Soulshine

Struggling with knowing and trusting a Higher Power is problematic. The 12 Step program requires that we have a power greater than ourselves. For me, the God I grew-up with doesn’t work as a reliable Higher Power. First off, a Higher Power has to be on your side. The God I grew-up with was never on my side as far as I could discern. And not much has changed since that time. I have a slightly better concept of my Higher Power than I did several years ago, but it still isn’t one that brings me comfort or makes me feel loved and safe. So what do I want in a Higher Power? I want a Higher Love that makes me feel unconditionally loved, heard, validated, and cared about at all times. I want a Higher Love that comforts me and makes me feel valuable. I want a Love so great that I feel safe and warm always. We all need to be heard and validated by our Higher Power. We need to feel like everything we are experiencing and feeling is important to our Higher Power. We need to feel ...

You can’t force feelings. It’s my birthday and I know I’m supposed to be happy, but I’m really feeling sad today. First of all, I’m way past the age of being happy about being another year older. And secondly, I don’t have the love and the other heart and soul necessities that I need to feel happy about facing another year. I spent the past couple of days with a really good friend, whom I love a lot, and we’ve had a really good time hitting the amusement parks in Los Angeles. I appreciate his friendship and the fun times and I am grateful for both. This friend even helped to maneuver a surprise birthday party for me yesterday. He’s a really precious person—and I’d probably be feeling even sadder today without his friendship. But I still feel a deep, deep sadness that isn’t going away. I think rationally that I shouldn’t be feeling this way and I don’t want to be feeling this way. Unfortunately, I know why I’m feeling this way:   I feel so stuck in a life that ...

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” Henry David Thoreau Yesterday I was in Fern’s Garden, a little shop on Second Street in Long Beach, when I came across a small journal with this quote from Henry David Thoreau. Seems we’ve had life-coaches around for a long, long time! I bought the journal because the quote resonated with me strongly. I feel very restless right now. I don’t really believe I’m living the life I have imagined for myself. In fact, I know I am not. Since I was a small child I’ve had one dream in my heart: to be loved by that certain special irreplaceable someone. That’s never happened, mostly because—as much as I have desperately wanted it—I’ve been too afraid to pursue it. This is one of the great pitfalls of codependency. We don’t feel worthy to pursue the dreams in our hearts. For some of us, we don’t even know what dreams our hearts hold because we have been so busy diminishing ourselves in order to...

“Are my lips unkissable? Are my eyes unlookable? Is my skin untouchable? Am I unlovable?” Darren Hayes, Unlovable Darren Hayes was part of the wildly successful 1990s band Savage Garden, which produced massive hit singles like “Truly, Madly, Deeply” and “I Always Knew I Loved You.” In 2000, he left the band to start a solo career that hasn’t been quite as successful. “Unlovable” is a favorite song of mine from his 2004 album The Tension and The Spark . Some days I feel very unlovable. I still struggle with the terrible acne scarring that ravaged my face when I was 14. As I get older and sagging areas further emphasize the scars, I feel very ugly. And I know it’s not going to get better. Time isn’t on my side. So I look in the mirror and I feel unlovable and sad. Lotions can only do so much, and I’m tired of people to this very day asking me “What happened to your face?” All it does is remind me that my face, my skin, isn’t the norm—that it’s somehow unlookable, unkis...

I was talking with someone last night who had developed an energy-draining disease. He was bitter with God, himself and life. And he was playing the victim. Life had done him wrong. It had placed him in the path of an insect that could infect him with an incurable disease. Likewise God had done him wrong by allowing this to happen. No one escaped blame for his ailment, including himself. So I asked him “Can you accept the fact that you now have this disease? Instead of fighting reality through bitterness and blame, can you ask God to help you to take your power back from this disease by accepting that you have it and that you can’t change things back to the way they were before?” He looked pensive, but I could tell that he was beginning to understand. I went on to say that life may be different now, it may be less pleasant in certain ways, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work with the illness. We can befriend it and see what it has to teach us about the true value of ...