Tuesday, August 4, 2009

How to handle what comes your way

As I said in my last post, we are responsible for how we handle what comes to us in life.

All too often, when something bad happens to us, we brush off our response because we rationalize that it was not our fault, or that it was all preordained, or that there is nothing we can do about it, or it is a lesson sent of us to learn or it is the "will of god".

There is even a prayer to help us deal with life: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change those I can, and the wisdom to know the difference".

On one level, that is very good advice. The most important part of that prayer, however, is the part about the wisdom to know the difference.

Such actions and crutches are fine or people who are not on a path. They live from event to event, sometimes happy, sometimes sad but never feeling like they have any command over their lives.

People on a path, however, understand that they are in control. Although sometimes, they don't always believe it. For some of them, there is quiet acceptance of whatever happens to them. For others there is a sense of adventure. What happens next, what new thing can experience.

Enlightened people, though do none of that. They understand that life moves and that they move through life. It does not matter to them what happens, although, they are prepared to act in accord with any situation. They spend their time mostly in peace. Living in the moment.

Now, this does not mean that enlightened people don't have emotions. They do. And they use them. The difference is that the enlightened know that they are not their emotions. Emotions arise, they experience them and then move on. They can also daydream. Enjoying a day dream at some time is part of the here and now.

That is the key. Experience everything; but don't cling. don;t shy away from emotions because you are supposed to be at "peace with everything". Stifling an emotion is worse than experiencing it. you are supposed to experience your emotions.

As you move through your day, focus on what you are doing. Feel it, experience it in its entirety and then move on. ENjoy life whenever you can. Take time to feel life. When you eat, eat. When you sleep, sleep and when you work, work.

Only then will you find true serenity.

MrT

Responsibility part II

At the end of my last post, I wrote about the idea that some new agers sometimes speak about-that our lives are selected by us before we come to the earth. Thus, whatever happens to us is entirely our own doing. This is often combined with the idea that we came here with a specific purpose in mind. Often, that purpose is to learn so lesson about the universe.

To follow this idea, we have to step back. This concept requires us to accept that we, as consciousnesses, exist outside of our bodies. THen, at the right time, we occupy a body and are born into the world. One of the problems we encounter is that when we take on a body, we "forget" who we really are. So, we spend a lot of time trying to remember our true nature. Once we recognize who we are, we can then use the physical nature of the world to continue on our paths of knowledge, or, to just have fun.

For some, then, what we experience here has been selected beforehand for our benefit. So, when you are complaining about being miserable, we should remember, we brought this on ourselves for a lesson.

While I do believe that we reincarnate, and that we can incarnate into a particular place, it is simplistic to accept that we entirely create our own circumstances.

You see, the only way that could be true is if we are the only ones on the planet. Obviously, we are not. Each of us has our own life, but we constantly interact with others. The idea that we are all working together is not realistic. Thus, many of the things we experience come out of the blue and are completely unexpected.

Therefore, we are not responsible, nor do we cause everything that happens to us.

That said, as I pointed out in my last post, we are responsible for how we deal with these situations.

More on that in my next post.

MrT