Gary Cooper, The Fountainhead In the 1949 film “The Fountainhead,” Gary Cooper plays an architect, Howard Roark, and Robert Douglas plays Cooper’s nemesis, Ellsworth Toohey, a critic for The Banner newspaper. Toohey works hard to destroy Roark’s reputation as an architect, writing scathing columns about Roark’s progressive and excessively expensive architectural ideas. Before long, no one in town will hire Roark to design a building for them. One afternoon, when it seems as if Toohey has successfully destroyed Roark’s career, the two men cross paths. Toohey stops Roark on a street corner by a new construction site and the two men exchange words. Toohey asks Roark what he thinks of him. “Go ahead,” says Toohey with a smirk of inflated self-importance. “You can tell me what you really think about me.” Roark looks down for a moment. Then he looks back up at Toohey and with total honesty says “I don’t think about you.” Roark turns and walks away w

You know, Kermit the Frog was right. It’s tough being green-- at least for those of us who look in the mirror every morning and see the reflection of a frog looking back at us. Green is nice for grass, but somehow it doesn’t make for a good complexion. But then, neither does acne, or age spots, or other undesirable blemishes that we choose not to accept. So we stand in front of the mirror each morning, day after day, rejecting ourselves and croaking “If only I looked like Brad Pitt” or “If only I looked like Natalie Portman.” Worse yet, we want someone to come to our aid and rescue us from our dreaded froggy-ness. We wait impatiently for a Prince Valiant or a Maid Marian to come and kiss-away our greenness as they love us into being radiant beautiful people. Yes, we wait for the great impossibility. And it is impossible. No one can rescue us and no one can give us what we have refused to give to ourselves. We may have allowed others to tell us that we were homely, or fat or unaccep

"Do to no one what you yourself dislike." Book of Tobit, Chapter 4:15 No one likes to be shamed and there are few things in life more damaging than shame. Yet many parents use shame to keep their children in line. “You should be ashamed of yourself” is an all too familiar statement that roars from the mouths of angry parents, and this particular lion’s roar is one that needs to be muted-- forever. Shame cuts to the core of a person. It tells a person that he or she is somehow inherently bad, and that being bad or evil personified is who they are; their very nature. It also infers that somehow this same person is hopeless and beyond redemption. After all, no one can change who they are inherently. So a child who is condemned and shamed into being the bad boy or bad girl is marked by adults as if he or she is the anti-Christ. No one can be created in the image and likeness of God and be inherently bad. That’s impossible. Bad is a word that needs to be used to define behavi

Newborn babies eventually blossom into children. In many ways a newborn is like a rosebud. A newly formed rosebud is closed tight upon itself in all of its greenness. But with each passing day, it begins to loosen and open to the world around it; sharing the great beauty of its red, pink or peach petals. Newborns grow in a similar way. As each day passes they gain hair, weight and color. They slowly open to the reality around them gaining knowledge, understanding and the willingness to share their beauty with the world. And they share it with no one more so than their parents. It must be fascinating for parents to watch their children grow and blossom into the unique image and likeness of God that each child represents. Each day, as a baby grows, parents have the unique opportunity to wonder what they will learn about their child as it opens and spreads its petals a little more into the sunlight of a new day. Will he have a bubbly personality, full of life? Will she move gracefully

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter; and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss We tend to think of the term “made for each other” as purely romantic. But I believe we can broaden the definition in the following way. God created certain people to be important in our lives. These people were made for us and we were made for them. In other words, part of God’s plan for the human race is to create a support system for all of us. God created certain people who would be there for us to help us grow into being the people we were created to be, and to help us accomplish our intended purposes in life. And, likewise, we were created with the intent of being part of a support system for specific others in our lives. Everyone’s support system includes parents, siblings, extended family members, friends, neighbors, love partners and God. In this light, there are many people in our lives that the phrase “made for each other” can apply to in a