Our people were still living free on the
prairies. But there was turmoil because of
the growing presence of the newcomers.
Many of our people had given in to the authority
of the newcomers. One band, however, was
still wild and free and living in the region
east of the Shining Mountains; the Big Horn
mountains.
During those times of difficulty, one man rose
among the people and became a good leader.
He was a courageous warrior on the battlefield,
and in his village he counseled with his elders
and made good decisions on behalf of the
people. So, of course, the people came to
him because they trusted his judgment, and over
the years his village grew.
One day a young man came to the village of this
wise leader. The young man's village had
been attacked by the newcomers, and many had
been killed or captured. All the young man
had were the clothes he wore, his weapons, and
his horse. He asked the wise leader if he
could join him.
The wise leader looked at the destitute young
man and said, "We are happy to have you
live among us. But first you must do one
thing."
"Yes," replied the young man.
"Tell me what to do."
"Find
the poorest family in the village," the wise leader
instructed. "Give your horse to them."
The young man was devastated. He had already lost
his friends and relatives, and now he was being asked to
give away his most prized possession.
"Uncle," said the young man, "I
cannot. Except for the clothes I wear and the
weapons I carry, my horse is all I have." Sad
and confused, the young man went away.
"Why did you ask that young man to give away his
horse?" asked one of the men in the village council.
"Because I wanted him to learn that he could have
become part of something larger than his own
troubles," replied the wise leader. "We
have many horses in our village and I would have given him
one from my own herd. But first I wanted to see if
he could surrender some of his pain, and make the
sacrifice I asked of him. In these times we all must
make sacrifices for the good of everyone. Perhaps,
after he has thought of it awhile, he will return."
"So," said Jeremy, "that young man's
weakness was selfishness."
"Yes," replied Old Hawk. "And if he
could have overcome it, he would have received much more
than the value of the horse. Not only would he have
been given another horse, but the entire village would
have embraced him."
"So how do we overcome our weaknesses?" Jeremy
asked. "They're as much a part of us as our
strengths."
"Sometimes we cannot," said Old Hawk.
"Remember, to our people, balance is essential and it
should be important to everyone. It is a reality in
the natural world. Night and day, life and death,
hot and cold, wet and dry, up and down, male and female,
and left and right, for example.
"Weaknesses and strengths are necessary for
balance. No one or no thing is only weak or only
strong. But some of us overlook our weaknesses, and
even deny that we have them. That can be dangerous,
because denying there is a weakness is in itself a
weakness. Likewise, accepting that we have
weaknesses becomes a strength. And by the same
token, overestimating strength is a weakness. You
should not be blinded by your strengths. The feeling
of strength is not the same as having strength.
"Neither should you ignore your weaknesses.
Know them well, too.
"When all is said and done, accept who you are in the
moment you are living. In the end, wisdom is born of
weakness as well as strength."
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When I was young and things got difficult at
home--usually between my mother and me--I would run
off to my grandmother's house. It wasn't much of
an investment in courage because it was only two
blocks away. It did, however, provide me with
immediate refuge from whatever situation I was
escaping. Mom-Mom, as I called my grandmother,
was careful never to take sides and always had
chocolate-chip cookies in the owl-shaped cookie jar on
the kitchen stove. She also let me sit in her
cozy lap while we listened to the radio.
Mom-Mom always had a lot of food in the house, and it
was readily available. She always said,
"You can take as much as you want, but you must
eat everything you take." She didn't like
wasting anything, especially food. That rule
seemed fine with me and helped me remain guilt free as
I topped off my pockets with cookies and candy every
time I left the kitchen.
One evening at dinner, I put much more food on my
plate than I could eat. As Mom-Mom put it,
"Your eyes were bigger than your
belly." Even with my pleading, she would
not back down. She made me sit there until my
plate was clean. It took several hours, and I
was very ill. It was an experience I will never
forget. That was the last time I made a pig of
myself at Mom-Mom's house.
Little did I realize that that incident was a prime
example of how we live our lives. It was about
making choices we have to live with.
The real choices we make in life are the thoughts that
we think and the beliefs that we hold as truth.
Our thoughts and beliefs exist as minute waves of
energy that operate in the universe to create the
situations, circumstances, and relationships we
experience as our life. And the universe is just
like Mom-Mom--it gives you no slack. If you put
thought energy into the universe, you must experience
it. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap,"
says the Bible. And, as you know, at times it
can be very uncomfortable experiencing your own
creations.
The good news is that once you recognize that you are
the source of your own experiences, you gain control
over your life. Being the source, or cause,
means that you can change situations that are giving
you difficulty rather than blaming someone else or
some other power.
It's a very simple concept once you understand
it. But it is startling news for many, because
it clearly says that we are all responsible for our
own life situations. At first, many of us are
not ready for such responsibility. When I was
first introduced to the concept that "beliefs
determine experience," I certainly didn't believe
that I was responsible for all the seeming disasters
that happened in my life. But there is nothing
like good old experience to get one knowing the truth.
Most of us can see the results of the conscious
choices that we make in our lives and, with a little
contemplation, can recognize the link between our
choices and the resulting experience. What's
unknown to most of us is that every moment of our
lives, we are also making choices from beliefs that we
are not consciously aware of. These subconscious
beliefs, in many cases, adversely impact what we are
consciously choosing.
Here, as a reminder, is the simple technique that will
help you shed some light on the subconscious beliefs
that may be getting in your way. Ask yourself,
"What would I have to believe to have that
experience?" Continue asking and answering
this question for yourself until you reach an answer
that feels like an "aha." When you
have a sudden realization--it will probably have
emotion associated with it--you've reached the
deep-seated, root-cause belief that is generating your
undesirable experience. As you take
responsibility for both your subconscious and
conscious choices, you'll feel more confident and
motivated to ferret out your limiting beliefs.
You deserve to experience all of your desires.
Continue removing those restrictive limits, and let
your power shine through.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
Twenty
years from now you will be more disappointed by the things
you
didn't
do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the
bowlines.
Sail
away from the
safe harbor. Catch the trade wind
in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
unattributed
People
Can't Always Be Trusted to Make the Best Decisions
I'm a person who likes to believe that best of
people. I like to think that others make
decisions based on what they perceive as the greater
good, that they'll do their best to try to help
others when they can, that they'll do the right
thing when they find a wallet with money and
identification in it. But over the years I've
come to find out that this simply isn't so--so even
though I like to believe the best of people,
I don't always think that way because I've just seen
far too much evidence to the contrary.
My current situation is one that illustrates this
point. I'm teaching at a high school in a
community with just a 36% vaccination rate for Covid.
Without getting into long discussions about
vaccinations in general, the evidence makes it
pretty clear that with such a low rate of
vaccinations, it's going to be pretty dangerous for
the kids if the schools are opened. The delta
variant of Covid is affecting young people much more
than any of the previous variants did, and packing
the students into small classrooms for 90-minute
classes is going to guarantee that anyone who does
come to school sick is going to be exhaling a large
amount of breath into the air for others to breathe
in.
The decision that's been made at our district is to
take no precautionary measures at all, and to take
action only after there's an outbreak or positive
cases reported. After they're reported,
though, will be too late, given the fact that the
enclosed spaces are rather small and crowded.
Decisions that would be best for the kids aren't
easy to make sometimes, but they're only difficult
in the short run--the long run will show just how
right the decision is, or just how wrong.
Another area that's touchy is that of
relationships--how many of us have known someone
who's committed to a completely abusive
relationship, and who constantly returns to that
relationship when given an opportunity? I've
seen this happen rather often, unfortunately, and it
makes for a lot of happiness, as well as for a lot
of stress for the people who care for the person who
is being abused.
Jobs are another source of poor decisions, it seems,
from the initial taking of a job to the continuing
on in jobs that we don't like. Many people
complain vociferously about the jobs they have, yet
make the decision every day to stick with the one
they have out of fear that they won't find something
else to take its place.
Decisions aren't always easy--I know that. And
they're not always clear to everyone. My
decision may make perfect sense to me, but no sense
at all (or just a little bit of sense) to you.
I think that the most difficult thing to deal with
when we watch other people make decisions, though,
comes about when they make those decisions without
considering evidence that seems very clear to the
observer. When I see a kid do something really
stupid at school, for example, even though they know
that there are going to be serious consequences that
they hate, it astonishes me that they're willing to
do what they do.
How many people have been thrust into financial
chaos because they've continued to buy things that
they don't really have the money for? I know a
man who decided to buy an $80,000 truck instead of a
$40,000 (or even 30k!) truck, and who has been
forced into severe financial problems because now
there's a huge new payment in addition to the
mortgage, bills, and the other car that they
own. All he needed to do would have been to
sit down and figure out just what the financial
commitment would entail, and he could have seen that
hard times were coming if he decided to buy the
truck.
In an ideal world, we all would be faced with
decisions, and before we actually made the decision,
we would look at evidence for all possible results,
and we would take those possible results into
account before making a decision. Our
decisions would never satisfy everyone, of course,
but at least we would feel that our decisions were
well considered and we would be able to deal with
results knowing that we at least did our best to
make the most positive decision overall.
But many things get in the way of good
decisions. Ego, fear, desire, desperation,
anger--all of these things can interfere with good
decision-making, and they can all sabotage our
ability to look at facts objectively and clearly.
There are many decision-making strategies out there,
and almost all of them start with the concept of
gathering data--get all the information that you
need to make an informed decision. But
most people aren't that patient, or they have too
many other issues involved to allow them to make
more than an emotional, often knee-jerk
decision. So I've learned over the years not
to expect too much from people when it comes to
making decisions--very often, people aren't going to
make the decision that makes the most sense, but
instead will make the decision that reinforces their
own beliefs or that benefits themselves more than
anyone else. And when I'm aware of this
dynamic, it helps me be at better peace with other
people's decisions.
(A little bit of background: I wrote this
essay because my school district just decided to
start school this year with absolutely no
precautions against Covid. It's a decision
that caused me to resign from the school, as I'm not
willing to stand in front of a classroom full of
young people who trust us and pretend that
everything's okay. Everything's not okay right
now, and we're not going to make it okay until we
start making responsible decisions.)
Life
is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises.
Sometimes
that beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you
know that feeling?
When something is just too beautiful? When
someone says something or
writes something or plays something
that moves you to the point of
tears, maybe even changes you.
Mark Oliver Everett
Beauty
is the mysterious quality that shouts loudly,
"Ah, this experience is right for me
now!" It is an abstract term that is
difficult to define because it has a slightly
different meaning for each of us. But I think
we will agree that when we accept or experience
beauty, we intuitively know that life contains much
more than we can comprehend. Beauty always
suggests something beyond--something greater than
ourselves.
The search for beauty is a journey into the meaning
of the universe. The experience of something
beautiful is a reward for our perseverance.
Beauty goes beyond the hardships of life and can
make it all worthwhile. When beauty finally
suffuses our souls, nothing else will take
precedence, because we will have discovered the
essence of God.
On the path
of awakening,
it is necessary to become aware
of your unconscious beliefs.
It is not a difficult task.
Just become watchful.
If you are alert and watchful,
without any judgment,
your day to day life will reveal
those unconscious beliefs to you.
Be a watcher of your self.
Be an impartial observer
of who you are at the level of mind
which is programmed
with your unconscious beliefs.
It helps to have a sense of humor.
If
you have an unconscious belief
that you will be abused or put down,
you will attract into your life
those who will abuse you
or be critical of you.
Your mind seeks to
be validated in this way.
"See," it will say to itself,
"I knew I was a victim.
I was right all along."
If deep down you feel unlovable,
you will attract into your life
those who are incapable
of loving you.
And even those who happen along
who are very loving,
will suddenly find themselves
being unloving towards you.
If
you have a belief that the
people who love you will leave you,
then sure enough, it will happen.
Over and over again.
So you had better become
aware of your unconscious beliefs.
They are creating
your experience of life.
They are based on your past
experiences, and mostly they are
formed in your early childhood.
As long as these beliefs
remain unconscious,
there is no way to be
released from them.
We have a hunch that it is possible to live
a better, more balanced, and less
stressful life, but many of us
firmly believe that we don’t have the time or energy
to make
the necessary changes, even though perhaps just one small change
could
significantly reduce our stress levels.Instead of striving for attainable incremental
changes,
we sometimes complain as if our lives are completely out of our
hands!
Life as we knew it is passing away, and something new
is emerging to take its place.
All of us are playing a part in a larger
transformative process, as each of us is being forced to
confront whatever it is we do, or even think, that keeps
love at bay. For as we block love's power to change our
own lives, we block its power to change the world.
Humanity is moving forward now, though in some ways
we are doing so kicking and screaming. Nature seems to
be saying to all of us, "Okay, it's time. No more
playing around. Become the person you were meant to
be."
We would like to, but it's hard. The problems of the
world today seem larger than they have ever been before,
making it easy to succumb to cynicism, fear,
hopelessness, and despair. Until, that is, we remember
who we are.
For who we really are is a power bigger than all our
problems, both personal and collective. And when we have
remembered who we are, our problems -- which are
literally nothing other than manifestations of our
forgetfulness -- will disappear.
Well that would be a miracle, you might say. And that
is precisely the point.
This book is about learning who we are, that we might
become agents of miraculous change. As we release the
fear-based thoughts we've been taught to think by a
frightened and frightening world, we see God's truth
revealed: that who we are at our core is love itself.
And miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.
It is said in Alcoholics Anonymous that every problem
comes bearing its own solution. And the gift being borne
by our current challenges is the opportunity to make a
large leap forward in the actualization of our own
potential. The only way the world can make a quantum
leap, from conflict and fear to peace and love, is if
that same quantum leap occurs within us. Then and only
then will we become the men and women capable of solving
the problems that plague us. As we leap into the zone of
our most authentic selves, we enter a realm of infinite
possibility.
Until we enter that zone, we are blocked, for God
cannot do for us what He cannot do through us. To say He
has the solutions to our problems is to say He has a
plan for the changes each of us needs to go through in
order to become the people through whom He can bring
forth those solutions. The most important factor in
determining what will happen in our world is what you
decide to let happen within you. Every circumstance --
no matter how painful -- is a gauntlet thrown down by
the universe, challenging us to become who we are
capable of being. Our task, for our own sakes and for
the sake of the entire world, is to do so.
Yet for us to become who we most deeply want to be,
we must look at who we are now -- even when what we see
doesn't please us. This moment is driving us to face
every issue we've ever avoided facing, compelling us to
get to some rock-bottom, essential truth about ourselves
whether we like what we see there or not.
And until we make that breakthrough in ourselves,
there will be no fundamental breakthrough in the world.
The world we see reflects the people we've become, and
if we do not like what we see in the world, we must face
what we don't like within ourselves. Having done so, we
will move through our personal darkness to the light
that lies beyond. We will embrace the light and extend
the light.
And as we change, the world will change with us.
We spend so much time on unimportant things -- things
with no ultimate meaning -- yet for reasons no one seems
to fully understand, such nonessentials stand at the
center of our worldly existence. They have no connection
to our souls whatsoever, yet they have attached
themselves to our material functioning. Like spiritual
parasites, they eat away our life force and deny us our
joy. The only way to rid ourselves of their pernicious
effects is to walk away ... not from things that need to
get done, but from thoughts that need to die.
Crossing the bridge to a better world begins with
crossing a bridge inside our minds, from the addictive
mental patterns of fear and separation, to enlightened
perceptions of unity and love. We're in the habit of
thinking fearfully, and it takes spiritual discipline to
turn that around in a world where love is more suspect
than fear.
To achieve a miraculous experience of life, we must
embrace a more spiritual perspective. Otherwise, we will
die one day without ever having known the real joy of
living. That joy emerges from the experience of our true
being -- when we detach from other people's projections
onto us, when we allow ourselves permission to dream our
greatest dreams, when we're willing to forgive ourselves
and others, when we're willing to remember that we were
born with one purpose: to love and be loved.
Anyone who looks at the state of the world today is
aware that something radically new is called for -- in
who we are as a species and in our relationship to each
other and our relationship to the earth itself. Yet the
psychological fundamentals that hold this dysfunctional
world in place are like sacred cows: we are afraid to
touch them, for fear something bad will happen to us if
we do. In fact, something bad will happen to us if we do
not. It is time to change. It is time to do what we know
in our hearts we were born to do.
We are here to participate in a glorious subversion
of the world's dominant, fear-based thought forms.
There are only two core emotions: love and fear. And
love is to fear as light is to darkness: in the presence
of one, the other disappears. . . .
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
