Soulshine

Sometimes we feel stuck. Life suddenly isn’t working. Maybe a relationship we cherish isn’t going anywhere, and we don’t know what to say or what to do to jump start the relationship. Or maybe we feel like we’re in a rut at work. We don’t feel challenged or we may feel like we simply don’t fit in our current position anymore. Or maybe our recovery seems to have stagnated. We were feeling really good about all of the new patterns of behavior we’ve learned to live, but suddenly now, we feel like we did years ago when we were hopelessly lost in our codependency. We feel miserable inside and we feel stuck in the mud of negativity. When we reach difficult crossroads like these, we need to pray for doors to open. First we need to pray for a door to open within our hearts. We need the door to self-love to re-open. This is the door that allows us to breathe-in self-approval and to feel worthy again to receive all that is good in life. There’s a reason why we’ve gone from feeling conf...

“Just take my hand and make me glad I’m changing.” Guillemots, I Don’t Feel Amazing Now I’m not sure anyone can make us feel glad that we’re changing-- aside from ourselves. We have to start thinking, accepting and believing that change is good for us on every level at every moment of every day. And most of us don’t want to do this. We’re fearful. Change means facing unfamiliar waters. It doesn’t feel safe and so we resist. We don’t wear change well because we like to rest in the comfort of stability. And yet change is a constant fact of life. We are actually powerless over change for the most part; and when we do try to control it, we ensure our own misery, because it’s impossible to stop life from changing. So let’s look at change this way. Change ensures that life is forever new, that we are always able to grow into fresh opportunities, into higher levels of understanding, intelligence, emotional maturity, spiritual enlightenment and physical fortitude. Change also ensures that w...

“Everything is just as it should be.” Andrew Weil, M.D., Spontaneous Happiness Most days I need to get out of my own way. I have a lot of “shoulds,” a lot of personal inner-demands and wants that I place on myself, others and even nature. And these mostly irrational demands do nothing less than cause me misery. Life is not about how I want it to be. Life is about how everything actually is, despite my objections. People are who they are, the weather is as it is, the day begins and flows as the universe flows. I am a small, but important part of that flow, and I need to be open to moving with the universal flow. When I am, everything is just as it should be. Awareness is the key to getting out of the way-- of both myself and the universal flow. Conscious surrender and release of my inner-demands is the next step. And acceptance that life is exactly as it should be—moment by moment—rounds out my active choice to live life as it is. Living life in the flow requires being focused in th...

Everything in the universe has a natural flow. We are part of that flow. Like every other element or living thing within the universe, we have our intended place and purpose. So then why is it that we humans spend more time struggling with life than we do flowing with it? We often choose to make our day, and life, a struggle. It doesn’t have to be. We can take conscious, positive control of our day and we can ask our Higher Power to govern our subconscious input each day. Each morning, pray to your Higher Power and ask for the guidance to flow with the universe. Pray that God keep you naturally within your place and focused on your purpose for each given day. Let go, stop struggling and allow yourself to flow. In doing so, you may find yourself more frustrated than usual at first. Why? Because you will still be hell-bent on having things your way. That stubborn little need to control the uncontrollable will still be present. Let’s call it withdrawal. So you might find ...