Soulshine

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...