Reframing Problems

"[T]he beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel."
~Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, p 20

No matter how enlightened we are, and no matter how old and wise we become, it is likely we will continue to experience some amount of obstacles, challenges and dissatisfaction in our lives - even if only on occasion or just for a moment.

If we reframe these problems as opportunities for personal and spiritual growth, and seek out the miracle they hold for us, we can often find great healing and inner peace - something most of us are seeking.

Consider a problem you are experiencing in your life right now, or if it's a bit too close for comfort, consider a problem you experienced years ago. You likely already see how it is a beast - it burdened you, angered you, hurt you, prevented you from having something you wanted.

Take time to journal or reflect the following:

• Describe this problem and all you can remember about it.
• What did this problem require you to learn that you may not otherwise have chosen to learn?
• How has this learning served you in other parts of your life?
• What did this problem require you to do in order to resolve it, escape it, or even recover from it?
• What did you learn about yourself while doing this?
• In what other ways has this problem served you?
• How has this problem resulted in the enrichment in your life or the lives of others?
• What qualities were present in you as you worked to resolve, overcome, or survive this problem?
• Acknowledge yourself for who you had to be to resolve, overcome, or survive this problem.

Perhaps you had to find another way to accomplish something you wanted, and that led you to grow new skills you were able to use in other areas of your life; or change outmoded patterns of behaving or thinking that prevented meaningful relationships; or meet amazing people you'd have never met otherwise. Perhaps while navigating a road block you learned how strong and resourceful you could be. Perhaps you learned how to gracefully accept and receive assistance from others when you had previously felt asking for help was a weakness, or were afraid to ask.

Stretch your mind as far as you can, and find the angel within your problem.

With the continued practice of reframing our problems in this empowering light, we often find ourselves experiencing our new problems differently. We start to recognize within them the opportunities for personal insight and expanded awareness - the hope and promise of bringing us something greater than we could have imagined. They begin to seem like little miracles.

Become What You Want

"You don't attract what you want. You attract what you are."
~ Wayne Dyer

If this is true... then what are you Being?
Are you Being Joy?
Are you Being Peace?
Are you Being Abundance?
Are you Being Success?

What is it about that what you want that makes you want it? How will it feel to have it? What will your experience of having it be like? Find that feeling inside of you - experience it! Become it!

Embody those qualities. Be those qualities. Feel those qualities. Experience those qualities in your heart and find those qualities in all that you see in the world. Translate the "thing" you want into the experience of having and Being what you want. Become what you want.

That is the way to attract more of what you want.

The Tao of Pooh

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there someday."

The Tao of Pooh, p 67
- by Benjamin Hoff

Dare to Have the Life You Want

It is not because things are difficult
that we do not dare,
it is because we do
not dare
that things are difficult.

- Seneca

Creativity - Power Thought Card

"Every thought I think is creating my future."

"The Universe totally supports every thought I choose to think and believe. I have unlimited choices about what I think. I choose balance, harmony, and peace, and I express it in my life."


~ Louise L. Hay
Power Thought Cards

Conversations with God

"Now, having seen the differences between where you are and where you want to be, begin to change--consciously change--your thoughts, words, and actions to match your grandest vision."

From Conversations With God
by Neale Donald Walsch
Page 77

Acceptance

"Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life."

Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now
Page 29

What the world needs

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who are alive."

- Gil Bailie


What a brilliant and inspiring quote!
A client recently found this and passed it along to me. It really rings so true to me and I am reminded of how important it is to keep my eyes focused on the internal rather than the external, knowing that all the joy I find for myself will serve the world magically, creating healing and peace.

What makes you come alive?
What brings you fulfillment and joy and bliss?

Meister Eckhart on self-love

"If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself."
Meister Eckhart,
as quoted in The Art of Loving, pg 58

Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

"Love is the active concern for the life and growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love."
Erich Fromm,
pg 25

"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love."
pg 43

"Selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites."
pg 56

Erich Fromm,
The Art of Loving

Rumi Quote

Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.
~Rumi

Quotes on Anger and Hate

Our anger and annoyance are more detrimental to us than the things themselves which anger or annoy us.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, translated by Maxwell Staniforth (1964)

Forgo your anger for a moment and save yourself a hundred days of trouble.
~ Chinese Proverb

Hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.
~ Buddha, The Dhammapada, translated by Juan Mascaro (1973)

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us--avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
~ Petrarch

Inner Simplicity

"Inner simplicity means getting rid of the extraneous things--such as worry and anger and judgment--that get in the way of having peace and tranquility in our lives."
~ Elaine St. James, Inner Simplicity: 100 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul

This is only one part of Elaine St. James' "definition" on inner simplicity, but it stands out to me today in particular. Often we spend so much of our time and energy on worrying and being angry about what already happened and can't be changed or hasn't and may not even happen, and judging ourselves and others.

On one hand, we should certainly learn lessons and be prepared for the things that come our way. But worry rarely constitutes learning or preparation. Similarly, anger may serve us temporarily to recognize we do not like something, but in the long run it only consumes us. Judgment is part of a cycle of repeatedly punishing ourselves and others, often when we've already been punished quite enough. All three suck the vital energy from us, giving us nothing but stress in return. Consider how much time and energy we can enjoy by releasing worry, anger and judgment!

Are you willing to release worry, anger and judgment? Are you willing to experience greater inner simplicity? Only when we are willing to change will we actually find ourselves able to do the work necessary to make it happen.

If you are willing to change, over the next week really notice when you start to worry, when you are angry, or when you are judging yourself or others. Ask yourself these questions:

How much time and energy do you spend on these activities?
What are you getting out of being worried, angry or judgmental?
How does it serve you?
What does it cost to let go of worry, anger or judgment?
What do you gain by releasing worry, anger or judgment?
What might you do or feel instead?
What if you chose not to worry and to just trust that everything would be perfect?
What if you forgave yourself or the other people involved?
What if everything that happens has a lesson in it?
What would that lesson be?
What does it cost to let go of worry, anger or judgment?
What do you gain by releasing worry, anger or judgment?

opening ourselves up to see possibilities

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
~Henri Bergson

If we believe we are undeserving of love and joy, we will only be able to see difficulties and misery in everything. If we believe we are deserving, which we are, we will see the magnificence and perfection around us.

Each day we have a choice about what to believe. We can begin changing our beliefs and creating self-love right now by speaking the truth to ourselves and stating "I am deserving. I am beautiful. I am talented." Whatever it is we need to change, we must first begin here, with our beliefs about ourselves. When we truly believe we are good and loved and deserving, we will be prepared to see the good and love and wonder around us.

Live Your Succulent Wild Life!

"Choosing succulence is a deliberate act
of personal revolution. It means waking up!
embracing your true self, studying your
patterns and letting out your most alive self
We all have one."

~SARK, Juicy Living Cards

Labels

"Labels and categories serve us only as long as we remember their limits. Mountains are alike in that they all share the quality of "mountainhood," but wind, water, earth movement, and time sculpt each individual mountain so that no two are exactly alike. Just so, a variety of influences shape our own lives... factors, such as gender, culture, role models, genetic heritage, parents and childhood history, body type, appearance, values, beliefs, and interests, influence [each person's] life path in different ways."

Dan Millman,
The Life You Were Born To Live: A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose

Anais Nin Quote

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin

Charles Dubois Quote

The important thing is this:
To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
Charles Dubois

Hodge-Podge

Dear Beams of Radiant Light,

Is it just me or has it been a stressful couple months???

Autumn always reminds me of the cycle of life, of death and rebirth, endings and beginnings. One of my favorite quotes illustrates of the beauty and necessity of this cycle.

Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it cannot grow.

While there are places in our life when we feel small or even great loss, sorrow and defeat, it can help us to be reminded that the end is also the beginning. We cannot have beginnings without endings, nor endings without beginnings. Lets do our best to radiate love out into the world so our national and world leaders can soak some of it up and maybe make some better choices over the next few years.

And with this, I offer up a hodge-podge of thoughts for the journey ahead.

With shimmering love and gentle hugs,

Amy




If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.
~Ann Landers


Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
~Rumi


To Release the Past, We Must Be Willing to Forgive

We need to choose to release the past and forgive everyone, ourselves included. We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive, be the very fact that we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing process. It is imperative for our own healing that “we” release the past and forgive everyone.

From: You Can Heal Your Life
by Louise L. Hay


Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver.
~Barbara De Angelis


Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
~Carl Jung

M. Scott Peck Quote

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
M. Scott Peck

William Shakespeare Quote

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
William Shakespeare

Gloria Steinem Quote

“If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?”
Gloria Steinem

Dark Parts Quote

“Welcome the dark parts of love and the deep unknown layers. Let them speak too.”

Sark,
2004 Page a Day Calendar

Prosperity Quote

"All of our prosperity lies in the present no matter what it contains!
Our attempts to live for, or in, the future set us up for scarcity.
We are continually chasing something we don't yet have."

Sark,
2004 Page a Day Calendar

The Road Less Traveled

"Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, it no longer matters."

- M. Scott Peck, M.D. The Road Less Traveled

Harmony

"All my relationships are harmonious.
When we create harmony in our minds and hearts, we will find it in our lives.
The inner creates the outer.
Always."

~Louse L. Hay
Power Thought Cards

Speak love

"One of the best ways to increase our sense of being enough is to change what we tell ourselves. How do you talk to your self? Is it kind, supportive and nourishing? Or is it critical, berating and diminishing?"

SARK
2004 Page a Day Calendar