Soulshine

Everyone we encounter is a teacher. Everyone has something to teach us about ourselves or about life. And last week, I learned a new lesson about myself from an Ebay seller. I collect old movie posters/lobby cards. I had won a beautiful one on Ebay and it arrived damaged last week. As soon as I saw the packaging, I knew there was a problem. The lobby card had been mailed in a manila envelope and only had one ill-fitting piece of cardboard inside. The cardboard was behind the card so there was nothing protecting the front side (the image on the card) aside from the manila envelope, which had been torn in two places during shipping. Sure enough, when I opened the package the lobby card was damaged in those two spots. I immediately contacted the seller expressing my disappointment about the poor packaging and damaged card, and included photos of the damage. I felt justified in registering my complaint. I had paid for a near mint lobby card, not a damaged one. In addressing the i...

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Franklin Roosevelt    Fear, more than anything else, has kept us frozen and powerless to protect ourselves. From the time we were small, many of us learned incorrectly that we had no right to speak our truth, to own our emotional truth (our personal power) or to trust anyone to be truthful with us.    As a result, we learned to remain silent in the face of abuse perpetrated against us and we learned to stuff all of our feelings. We became possessed by our fears: 1) fears that we didn’t count; 2) that we deserved the abuse we received; and 3) fear that we were destined to be victims.      Today we are all here to prove to ourselves and to the world around us that we do count, that we deserve to be treated with proper respect and that we are not victims of life or anyone.    Today we are proclaiming that we will own our personal truth, that we will learn to experience and understand our ...

“Everyone is worth knowing.” O. Henry Most everyone compares themselves to other people. Sometimes we see ourselves as “less than” and sometimes we see ourselves as “more than” or “better than. “ As a result we categorize people. There are city slickers and there are country bumpkins. There are yuppies and there are rednecks. And who could forget hippies? Or preppies? Or nerds? Here in the desert, I categorize men based in their choice of footwear. To me, men who wear flip-flops are “cool” and men who wear sandals are “geeks.” Of course, men who wear socks with sandals are “super geeks.” Now stop and think for a moment about the ways in which you categorize and label people. The point of all of this is that by categorizing and labeling people, we determine in our own minds who is worth knowing and who is not worth knowing—before we ever have a chance to “know” them. In doing so, we eliminate many people from our lives by unfairly judging them as being “too cool” or ...

“Every individual has the same fundamental human rights as every other...” Robert Alberti & Michael Emmons , Your Perfect Right In their legendary book Your Perfect Right , Robert Alberti and Michael Emmons go on to clarify the above statement adding “regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, role or title.” I don’t see any need to clarify, however, because it becomes a means of still being exclusionary. What about sexual orientation? Does “ethnicity” include “nationality” or “skin color”? How about religious preference? When we add on “regardless of” it opens the door to being exclusionary while still looking inclusive. Let’s face it: We’re all equal in this world—and I do mean EVERY human being—period! There are NO EXCEPTIONS. That said, it would be much easier for us all to exercise our human rights if we all BELIEVED we were equal and if we were assertive enough to keep people from treating any of us as if we are less than they are. The book Your Perfect Right is ...

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Gospel of John How has God loved us? Passionately. Greatly. Unconditionally. Powerfully. Equally. God’s love for everyone is equally as great, as unconditional and as powerful. God has no favorites. No one is “more” to God or “less” to God than anyone else. We are all equal in the eyes of God and we are all equally loved by God. And so our calling is to love each other equally, just as God loves us. This means we need to come to terms with our fears concerning our own lovability. We must believe God loves us without fail and we must learn to love ourselves in the same way. We must then love others as we are loved by God and ourselves. To do so we have to come to term with a further set of fears: Fears about those who are different from us and fears of those who we simply don’t understand. In order to set aside our fears about those who are different from us, we need to lesson the grip of ignorance...

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...