Soulshine

Seems most of us enter recovery with a very dire need to control life. The concept of flowing with life is totally foreign to us. We are so used to scripting every moment of every day in our heads. We decide what we think others should or should not do in order to please us. Thoughts like “No one should bother me today,” “He should have called me,” “She should want to see the movie I want to see” run through our heads second by second. These are all controlling thoughts. They are designed to ensure our personal happiness—and yet they do just the opposite: They make us miserable because we can rarely enforce them and make them reality. Every day we have a choice. We can script out our day and set ourselves up on a course of manipulation (control) and disappointment, or we can let go and ease into the flow of the day as determined by our Higher Power. I have learned to stop scripting not only my work days but also my free days and vacation days. Sure, I take time to plan what I...

After having a sandwich at a local eatery today, I stopped in a small grocery and got a double dark chocolate protein bar for dessert. There were some tables outside the grocery, so I sat down at one. A man came out of the grocery, looked up at the sky and asked me “You think it’s gonna rain today?” The skies had been overcast all day and so I said “Yeah, we’ll probably get a little rain.” Before I could even take a bite out of my protein bar, he started talking about weather-related conspiracy theories. I don’t mean global warming here. I mean ideas along the lines of governments manipulating weather patterns to purposely cause catastrophes. I personally don’t believe in these theories and I tried to say so, but it took a while. I could barely get in a word. When I did get a chance to disagree, he backed off and went into other conspiracy theories. Ten minutes or so later, he headed on his way. I sat and realized that it wasn’t too many years ago when I would have fe...

“Your soul can see that this moment NOW is full of gifts for you. Meanwhile, the ego is waiting for a better now.” Robert Holden Seems many of us need to learn to see life more clearly through the eyes of our souls. Robert Holden is certainly right. Our souls see the magic, the miracles, the blessings in each and every moment. But then, sadly, there’s a part of us that’s never satisfied. Whether it’s the ego or not, I can’t say. But I know I have a voice inside of me that’s rarely satisfied. That dissatisfied voice inside is always complaining about all of the things that it wants but cannot have. It complains that it wants love from this person or that person—a love that is never felt—and so the voice is miserable in its longing for what it can’t have. And in the process of its whining, I am made miserable. The disenchanted voice whines about many things. Life never seems to be what it wants life to be because this voice always wants all of the wrong things. At the ...

“A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” Spanish Proverb Living a life based in fear is as normal as breathing air for many people. And this is probably twice as true for those of us who have addictive personalities. As children. we embraced one major fear—“I’m not good enough”— and then found ourselves buried under an avalanche of life-destroying anxiety and worry. It wasn’t long before “I’m not good enough” developed into a mile-long laundry list of all the many reasons why we weren’t acceptable people. All of these fears were then further complicated by another major fear: Fear of abandonment. Once we deemed ourselves as unacceptable, it didn’t take us long to realize that we now had deep-dark secrets we needed to hide from others. After all, if people we loved found out just how defective we were, they’d say a swift “Goodbye” and never look back as they quickly ran away from us—or so we imagined to our great detriment. So life became on long series of fear-d...

Today I choose to let go of all of my fears and of all my need to control life I allow myself to flow with the Universe in my rightful place and I choose to flow with complete freedom with self-love and the joy of knowing that all is as it should be whenever I choose to keep myself from getting in the way of the natural flow of the Universe. Let’s flow together world toward our Divine purpose. Amen.

“A persecution was started against Paul and Barnabas, who were then expelled from the territory. They shook the dust from their feet in protest. They knew only how to be filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” The Christian Bible, Acts of the Apostles Why is it that when bad things happen to us we are far from being filled with joy and the Holy Spirit? Maybe it’s because we are rarely filled with joy even when good things are happening to us. And why would that be? Well, because we fail to recognize that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, and that we have the power to cultivate that heaven and to live it. Instead, as life-long addictive victims, we have chosen to give away our personal power over our inner-lives and to create our own internal-hells. Many of us have been guilty of giving away our inner-personal-power since we were small children. We gave away the heaven inside of us to Mom and Dad and many, many others. We were born believing we were beautiful, bu...

"O God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is. Amen." Macrina Wiederkehr I had lunch at an Asian restaurant the other day and my Fortune Cookie had this to say to me: “Be yourself and you’ll feel at home anywhere.” Obviously this statement holds great truth, so what keeps so many of us from being ourselves? The answer is actually simple: We don’t feel lovable. There are way too many of us who never have felt lovable. According to Robert Holden, in his new book Loveability , “the basic fear ‘I am not lovable’ is what causes you to be afraid of everything.” This makes sense to me. I’ve been possessed by two interwoven basic fears since I was a small child. Those interwoven fears are “I am not good enough, therefore I am not lovable.” In my course of work, I discover everyday that almost everyone I encounter is haunted by these same two interwoven fears. And these two basic fears then spread fear and worry to every other a...

Hope everyone has a very Blessed Christmas and Holiday Season. Remember to let go of expectations. Accept each moment and every person as they are by not demanding that they be as you want them to be. If you accept the moment as it is you will find joy in it. If you accept others as they are, you will find beauty in them. And if you accept yourself as you are you will find joy, beauty and complete peace!

To love well, we first have to understand what it is that keeps us from loving well. The antithesis of love is hate. So examining ourselves to understand whom or what we hate is an important step toward learning to love well. Every child in our society is taught to be fearful of anyone that is different from them and to be leery of any customs or practices that are different from their family norm. More often than not this conditioning is taught to us in subtle ways. For example, as children we hear adults around us criticize or demean people of other races, nationalities, religious practices, sexual orientations and political beliefs. These putdowns are often caged in humor or innuendo, but sometimes they are flagrant violations of God’s law to love your neighbor—no exceptions. Either way, children learn a deep-seated mistrust of those persons who are different from them and this mistrust is fueled by the fear that often erupts as hatred of those who are different and seen as evil i...

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...