Soulshine

“’What is real?’ asked the Rabbit one day… ‘Does it mean having things buzz inside and a stick-out handle?’ ‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse, ‘It’s something that happens to you.’ ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit. ‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse.” Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit    Discovering our true God-encoded purpose in life requires that we become authentic or real people. It means we stop hiding behind our fears and allow ourselves to be vulnerable— to open up to ourselves, to life, to others. It means we recognize that we alone are the stewards of the life God gave us. It means learning to honestly love ourselves.    Becoming real, as the Velveteen Rabbit learned, means we must own our thoughts and choose them wisely (Choosing the kind over the critical). It also means we must open-up to   our feelings and be willing to accept them, even when they do hurt. It likewise means that we must learn to treasure our bodies...

“The meditation room is within. Decorate that.” Richard from Texas, Eat Pray Love Apparently during my trip to Los Angeles, someone was gracious enough to share their nasty little cold germs with me. This week, I’ve found that nursing a cold is a good test of how well we take care of ourselves. It’s also taught me a lot about the inner-critic in my head. In terms of self-care, I decided last Sunday that I would stay away from the office. Then I made sure I had all of the necessary cold medications, including cough drops. I immediately began drowning my body with chicken noodle soup/chicken broth to get the old electrolytes back in balance again. I’ve also downed a lot of green tea and I’ve allowed myself to lie around and watch movies. All of this has helped me reduce the severity of the cold. The cold I had last year took me through three boxes of tissues. This cold has only required one box. On the down side, I’ve heard a lot from my inner-critic. In particular, h...

“When we stop naming ourselves, who we think we are disappears…” Adyashanti, Falling Into Grace We use thoughts and the words that enable those thoughts to define ourselves, others and the entire world. As children, we allow the thoughts and words of others to define us: child, white, black, chubby, skinny, pretty, plain, shy, aggressive, good, bad. And we become, in our minds, whomever others have defined us to be. We believe their words. We capture those words in our heads as thoughts. And we come to define ourselves by the words that adults have placed upon us. We own their words and we become their definition of who we are. How many of us still define ourselves today by the words that others assigned us as children? Probably all of us do to some degree. How many of us ever take the time to challenge these outer-imposed identities? Probably all too few of us. So let’s start today. As Adyashanti says, when we stop naming or defining ourselves with the thoughts/words others origina...