Self-love, many people's issue it seems, is Spirit's job, not ego's. It's too big a job for ego. When we lead with ego on the issue of self-love, we come up short because ego is about what we do and have; Spirit is about who we are. Ego is just not equipped to handle self-love. So, we need to get ego back on it's service dog leash, make it heel, and bring Spirit to the forefront to lead us into the world as a self-loving being. How do we do that? We choose to self-love. If we can't do it alone, we work with someone to find out the underlying reasons or hurdles keeping us from choosing self-love. Then we picture and define ourselves as who we would be if we did love ourselves (see Future Self exercise), step into that picture and feel what it's like to live that future person. Love to all, Deb B.
A loved one asked me if her dislike for herself comes from ego. I told her defining ego is a tricky thing. It's part of all of us; a kind of tool. Its job when functioning well is to help us appear externally acceptable to the world, get along with others, stay safe, and a modicum of other things we need to get through this 3 dimensional world with a little grace and dignity. Without it functioning well, it's hard for Spirit (a.k.a., soul, higher self, authentic self, divine energy, etc.) to show up in us to do it's job: Make sense of the world, give to others, love, appreciate, have compassion, and all the other things that make me say things like, "Wow, my sister-in-law is a terrific, caring, loving person." Here's an analogy: Picture yourself as a house; a cottage by the sea, a nice, sturdy cape cod or rambler, or a mansion - any pictures is fine. Ego builds this house. Ego takes visitors on tours to see what it did in the house and what it owns. Very good - people like that . . . one or two times. But, if ego keeps giving the same tour which is all it's capable of, visitors tend to stop coming. Visitors know what ego did and has and now they want to know who she is. That's where we need to choose to let Spirit lead us. We make a house into a home when we allow our Spirit to shine through. We bake cookies so the fragrance wafts throughout our home instead of just spraying air freshener. . . . we're deeper than that. We make nice meals and entertain our visitors, tell stories of our lives, make them laugh, and ask for their stories while we listen with our hearts. We reach out to them and comfort them. You get the picture. Ego is what we do and have and Spirit is who we are. So, Spirit is the overarching, understanding part that gives us inner guidance, if we choose to listen, and ego is Its hands and feet in this world.
Self-love, many people's issue it seems, is Spirit's job, not ego's. It's too big a job for ego. When we lead with ego on the issue of self-love, we come up short because ego is about what we do and have; Spirit is about who we are. Ego is just not equipped to handle self-love. So, we need to get ego back on it's service dog leash, make it heel, and bring Spirit to the forefront to lead us into the world as a self-loving being. How do we do that? We choose to self-love. If we can't do it alone, we work with someone to find out the underlying reasons or hurdles keeping us from choosing self-love. Then we picture and define ourselves as who we would be if we did love ourselves (see Future Self exercise), step into that picture and feel what it's like to live that future person. Love to all, Deb B.
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I like to promote harmony in my thoughts (which become form), words and deeds. I define love this way. This is the work of Spirit, a.k.a., Soul. I believe my life challenge is to lead with Spirit because it seems every time I lead with ego (when I'm defending myself, angry, frustrated), I lose harmony.
I'm talking about the forever kind of marriage which is the kind I heard about when I was young and expected. While thinking about a marriage of 20 years breaking apart that I had just heard about, i had a dream that very same night. i was older and looking back on my life's journey. I saw myself as young and in a little Smart4Two car with a man. He was driving. We were happy and so got married, right in the car. We were driving in a direction we both agreed upon. Then we had kids so the car changed into one with a big back seat. It cost more to go down the road and there were more detours and pit stops than before but we were still relatively happy.
As the kids got older, we started accumulating stuff so before we really knew what happened the car turned into a big truck as we were traveling down our road. We collected the stuff in the bed of the truck. There was a house, lots of things for the house, and other stuff I'm not sure about. The kids started bringing friends home and the relatives started visiting more because of the kids, so one day I looked back and we were towing an RV. There were a lot of people in our vehicles, people from church, from the kid's schools and other activities, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, mothers, fathers, and grandparents . . . lots of grandparents. It was really expensive to travel down the road now. We kept having to stop and let some off so others could get on. Oh, and we were still going in the same direction but the path was more complicated than it used to be. In addition to the detours and pit stops there were side paths that i thought would be a good idea to travel down but my husband didn't and vice versa. We stayed together in the front seat of the truck but in order to keep each other happy (and i use that term loosely at this point), we did take some of those side paths. Well, we finally arrived at our destination that we began all those years ago. The kids were grown in vehicles of their own. At times our paths cross but now we are the ones getting on and off their RV's. When we are on our path we are no longer in a truck. We traded it in for a nice Biuck, although not your grandfather's Buick. We were among the lucky ones - our marriage survived. Although, when we had it all, the kids, the truck, the RV full of people, there was a big bump in the road. We almost lost our way. One of us almost got out of the truck, threw up their hands, and ran screaming in the opposite direction. The one was not running from the other one but rather from the truck, et al. We came so close to being a statistic, one of every two marriages that didn't work. How did we avoid that pothole? I'm not sure. Maybe as the marriage had gotten bigger without much of our notice, we also weren't sure what caused the one's need to get out of the truck. It was moving really fast and we didn't want to get hurt, i guess. Lucky for us, now that I think back, because now we are driving where we want to again and the marriage was good and produced happy people and memories. It's guiet inside the Buick. I'm older and he's still driving but we take turns more than we used to . . . and we're happy. Love to all, Deb B. I've made some transformations as I've matured. I used to be self-conscious when I was younger; concerned with how I appeared to others. Even though I did not have a big ego, I was still ruled by it. Then I realized recently that i am less self-conscious and much more mindful. Both states of awareness give me information about me in my environment, but self-consciousness lets me know what i am doing and mindfulness informs me of who i'm being. Because i want to be a calm, peaceful, helpful and kind person, i can choose my behaviors, thanks to mindfulness. Mindfulness grew out of being self-conscious when i began choosing how I showed up in the world.
I also used to consider myself subservient; a victim of circumstance. Now, I choose to be solicitous; caring. I am not a victim any longer. I have chosen to be of service to others. What caused these changes? Embracing life; not taking it for granted, finding my purpose in life coaching, and taking good care of myself. I lead a more healthy, abundant life because of these transformations. Love to all, Deb B. "It's impossible", said pride.
"It's risky", said experience. "It''s pointless", said reason. "Give it a try", whispered the Heart. Anonymous When I was 5 my parents were the smartest people in the world. They knew everything that helped me survive and have fun, too. My Dad took us to the Shore every summer and I loved the Shore (still do). When I was about 8 I started to see they didn't know everything. My Dad had some troubles and argued with my Mom who thought her job was to "pull him up by the bootstraps". Nothing too out of the ordinary when I think back on it but a few of their scenes definitely shook my world. Thank goodness for my older brother because I knew if my parents were distracted and stressed, he would have my back. In my teens, my parents became down right ignorant. They were old-fashioned and had bad habits. What hypocrites, I thought, they didn't really care what I did! Then, when I was in my 20's I left home to see the world (southern U.S., anyway). It wasn't until I got married and raised a family that I finally started to see what they went through all those years I was growing up. They were young when I was 5 and happy to be fulfilling their dream of a family. They were really feeling the pressures when I was 8 and life was overwhelming them by the time I was a teen. As a kid I had no experience and, therefore, no empathy for what they were going through. I'm glad I stopped blaming them for all my troubles when I became an adult because they didn't deserve that. My parents did the best they could with what they had and when I look at myself today, I thank them because they were huge contributors to who I am now. Love, Deb B.
Bill and I had a great phone conversation the other day. Bill is a coaching client and every time he brought up a life issue, we worked together to come up with the question that was floating beneath or above the issue and he found a way forward. It was so much fun for both of us. Later, he emailed me that it was the best coaching session he had ever had. I told him I thought so too and asked him if he had felt the 3rd party energy in the room. He said he hadn't but now that he thought back, we did seem to be creating a larger essence with our conversation. I thought of it more like an inviting than a creating.
I always thought of God as an old man with a long white beard walking around Heaven. I guess i picked up that image in Sunday School when i was 4 or something. Anyway, my grown-up version seems to be more like an essence when 2 or more people get together in a warm, positive manner. I now understand Deepak Chopra better (it's a continual journey of understanding for me when it comes Chopra) when he talks about consciousness being omnipresent and omnipotent. This picture of God makes more sense to me and brings me closer to understanding the pure soul. Love to all. Deb B. Caroline Myss and Deepak Chopra, two of our modern spiritual leaders, talk a lot about pure souls. They name names but suffice it to say these are people who live on earth like us and are all about serving others. They seem to understand universal truths and they teach how it is within our reach to move toward being a pure soul. A pure soul has no guilt or shame, is not defensive, competitive or aggressive, rarely has mental or physical health problems except maybe late in life. I think a pure soul gets angry or sad if others are being cruel or disrespectful to their fellow man because cruelty and disrespect are the opposite of service.
Most of us are probably in the middle of the continuum between pure soul and not-so-pure soul; leaning toward pure soul in my mind's eye. The best news is we can chose to work on moving toward the pure soul side because of our free will, even in the worst of circumstances. I thought I would conduct an experiment. Every morning when I meditate I think back to the moments of the day before when i was closer to a pure soul and when i was not. The irony for me is that a pure soul probably doesn't have to do this kind of exercise. I came up with a few times when I got defensive or felt victimized and sorry for myself. Another time i started jabbering in order to teach something I knew about and then realized the conversation would have gone much better if i had asked a couple of clarifying questions so my "student" could come to his own conclusions. Going through this exercise helped me get a little closer to the pure soul ideal. . . . for the moment. But, what happens when these situations come up again? In order to be a purer soul I have to let things that don't have to do with service roll off my back. I guess that challenge is part of my life journey and it makes me joyful to be on this path. Love to all. Deb B. Your language when speaking to others about your beliefs for the purpose of trying to help them is the key to whether they receive the information you're offering or not. I never want to come off as a know-it-all, an unsolicted teacher, or being too out there to help others with the "real" world. So, I try to stick to language that will leave their minds open to what I have to say. You may ask, how can I know what will tune them out? I'm guessing: Preachy, religious-sounding stuff (especially if it's not their religion), airy-fairy stuff, or talk of change or transformation can turn some people off or be just plain scary. So here's some words I've come up with to keep conversations open and flowing:
Getting in touch with your Intuition when you need it most (instead of spirit or soul) through meditation. Redirect your life (instead of change or transform). Aligning with Nature's rhythms (instead of God or Universe). Love your own essence (instead of self, spirit, soul, divine energy). Got any more? Love to all, Deb B. Ya gotta love Deepak. This quote means so much to me since I’ve been studyingTransformational Presence Coaching with Alan Seale:
Soul carries the potential Mind carries the intention Brain produces the result Love to all, Deb B. |
AuthorI'm very happy to be blogging about my spiritual path. I've a long way to go but I've come a long way, too. Love to all, Deb B. Archives
July 2016
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