People most often learn too late in life. So what places us on one side of the glass, seeing what needed to be done but now we are unable to get through it to help our past, ignorant selves?
You spend your first 20 years worrying what people think about you. You spend your next 20 years swearing that you don’t care what people think about you. You spend the next 20 years realizing that they aren’t thinking about you. A liberation!
All Our Being Is About Belonging
Fitting in and being accepted is crucial. That’s supposed to happen when we are very young children from our original caregivers. When it goes wrong, it dooms us to get it in many distorted ways from looking for love in all the wrong places, to being the richest kid on the block. We see people become celebrities, political leaders and monarchs.
All of it is to get the value they didn’t get as children. It never fills the bucket. No matter what, they are never good enough. They think they have to earn love. Love doesn’t work like that.
And for those who get fed up and discover they can’t get it from society, they go mad and either kill themselves, others, or both. They couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
You can’t get it from others once the time has passed, that includes the original caregivers. You have to find a higher spiritual power and see that long ago child get it from a spiritual source which trumps your original parent-Gods.
Blessings
That blessing fulfills all those soul longing quests of worth and value the earth never can.
An old Native American woman was asked why she was always so happy. She said that she has two wolves in her heart and they are both hungry— one wolf is angry and evil, the other wolf is filled with love, and that’s the only one she feeds.
Anonymous
A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break,fall apart,numb, ache,hurt others and get sick.
Emotional Security Is It What You Know
People unconsciously recreate the upbringing they experienced both emotionally and in relationships, particularly in love. They manipulate their environment until it resembles the drama they grew up in because those are the patterns and roles they are comfortable in.
People who find an abuser, when they purposefully set out specifically not to, are always surprised. So are outside observers wondering why they won’t leave them.
They don’t simply because the security of the known trumps the insecurity of unknown. Many times I’ve heard from someone who finally found peace with a partner, and then tell me, “They’re boring.” These people need the drama.
We will distort the very things we love, making them into what we grew up with. What once was the draw, is now the irritant. What was the delight is now the pain. One has to purge the old source codes in our vault in order to give us new references so we can find our true loves and treat them that way.
No man who thinks ill, will hear the truth despite a hundred signs.When one talks to such a person, their words become the very cause of that person’s fantasy. – So the response to him is silence and peace; to talk with an idiot is insanity.
EBLIS
When one who fantasizes is presented with reason, his fantasies increase.
The Pessimist
A woman I know spends most of her time thinking about how much she hates her thighs. She can give you a detailed report on what is wrong with them. She forgets all the places those legs have taken her, all the miles they have walked for her.
It doesn’t occur to her that when she gets up in the middle of the night to pee, those very thighs walk her to the toilet.
Spend more time appreciating what you’ve got— a heart that beats, a way to pick up your cup of coffee, the eyes that see that cup and know what color it is. Blessings abound.
People almost always find what they are expecting to find. If they allow their expectations to guide their search.
Spiritual Beliefs Are Man Made
The books of life are all made up. Other people with fears, loves, hopes and dreams, who were just like you, wrote them. They were winging it too.
It was their attempt to try and pass on stories which would help others.
The reason belief systems are so different is they develop around the terrain, weather, vegetation, and the animal life in that person’s environment.
They see it as absolute (God) and promote it as to how the world really works. They insist following that limited belief system they became so certain about, so secure in, is perfect.
“Most of us are not really approaching the subject [scriptures] in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it [them] in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party.”
C.S. Lewis,- Mere Christianity
Reality
In reality it is a very small, limited view of life and their little corner of this earth. In order to comply with it in your world, you’ll have to eat your own awareness as you discount your life in order to maintain their view.
It is very, very exclusive. They have it, you don’t. They have a right to ostracize you if you don’t buy into their view. It is a threat to everything they know if your view is valid too.
We have a legion of hypocrites doing this in our religious and political systems as the media produces glasses they now insist others put on in order to see the world properly.
We have been brainwashed by our parents, society, politicians, religions, capitalists, and fear. They need certainty and use us to validate it.
The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.
Robert Heinlein
They are all trying to give rules for their own tribal living so the tribe will get along and survive. They typically were made for a limited group of people living close to the land in a virtual hand to mouth existence.
Dropping the Rules and finding the commonalities in them all is an inclusive process rather than an exclusive one.
Doing so touches on all the great teachers about peace, decency, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, grace, beauty, gratitude and love. They are simply models for how we can choose to live too; not as laws, as decent humans trying to get along with each other.
If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian.
Mark Twain
Nobody Else Can Give You Their Wisdom
They can only give you data. YOUR experience is what creates wisdom in you. All the rest is just information which may or may not work for your situation. Telling you what to do in a given situation won’t make you smart.
We see people have information all the time and when it comes time to use it, they don’t because they don’t trust it.
It’s not part of them. People don’t tend to learn how to have a successful marriage or how to raise successful children because they truly believe that information is already inside them and perfectly fine.
Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes.
To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.
Straightening Family Ties
All of us have conflicts with siblings growing up. Size, ability, birth order, gender and situations create disagreements. Our feelings are hurt with shaming, name calling if not actually physically being traumatized.
Big kids bully smaller ones. Resentment and grudges can entrench. If this is not sorted out as young adults, it can lock in for the rest of their lives.
New events seen through the unfinished business lens confirm the other is not trustworthy. Confirmatory bias is validating what you already know by selecting for those traits.
Admitting you hurt the other and were selfish at the time is crucial.
Achieving forgiveness and recognizing the impact it had on them frees stuck energy and cleans the slate for the next phase of life. People who do so tend to become best friends as adults.
Sibling relationships outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship, they flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty, and distrust.
Erica E. Goode
Crucial Decisions Made Before 25 Affect Your Entire Life
People get married to people they don’t really love.
They have kids they didn’t want. Get college degrees in things they are supposed to but really don’t care about. End up stuck in a career track they come to detest within ten years or less. Thus get trapped and now are frozen the rest of their life.
Don’t make an early life decision you can’t correct or reverse. Children are the most serious. Life partners are the next. At 25, give or take, most people get clarification as to who they are and what they are about.
Getting sorted for your truth is crucial for lifelong happiness. Waiting until maturation of who you are first makes all the difference in the world.
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
No One Makes You Do Anything
We are a nation of victims. We love saying “they made me.” “I didn’t have a choice.” But unless something was done TO us forcibly, we had an option.
That also goes for happy and miserable too. You can’t make someone mad and you can’t ever make them happy. It’s always their choice.
We’ve always been choosing. Name one thing you did but didn’t have choice?
You can’t, because even if its between bad and horrible its still a choice. It is between two or more options in your predicament. Checking out as a human is always one of them.
We tend not to because we want to see the adventure to tomorrow.
The person responsible for your happiness in the world is you. Its an amazing day when one figures out they’ve been ceding that power to someone else all these years.
Realizing that we’ve surrendered our self-esteem to others and choosing to be accountable for our own self-worth would mean absorbing the terrifying fact that we’re always vulnerable to pain and loss.
Martha Beck
Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
Joel Osteen
Helping People Reduce Their Suffering Is The Most Satisfying of Work
Most of us are trained to chase the almighty dollar.
We pass on jobs which are less pay and more satisfying in order to maximize our payoff financially. It makes sense until 20 or 30 years later we find life has no meaning. There’s no depth to the routine. We just take care of business.
Feeling satisfied in life is connecting to other people. When we relieve others’ suffering, it gives meaning for us. Many people can’t actually afford to work a social service job.
But we can still volunteer to help kids, a sport team, scouts, teach a computer class or help people learn English.
There are people who are struggling through their life who need help and you’re the one who could provide it.
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.
Dalai Lama
Not Getting Educated
The powers that be can manipulate people who don’t have an education because they sadly do not understand the dynamics of life. They only understand what has been programmed into them from their little corner of the world.
The manipulations of family and friends take precedence over the larger picture of ones life abilities and how they fit in the world.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Benjamin Franklin
The trend of unsophisticated home schooling is dumbing down a generation of American kids. Fear becomes the motivator as a substitute for reason. Listen to how many people justify what they did because they felt like it.
That education and grades convert into money and opportunity. It sets up lifestyle as to where you will live in your town and with whom your kids will associate. It also affects how the society works.
When the population isn’t educated, the corporations are able to use them and pay a minimum wage.
Then society drops to the lowest common denominator and gets back to suspicions and fears which set up isolation, survival and paranoia. It reinforces victim mentality.
Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.
George Washington Carver
Not Learning Empathetic Communication
Our relationships with family are supposed to be enhanced by communication based on love. Love is inclusive and our language should reflect that. Instead, we tactically explain and win at the expense of the persons we profess to love. Being right surpasses being loving.
It cuts them off and isolates us from the very people we need to be closest to.
Our conversation is supposed to make us feel closer, especially in a disagreement. The other person needs us to acknowledge the movie in their head. Not agree or disagree.
That allows the person to experience being seen by someone who cares and that means they don’t feel so alone. They experience that we “get them”, even if we disagree.
Genuine listening is hard work; there is little about it that is mechanical… We hear with our ears, but we listen with our eyes and mind and heart and skin and guts as well.
Alfred Benjamin
Complete Strangers Will Help You
All over the world, people tend to help others when they see someone in distress. People don’t tend to like beggars but if it looks like someone is trying, they tend to give assistance.
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.
William Butler Yeats
We empathize with others trying to find their way in the puzzle of life. If we can help someone by reducing their life stress, we usually do.
If it looks like you are taking care of your life, and trying to help yourself by struggling to do things better, most people will give assistance. It may be holding a door, it may be giving directions, it may be paying a bill. Ask for help.
Good things happen when you meet strangers.
Yo-Yo Ma
We Can Upset The Balance Of Nature
We are supposed to be helping the earth/nature/life stay in balance. Nature is a living organism and as such can be twisted into oblivion. People don’t seem to understand why the phenomenon of drinking sea water for thirst kills them.
The sodium changes your PH balance. All life is a balance and must remain so or we die. Instead of being satisfied with just enough, they get koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance.
So many people now get too much money, too much food, too much stuff, too easily off track with so many distractions, they don’t notice their PH is off until it destroys them.
We can kill off a species and we can ruin a forest. Additionally, pollute the seas while we change the DNA of crops and kill our honeybees. Go ahead to melting the ice caps as we poisoning our air.
Life will not go on as we’ve known it if we don’t start caring about spaceship earth. The blackness of space will suck us into it. We can’t live there.
Our children can’t live there. We are learning too late, nothing is truly thrown away. It all becomes part of somebody else eventually. Its a closed system.
Unfortunately, upsetting the balance of nature just happens to be what our species has been selected to do well- although we hate admit it.
Like the Walrus in Lewis Carroll’s poem, we shed hypocritical tears over the diminishing supply of oysters, while gulping them down as quickly as ever.
People Chase Dreams
Most of us get our career by asking someone to hire us. We work for them. Doing our time and hoping the company will take care of us. Forgetting, people are now deceived into believing capitalism is the best form of commerce.
It has been shown again and again, undeterred capitalism makes monopolies whose CEOs get off on power and wealth, not helping other people.
Most of us have played monopoly and know what happens when someone takes over the board. Now think about it as everyone that loses, gets sick and dies. That’s the real world.
We have an idea that commerce is good and helps people. People get a business going and work for themselves. That is all good. Sad to say, most will fail.
Some from circumstances, some from not having the skill, and some from bad timing. But the real issue is when another group of thugs works to put you out of business, just because they can. Greed thirsts for power. It is an addiction. Never enough.
The Big Boys
The big boys will throw you away like a used rag. They are users not givers . The companies now are in it totally for the Wall Street money. Profits are above any human caring. That’s why they hate any regulation.
There would not be any national parks, no safety equipment on cars, no safety standards on food or drugs, no legal recourse when companies lied and deceived you out of your pension, health and life.
The only hedge against big business is the government.
They have now vilified government to get people to reduce it to uselessness. When people find out they are now the victims of the very monster they have helped make, it will be too late.
All the warning signs are being dismissed and rationalized away by people paid to do so. You need to take care of yourself and make sure the government has the big boys in their scrutiny.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs
Reasons For The Aggressor in War Is Always A Lie
War is a political game by heads of state and is always based on scaring people into believing they are losing, so they must attack and destroy another group. They get the naive young people to believe it’s a cause worth dying for while they reap the rewards.
It generally is about economics but they wrap it in flags and slogans to rally the populous for support. War creates misfortune for all those but the planners who profit from it if they win.
The people who actually do the warring are scarred for life, being forced to kill other human beings. All wars are based on the mistaken belief there is not enough to go around.
It has been proven again and again, if the money spent on war equipment and killing, were used on feeding, shelter and education, we would have a beautiful world indeed.
When the economic game is monopolized and controlled to keep some group suppressed, war is used as an excuse to eradicate the rabble rousers.
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that is wants to live humbly for one.
Wilhelm Stekel