Soulshine

How do you invest your personal energy? Do you invest it in negative “I am” statements, or in positive “I am” statements? Negative “I am” statements include, but are not limited to, phrases like “I’m lousy,” “I’m putrid,” or “I’m crap.” Positive “I am” statements run along the lines of “I’m talented,” “I’m attractive,” or “I’m creative.” There’s quite a difference between “I’m crap” and “I’m creative.” The first destroys your self-worth and the latter enriches your presence in this world. So which would you REA LLY rather invest your energy in— self-deprecation or self-affirmation? Do you want to be miserable by investing in “I’m crap” statements, or would you rather have a sense of well-being by investing in “I’m creative” statements? Seems like a no-brainer to me. And yet, so many of us continue to use up all of our personal resources by bashing ourselves into total misery. We ensure that we have bad days by relentlessly playing bad “I am” statements through our heads. Then we w...

“What you feel you lack on the inside will be sought from people  and things outside your approval…” Howard Falco, I AM “… Until the day arrives when you realize you no longer need it.” Oh, for that day to arrive… again! Yes, again. That day arrived the day we were born. No baby is born self-conscious. No baby needs outside approval; help, yes, but approval, no. Children between the ages of one and 10 are rarely self-conscious. They may consider themselves to be the center of the universe, but they aren’t neurotic about it. That particular neurosis doesn’t develop until we hit puberty. Once we reach our teen-age years, many of us become the center of the universe in a very needy way. If we didn’t receive the proper love and affirmation we needed as small children, then puberty can become our worst nightmare. Every self-conscious bone in our body pricks against our inner-emptiness sans mercy. We find fault with our faces (even before acne sets in), with our bellies, our knees, our...

"Lazarus Come Out!" Jesus Christ, Gospel of John At this time of the year we hear a lot about caves or tombs. There are scripture readings about Jesus calling Lazarus out of the darkness of his tomb and into the light of day. On Easter Sunday we hear of how God the Father raises Jesus from the dead, calling him out of his tomb and into the light of eternal life These readings remind me of Plato’s allegory of “The Cave.” If I remember correctly, Plato tells a story of people who are chained facing the wall of a cave. They have never been outside the cave and have never experienced daylight. There is a fire burning behind them and all they experience, aside from darkness, are the shadows of objects. When something moves behind them, the firelight casts shadows across the wall of the cave. The inhabitants believe that the cave is the only reality life offers.  Plato proposes the idea that one of the chained persons is freed, stands up, looks around and is attracted to the ...

Life would be a lot easier for everyone if we could all keep our primary focus on ourselves and our own personal issues. Life gets difficult, messy and downright ugly when we start looking beyond our own noses. Allowing our noses to grow and stick themselves into other people’s business is one of the biggest sources of trouble in daily life. Unfortunately, it has become epidemic. Boundaries have been blurred and completely lost in some cases. Many people no longer know where they end and other people begin. If you are no longer sure where you end and someone else begins, ask yourself questions like “Whose problem is it?” or “How does this affect my life?” We often have problems bombarding us from all directions. We have a report due at work in the next three days, our spouse is depressed about turning 50 years old, and our 16 year old niece has runaway from home-- leaving our sister-in-law to fall apart all over us. To make matters worse, our mother is in the late stages of leukemi...

On a rainy autumn afternoon at the Lincoln Park Alano Club in Chicago, I got a spiritual answer to a lifelong problem of mine. I was at my favorite weekly CODA meeting and it was a pure a-ha moment. The light bulb in my brain went off immediately. Jean was speaking. “All my life,” she said, “I’ve been wanting someone else to give me the one thing I wasn’t willing to give myself.” Jean paused for a moment, then continued. “And that one thing was love.” A bittersweet mixture of tears filled her eyes. “I’ve searched high and low for the right person, for anyone or everyone who could give it to me. But this week I finally realized that no other person could give me the one thing I first needed to give to myself.” Like most everyone I knew, Jean wanted that really one special person to love her into being good enough to love herself. I had wanted it my whole life, too. And like Jean I had also searched high and low for a savior. I didn’t know how to save myself from my self-loathing and ...

“When I loved myself enough… I began to accept the unacceptable.” Kim McMillen , When I Loved Myself Enough It’s pretty hard to love yourself at all when you have felt so unlovable your entire life. My list of unacceptable things about me has been pretty long over the years. Trying to accept them seemed impossible at first. Then I realized that hating and fighting them was a winless and extremely exhausting battle. I was tired of fighting an endless war inside myself. Then I came across Kim McMillen’s book “When I Loved Myself Enough” at a bookstore in Denver. I opened it and the first thing I saw was “When I loved myself enough… I began to accept the unacceptable.” I immediately added a few words of my own: “I began to accept the unacceptable” about myself and others. How often are we unwilling to accept our looks, personality, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, quirks or other inner-demons? How often do we blame ourselves for being bad people simply because we were frazzled th...

“Two divided by love equals one and one is a lonely number.” Two Divided by Love , the Grass Roots Back in the late 1960s/ early 1970s, there was a popular rock group called the Grass Roots. One of their hit singles was “Two Divided by Love.” Today, as I re-experience that song, it occurs to me that it’s quite impossible to be divided by love. Love unites. Love unites me to myself when I’m struggling with my dark side and its many imperfections or limitations. It unites me to my pain. Love helps me to face the pain. It helps me to walk through the pain and to take back my personal power by refusing to run from my pain, or from those who try to inflict emotional pain onto me by criticizing my imperfections. Love converts pain to power. It allows me to stand up, face the bullies of this world and honor myself. Love unites me to God, my Higher Power, who works endless miracles in my life. The miracles are always present, but I see them more clearly when I’m united to God through love...

Parker Palmer, in his book A Hidden Wholeness , says “We are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual DNA of our uniqueness—an encoded birthright knowledge of who we are, why we are here and how we are related to others.” That spiritual DNA at the core of our being is, I believe, encoded into our souls. It is our true self, a spark of the Divine and our inner-teacher. According to Palmer, a Quaker, the workings of the soul are multi-faceted. He says: The soul keeps us grounded in our own being. The soul keeps us connected to the community where we find life. Relationships are necessary for each of us to blossom into the fullness of our being. The soul tells us the truth about ourselves and the world around us. The soul gives us life and prompts us to share that gift.        Taking time to connect with our souls is a daily necessity if we are to better understand our uniqueness, our seed of selfhood. A daily so...