The Ego is the Veil

What if the “veil” isn’t out there somewhere but rather inside of us right here in the form of our ego?  I wonder.  We talk of many things as if they are “out there” outside of ourselves and as we learn and live this life, understanding begins to dawn and we come to realize that as above, so below…as within, so without.  During times of meditation or selfless service, the veil seems to thin for us and we feel bliss or true love.  When we thin the veil of the ego, we begin to feel the truth from the core of our being without the ego arguing for pole position in this situation or that situation.

I think the veil; the thing that separates us all is the ego.   The ego and/or veil, has a perfectly good purpose.  I don’t think either was supposed to be destroyed or in anyway eradicated.   Instead, the ego and the veil it seemingly creates should be understood.  We can thin the veil thereby minimizing our egos by setting our intent, turning our ego-self over to the greater Soul-Self thereby piercing the veil and all sorts of amazing things are then possible.  Things we could never have imagined from within a thick veil of the ego can then be created positively.  Consider, if we over-identify too much with the ego in an unhealthy way, (and oh goodness are there oh so many unhealthy ways), the veil is thick around us and we are cut off from not only Source but each other as well.  The conclusion I come to is that the thicker the ego or veil, the greater the disconnection from Source and others.  This can unwittingly occur due to unnatural beliefs or other unhealthy means and can be a very challenging way to learn in this life. 

So, I come to understand that all is truly perfect as it is whether or not I judge it thickly veiled with my own ego or not.  Even the ego and the veil are perfect.  They are perfect for each soul’s journey regardless of the dimension of the ego or veil.  All things in good time come through the thinning of the veil or ego, like love, compassion and understanding.  I wish to explore this “thinning veil” concept a bit more.  I didn’t come up with this idea entirely on my own.  It was a little nugget of a puzzle I was left with as I some how managed to thin my own veil and a trusted guide from somewhere seemingly not here and yet right here left me to ponder…and ponder I will.

 

© 2014 Jaie Hart, All Rights Reserved

(photo, beautiful random google image find)

Life - The Journey Continues Series

I've completed my latest series of books.  These represent a collection of my favorite articles from this blog and other articles I have written.  This series represents my thoughts on various topics we deal with in life and the ways in which we might look at them in a way to reinforce the benefit of seeking silver linings, searching for understanding and grasping the meaning of life and it's many lessons.  If you're interested in any of these works, please visit my website at http://www.jaiehart.com.

Blessings of infinite love and light!

Jaie

Truth: Understanding Makes Compassion Possible

The concept outlined in the title above comes from a beautiful soul, Thich Nhat Hanh and you can read the details in a wonderful little book of his titled “be free where you are.”  I was shopping for books last weekend to study for a Masters program I’m working on and this little book caught my eye.  The title caught my eye because for my own reasons I was considering some of my own thoughts about being trapped and had begun to realize that my prison was merely a matter of untamed thoughts and not really a reality.  The above title comes from a chapter in Thich Nhat Hanh's book.  

This particular chapter resonated so much with me that I had to write about it.  So, what does this beautiful soul mean when he says, “Understanding Makes Compassion Possible?”  As we experience each other through our daily interactions, we will meet all kinds of people.  We’ll meet those who are loving, giving, forgiving and compassionate.  We’ll also meet those who are hateful, selfish, vengeful and unfeeling.  It is what it is – that’s just life on Earth.  Through understanding that those before you (who may be exhibiting the negative attributes I’ve written about above) are suffering too in some way just like you, you begin to open the door to compassion.  Once you let compassion in by throwing that door open ever wider, you become free in so many ways.

It is hard to be compassionate when suffering souls are doing everything they can to seemingly wreck your day.  However, as surely as I’m sitting here breathing and typing out my thoughts, you can learn how to open that door and free yourself from the prison of giving your power away through vengeance, revenge, vindictive or equally offensive behavior in reaction to a situation you experience with a soul who is in pain.  I’ve written this before and so have many others:  Hurt people hurt people.  That is just the way of things here on Earth.  If you arm yourself through understanding and its resulting compassion, you can free yourself from much needless and energy wasting drama.   

But here is the thing, everyone has their role here to play, scenes to act out and lessons to learn.  There is no right way or wrong way to handle people, situations or interactions with one exception.  If you have a specific expectation, what you do in your actions will result in a reaction or consequence.  Through understanding you might learn that if you push the buttons of grumpy or wounded people, they may take a swing at you.  Or, through even greater understanding you might learn than wounded people might take a swing at you just because you are standing there whether or not you push their buttons.

Some people become angry and upset because they suffer.  Adding insult to injury does not solve a problematic interaction.  Understanding, compassion and love for self and others can solve a problem just maybe not exactly the way you expect.  It’s possible that you may find you have to hold compassion and understanding for yourself and move yourself away from people who trigger your reactions until you can learn not to react.  Again, there is no right or wrong way to handle an interaction but there are consequences for actions and when suffering is involved, adding more suffering doesn’t help.  Should wounded people seek assistance to ease their suffering?  Sure.  But, what if they do not know how? What if they do not know that they are suffering?  What if they are so lost in their suffering they don’t even know where to begin?  Will you adding to their suffering make you or them better?  Ask yourselves these questions.  Ask yourself if a situation you face needs understanding, compassion, love, space or thoughtful discussion. 

I find that I sometimes must hold compassion from a distance with those who trigger me.  I do reserve the right to set boundaries but would make every attempt to do so kindly, lovingly and diplomatically no matter what someone else has done.  Sometimes I may be stressed or irritable and react instead.  I don’t like how I feel when I react in such situations and start to feel the prison doors of emotion begin to shut me in again.  I do like how I feel when I make an effort to understand what is really happening, when I can move beyond my assumptions and perceptions and reach for the truth and set an intent for compassion.  I wish to do no harm in this world and I’m sure there is no shortage of people who might say I was evil incarnate.  I can’t worry about what other people think.  I can only do my level best to seek understanding, try my best to be kind and do whatever I can to find compassion in my dealings.  When I can find a way to do this, I free myself from the prison that reactive emotions of anger, disappointment and pain create.  It’s hard not to let the ego step in and fight back but sometimes you have to stop and think that it may very well be that the grown up before you is actually a very wounded child on the inside.  Would you take a swing at a wounded child?  I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t because I couldn’t live with myself if I did.  I would put myself back into an emotional prison I truly wish to be free from.  I have found that the understanding and compassion in the book above has always set me free.  When I forget, I change course and right my actions and strive to stay compassionate.  I am not perfect but realize I am perfect in my imperfection and so is everyone else I interact with.  As I suffer, so too have they suffered.  I do not wish to participate in creating suffering.  I truly wish to leave everything and everyone in better shape when we part ways than before we met.  Does it always work out that way from one side or the other?  No.  Not always.  But the intent is always there regardless.

I’ve always been so very impressed with the loving words of Thich Nhat Hanh.  I can tell you that on more than one occasion, his words saved my life from an emotional perspective.  I just wanted to share this piece of his wonderful wisdom with you in my own way.  Please understand something of vital importance though.  It is not understanding, loving or compassionate to self to become a self-sacrifice to those who engage in violent or emotionally abusive actions.  The consequence of those kinds of actions may need to be you setting a boundary that results in demonstrating true love for yourself and true love for the other person by moving away to a place they can do you no further harm.  There is a chasm of difference between holding compassion and being a doormat.  Please strive to understand this difference.  Your first order of business is to discover your self-love, hold compassion for self and then you will know how to love and hold compassion for others without becoming a human sacrifice.  

Love can change a lot of things but it cannot change psychology from a one-sided perspective (meaning that if the other party continues to throw punches out of fear and pain, that you stand there until you are bruised and bloody).  You can still be loving and compassionate by refusing to engage, refusing to participate and do the right thing by all involved with love in your heart.

 

~Blessings of understanding, compassion and great love beautiful souls.

© 2014 Jaie Hart (photo/words), all rights reserved.

Curious

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Wispy clouds float like angel wings

Across the sky so vast and deep blue

Warm rays flow to the Earth as she spins

Life is bustling and beaming energy bright

And I, caught in this moment enchanted

Dreams and desires clamor for focus

I smile observing everything as I go

Finding this moment of disconnected connection

Strange and curious even if a bit serious

Back to the flutter my attention now goes

One backward glance of my week of struggling

To understand all this maneuvering and juggling

And I feel it there, a twinge of stress at my core

A deep breath in as I watch the last leaves falling

Knowing I could let the wind blow away these memories

I decide to return to my former state

Embrace the curiosity of life as it unfolds

Wondering why it becomes hard to remain ever present

When this moment of presence is filled with pure wonder

This Essence, it’s Source, much sweeter than anything

I smile again reaching higher and farther

Watching a gull on the wing of another

And catching up still is yet another

Life goes on each moment by moment

And we choose how we will then too

© 2014 Jaie Hart (photo/words) 

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Shift and Reflection

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A new place or frame of mind it is that I currently find myself.  The things that seemed so important aren’t any more and the things I hardly gave attention to have suddenly, subtly and beautifully become a much greater focus.  For whatever reason, I wanted to understand the meaning of life, why things were the way they were and why people were the way they were.  A very self-centered focus was this coming from a truly fearful place and desire for control when I first created this blog many years ago (I’ll honestly admit).  You see, in my unthinking or over-thinking frame, I thought if I understood the actions and motivations of others, I could keep people from hurting me emotionally.  I learned a great deal formally through education and much through direct experience and discovered neither could prevent people from blowing me up emotionally-speaking.

People, for reasons of their own desire for experience in this place in our beautiful Milkyway Galaxy will do what they wish to gain what they came for.  There is no amount of control that can truly be exerted over such people who’s realities begin to overlap in experience with your own.  The only power we truly have is to be who we are and to choose how much suffering we are willing to give ourselves permission to experience.  We can choose the level of suffering we engage in or we can strive to understand that there is much more to the picture of life than what meets the physical human eye.  I’ve learned this of late and came to the realization that for so very long I had chosen a path of suffering at first to get there.  I don’t choose the suffering any more.

From where I was in the early years of my blogging up to now, some important shifts and changes have occurred for me.  Primarily, I do not choose to participate in suffering or with people who create that for their own expression or amusement.  I choose instead to find the silver-lining, the lesson of a thing or mere understanding that some situations aren’t necessarily entirely about you or your lessons at all.  Sometimes the other’s realities overlap with yours for them to learn from you doing nothing at all but being you.  The learning and the teaching seem always to be a mutual exchange if you can step back far enough from the egoic mind and view things much more objectively.  This is not an easy thing to do but it is something that can be learned.  I have learned.  That’s not to say I don’t occasionally get hooked by a drama created by another or question my own sanity for participating in some of the things I choose to participate in (or in some cases not at all), it just means that I eventually seek greater understanding of a thing outside of my beliefs, outside of the box and outside of common understanding.

What does it get you to engage in or create a dramatic situation from which to learn?  You get the experience of the drama and maybe, just maybe, you might gain understanding as to why you wanted to create it or participate in it if that is what you chose to do.  I find great comfort in seeking the meaning of things, understanding better the real truth of things beyond the limited scope of my beliefs.  How I see things doesn’t necessarily represent the truth of anything but I’ve learned to be willing to be open to that thought alone and that thought has set me free from much angst and unhappiness.  It helped to free me from the dark, thick and ugly chains I wrapped myself in while unaware of what I was doing or why.

I grow weary of attempting to understand anything any more in the ways I began many years ago.  I also tire of holding expectations for anything or anyone because it seems expectations breed only discontentment for me and I no longer want any part of that in my experience of life.  What I want from life is just to learn to appreciate it as it is, without the need to change it, mold it, form it, control it or manipulate it to be anything other than what it is.  What I want is to open myself up completely to the truth about everything and that is not something I’d take anyone’s word on.  Many people in this frame profess to know the truth of a thing but if you put that “truth” under the scrutiny of testing objectively, you often find such a truth to be provisional based only on the beliefs of others, assumptions of others or the perceptions of others.  I appreciate these things as they exist and realize I no longer wish to resist, correct or reject anyone’s beliefs or even my own.  What I really want is just to enjoy the blue sky just as it is, enjoy it when it turns dark and gray, enjoy it when it’s filled with fiery orange rays of light or black filled with twinkling stars.  I want to learn to accept life on it’s terms as it is without my interference or judgment of it.  I wish to gain acceptance of what is as it is without always leaning on suffering to do it.

It’s kind of a tall order as it flies in the face of all I’ve been taught but I seem to care less and less about that and care more and more about what resonates as truth within me.  When I feel love and compassion and can respond to life as it comes, I feel more authentic and real and that life has more meaning.  When I feel fear and anger and react to life or attempt to control what comes next I feel like the shell of a human being, powerless and helpless.  I don’t like how that feels so realize I can stand in my power or my own light by holding more closely to love and compassion knowing therein these two things lies the passage ways to the truth of everything.  I don’t know how or why I know (maybe some really fantastic teachers of late on this side of the veil and beyond) but I know.  I may decide to go quiet for a little while and dive deeper into my studies towards very specific things I wish to accomplish.  I need to carryout the actions that follow my shift in thought.  No easy task but necessary for me.  Freedom matters a great deal to me and I've come to the realization that you can’t discover what it is you truly want and need and then engage in everything contrary to that desire.  There is work to be done and much of it. ~ sigh and smiles ~

I see this particularly entry is more like a diary post than a blog post but I’ll put it out there any way in the event it helps someone else who may be going through similar thoughts and realizations and maybe if for no other reason than to let them know they are not alone.  None of you are ever alone even when it seems like it.  I’m here.  You’re here.  We’re all here together part of a vast whole of an amazing existence.  Where is the “alone” in that? (smiles).  Every single thing under the sun and beyond it matters.  Your thoughts matter, your energy matters and your triumphs and awakening awareness matters.  Even your lack of awakening and awareness matters.  Nothing is unimportant in the scheme of existence of life here.  Every piece that individually expresses itself is an important part of the whole I have learned and learned in a way I can’t really explain.  It’s not my place to at this time.  For now, I wish you nothing but joy, bliss and love as well as the strength and courage to live your lives in infinite authenticity and curiosity.

© 2014, Jaie Hart (photo and words)

Learning to Listen

In our day-to-day, we seemingly go through the motions engaged in many things we think are so important.  We become mired in the egotistical dramas and plays projected onto our field of existence by ourselves and by others.  We participate without thinking either on the offense or in defense as each situation may call us to do and while we do it, in our strategizing and striving we’re forgetting something important… the “still small voice.”

There is more to the “still small voice,” our thoughts and our actions than achieving some goal that either we create or is created by others for us to aspire to.  There are multiple levels and layers of consciousness that we remain mostly unaware of as we live our lives each day.  Our minds hold our consciousness, our bodies hold a level of consciousness, our souls hold a consciousness and our spirits hold a consciousness.  Each of these levels represent the concept of the still small voice and each aspect of consciousness speaks in it’s own language.  If we do not learn how to listen, we may encounter some uncomfortable or otherwise dire results in our efforts.

Each of the levels of consciousness that I ascribe to the “still small voice” as I’ve described comprise a highly collaborative system of being or existence, if you will.  The mind thinks and sets forth an energy pattern that influences our actions based on our assumptions and perceptions.  The body’s consciousness in collaborative harmony with the mind’s consciousness will manifest through physical and sometimes emotional feeling.  The soul’s consciousness is beyond the consciousness of the day to day but it can be felt through true and pure emotion that is not egotistically based in any way, shape or form.  The spirit’s consciousness is much more global and also uses a language of energy that influence not only the being that it is part of a person but everyone and everything around the being or person.

Each of these levels of consciousness is always in constant collaboration with the other, constantly communicating messages back and forth and creating through this collaboration, our experiences here in life.  If we cannot hear what the deeper messages are for us, we may end up sick, stressed out, ulcers, cancer or other things we really don’t care to deal with or walking into untenable situations for us.  Now having said that, I cannot discount that each soul has set itself up with a specific series of experiences from which to learn in this life.  If one wishes to learn from the cancer experience, it is not wrong thought or ignoring messages that creates the cancer.  It is just the being wished to create an experience for itself and through learning to listen, one can come to greater and more peaceful learning from the experience.  Speaking from experience, in my own case I chose a series of lessons of involvement with certain types of interactions unconsciously from the conscious mind’s perspective.  There was an experience I wished to have I was completely unconscious of but once I learned the languages, the other ways in which consciousness spoke, I started to grasp the lessons before me much more quickly and much less painfully, I might add.

Let me give you a more specific example.  Let’s say someone is told their whole life by others that they must achieve a certain position or possessions in order to be recognized or loved.  A person who engages in those endeavors may achieve the results and yet find stress and anxiety or insomnia has taken hold.  In this kind of example, what you have is the body’s consciousness speaking and know that it does not speak alone.  While consciously one may be unaware of the other consciousness aspects speaking, the body or the mind can start to experience messages solely intended to get one’s attention.  If you can see or feel the message, you can give yourself pause to say, “Hmmm, if I am achieving all I set out to do with this goal or that aspiration, why am I not happy, sleeping or enjoying life?  That is the intent of the message of body manifesting messages through mental challenges such as anxiety or depression and other possibly physical symptoms as well.

When you learn how to listen to the whole of the “still-small-voice,” you can avoid some of the negatives or even if you experience the negatives (which are a normal part of existence), you can learn to deal with them more effectively.  You can deal with them more effectively by becoming more conscious of your own internal messaging system.  If your behavior is incongruent with the truest desires of your spirit or soul, they’ll begin to speak until they find a way for you to consciously understand (Now do you understand life’s repeating lessons?).  In this way, you will never allow yourself to truly let yourself down no matter what it is that you face.  You have an amazing consciousness system that communicates with you all the time about your environment, energy, people and situations and not just from the limited ego-judgmental perspective.  That is only one small form of the conscious communication system.  What you want is to understand the communication of the “still small voice” so that you can learn to respond to what you face (stay in your own light or power) rather than reacting to it (not staying in your own light or power).  When the egoic mind alone is in charge disregarding all other parts of the consciousness communications going on, you are forever reacting, taxing your energy and biological systems, becoming more mired in the illusions of perceptions and assumptions and can lead yourself down some pretty dark and treacherous roads.

Through learning how to listen to all aspects of the consciousness communication systems that are part of who you are, you will always make it back home to peace, bliss, joy, serenity, understanding and compassion.  One of the greatest ways to learn how to listen is to understand when you are clearly not listening.  If you are reacting, tired, stressed, sick, etc., it’s possible you are not really listening to the guidance so readily available to you that can help you understand and cope.  Another fantastic way to learn how to listen is meditating.  Taking up a practice every day of stopping all thought, learning to listen for the “still small voice” and even asking your higher consciousness systems to speak more meaningfully or obviously to you, you will start to understand the language.  It takes time, patience and willingness to benefit from the communications.  The reality is that whether you consciously learn to listen or not, the system itself will still find a way to get you the message.  The difference is a matter of control and the only thing you truly have the power to control is you.

I suggest that you take the time to fully understand how it is that you communicate with you.  All the wonder and magic that is YOU, will never let you down.  Mind your thoughts, stay open to learning to understand the language of the various consciousness systems through intent and then begin the noticing, the timing and the many ways in which you naturally and always speak to yourself and guide yourself in a positive light.  Remember, when it is the egoic consciousness involved, you are reacting.  When it is the other consciousness or higher consciousness involved, you are self and other-compassionate and more understanding and open…and thus, much more willing to hear the “voice” within.  Listen.  You truly have so much to say to you and you are worth listening to.  ~Blessings.

 

© 2014, Jaie Hart

(Photo, http://psychicpowernetwork.info)

Hold This For Me, My Power

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Oh the ways we give it away so unaware.  If only we knew the keys to prevent ourselves from giving away our power at every turn, we might be better able to address our human interactions in this life.  You see, there will always exist those who know no other way to exist than to intimidate and manipulate others for their power not realizing they have it within.  There too will always be those of us who too willingly give it away without thinking.  Here are some ways to know when you have given your power away and I put them in no particular order:

1. Victim thought processes or identification.

2. Blame thought processes or identification.

3. Dependency thought processes or identification.

4. Manipulating thought processes or identification.

5. Intimidating thought processes or identification.

6. Judgmental thought processes or identification.

7. Persecuting thought processes or identification.

8. Negative self-thoughts and perceptions.

9. Vengeful thoughts and identification.

Do you begin to see where I am going maybe even just a little?  The moment we have given in to any of the above thought processes, beliefs, actions or identification, we have diminished our own power and given it away either through holding a false belief or a fear that we created in response to some kind of external stimulus that it was actually we who created to begin with.  No, this is not a blame the victim thought process and if that is what you take from this so far, I must ask you to go much deeper than the superficial egoic mind to understand.  Going deeper within to feel for understanding will actually raise you above your ego that believes that it always must be right, perfect, save face, be the most, the best, the whatever anyone else may think of as cool and wonderful.  We have to get beyond these things in order for us to begin to dust off the emotional debris we’ve collected inside of us through our lack of awareness that keeps our truth hidden from view.

First and foremost, we are powerful always in all ways all the time.  It is only when we choose not to be powerful that we sink into the dramas of the world that we momentarily think have more significant meaning than they really do.   Going back a bit further to form a framework for you from which you may begin to understand, you are here, believe it or not, to experience and experience life in ways YOU choose.  Yes, you choose and there is no room in your choices really for judgment, blame, seeking perfection, to be right, better, best, etc.  You can give your power away through these things if you want to but you don’t have to.  It is a choice. 

Some things don’t seem like choices at all.  Some things feel entirely thrust upon us quite unexpectedly and it is way too easy to get caught up in identifying with the victim or blaming activities in order to vent your way through an experience.  It wastes your precious energy to engage in such thinking and sometimes acting.  It takes less energy and promotes a greater sense of balance for you to attempt to seek understanding for your own choices (whether you realize you made them or not).  Bad things happen to bad people.  Bad things happen to good people too.  The judgment of “bad” is just that, a judgment and it is a judgment most often based on a false premise or belief.  When you begin to understand that we are all part of the whole of life, you start to think about things a little differently.  At some point you begin to disconnect from the world of victims and villains and start to instead embrace the world as it is through compassion and seeking understanding of what you really intended in your creation of this dramatic experience or that one.  You had an intent.  You just can’t recall it. 

You may have heard the term Maya as an attribute describing the superficial consciousness of and happenings in this world as illusion.  In the world of Maya, ego rules supreme and merely battles and clashes with all it encounters in the fight for better/best, etc.  Ego judges, persecutes, attempts to steal what it already has, competes for some superficial prize that doesn’t take one anywhere or give anyone anything of lasting import.  Spoiler Alert:  There is no prize for being better, best, right, stealing energy, giving it away or striving to master illusions.  What we get from this life is the richness or value of our experiences rather than the experiences solely.  If we maintain a place of power, which is our right, we do not have to choose the world of villains and victims whether or not others wish to exist in those worlds and believe in those frameworks.  You can live your life in fear or worry or you can choose not to. 

I’m not saying any of this is easy.  I can’t even say I’ve done it all the time.  I too am just a mere student of this life but I do know a surely as I’m sitting here breathing and typing away that I can feel it when I give my power away and I can feel it when others try to take it from me.  Psychology and lack of awareness runs rampant in our world.  It has been this way always.  But some of us who care to look can catch glimpses of the truth deep within us and take great comfort in the knowing that it is we who choose to be energized or depleted, to become victorious or defeated as we face each of the scenes of our lives we have created for the challenge of the experience.

I suggest to you that despite how you have lived and what you have experienced up to this point in your life, you can make a choice to understand your beliefs, their origins and whether or not you will continue to buy into them or not.  You too can choose whether or not you will stand in your power full of love and light or hand it over to the very next person who demands it through manipulation or fear generating villain-like postures.  It’s all up to you.

In the midst of some of our darkest and most challenging experiences, these little flashes of insight will come from your soul.  Watch for these and expect them to show up for the purpose of your truest and most reliable guidance.  Steer clear of energy robbing anger, frustration, fear, intimidation and all the other negatives as much as you can.  Do so through seeking understanding and choosing how you wish to participate with such things in such a way where you hold yourself accountable for neither doing yourself nor anyone else any intentional harm and you can find and hold your power to you.  If you give it away in fear of worry, you cannot positively create.  I can attest to this fact.  If you hold it with the knowing, trust or faith in yourself as a Source-Connected miracle of energetic existence, you have half the battle of dealing with the challenges you face won.  You can then step back a bit and observe what you might have wanted to glean from the experiences you go through.  The self-love you do hold in the heart of your soul knows that you established experiences for much higher reasons than reinforcing your weaknesses.  The heart of your knows that you created experiences to rediscover your strengths.

It’s a huge leap sometimes to go from fearful to courageous.  So, start with one little step instead and that very simple step begins with curiosity.  Be curious rather than assumptive, judgmental or resorting to persecution, blame or vengeance.  You’ll feel much better about your experiences in the end because then you are moving in tune with your soul that has a much longer-lasting impact than the superficial pursuits of the ego.   Speaking from experience, when your heart stops and your consciousness goes on, the things the ego thinks are important here on Earth do NOT come with you.  What does come with you is the love you held inside, the compassion you experienced, the awe, wonder and beauty of your experiences comes with you and nothing more.  Okay, for some may be regret comes too but if you are alive right now and reading this then there is plenty of time for you to shift your thinking.  Do it today.  You have the power within you and all the love in the universe behind you and to support you.  ~Blessings of infinite love and light.

(Photo, fortunate random internet find)