Weekly Ramblings – Remaining Centered Despite Life’s Little Surprises

Tags

Calmness, Centeredness, Emotional, Meditation, Spiritual Exercises, Unconscious

I just got back from my Sister’s home after being there for a few days. It’s always a nice change of pace from the day-to-day. I visit my sister each month for a long weekend to hang out, get some good food and binge-watching TV shows or whatever she wants to do. This last trip we went to a comedy show, featuring Rocky LaPorte and Ron White. It was hilarious.

During this short stay, we also experienced a vehicle break down, which resulted in the replacement of a tire on my car. I was wondering how to react to these little-unexpected experiences. How do we stay in balance when something out of the ordinary happens we had no warning of?

I think the best way to handle the unexpected is to be proactive about those things we know may happen but may not. How do we prepare? We have insurance to protect against an accident, insurance for our health, even insurance for our life. We make sure we have an emergency kit in our car and home in case someone gets hurt. We make sure we have a good spare, jack, and other equipment needed to change the tire. We save some of our money to prepare for any potential emergency.

I contemplated about this over the weekend, after it happened, and realized that the key to dealing with the unexpected is to remain calm and balanced as well. It is so easy to be thrown off balance when the boss hands us a job we aren’t ready for, we get sick unexpectedly, or a car breaks down. Any number of things can happen to us or the things we own with little or no notice. Remain calm. Remain balanced. There is no reason to get out of whack when one of these things come to pass. Use your creative imagination to solve the problem once you’re hit with it. Remain calm. Remain balanced.

I practice meditation daily. My religious path calls this practice a spiritual exercise. Spiritual exercises come in all shapes and sizes as most meditation practices. The key is consistency and to have a purpose or goal when doing them. In Eckankar, we strive to practice these spiritual exercises with an open, loving heart. Sometimes, this is hard, particularly when one of these out-of-the-blue emergencies happen. We are freaked out, scared, nervous, the whole emotional gambit. The practice of meditating or spiritual exercises counter these feelings by slowly building a foundation of calmness and centeredness, both of which allow us to remain in control, despite what is happening around us.

Have you ever heard the statement: “He was so angry, he couldn’t think.” Thinking or mentalizing on something is really difficult if your emotions are out of control. The calmness allows us to think, to critically analyze our situation and get to work on solving the current dilemma. What happens when we have internalized solving the kind of problem we are hit with? This solving goes to a higher level. It is literally unconscious, which is what happens when we know how to solve a particular problem without thinking about it. Do you see?

Emotions, come before intellect, which comes before unconscious execution. If one of these is out of balance and control, they make the others that follow impossible to use. If we are too emotional we won’t be able to think about a solution—the emotions won’t allow that. If we are too caught up in mentalizing or thinking about a problem, our ability to apply what we already know is impossible.

By meditating or doing a spiritual exercise every day, we build up an internal centeredness and calmness that becomes more and more difficult to upset our natural balance. Thus, we have access to the creative imagination that would normally be blocked off by a stressful situation. You can find a great wealth of material available about meditation online or read about spiritual exercises at www.eckankar.org.

Have a great week!!

See you next week…

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote

Tags

Attitude, change, Mahatma Gandhi

Today’s Quote:

“We must be the change we wish to see in our world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Hello, readers! Are you currently having any difficulty with your current situation, the work you do, or the environment you are in? If so, keep reading this. I offer some ideas on how you can change your situation, how you feel about work, and how you feel about your current environment by merely adjusting your attitude towards these things.

Change can be easy or difficult. The key to making a change is not about trying to change someone else, change something else, or change the conditions we find ourselves in. Trying to change any of these things is impossible. The only thing you can change is how you perceive someone else, how you perceive something else, or how you perceive the conditions you find yourself in.

Subsequently, the change we make is nothing more than changing our attitude about our reality. Take a look at anything you have to do, but really do not like to do. Let’s say you don’t like doing your laundry. If you perceive doing your laundry as drudgery, you have a few options. You can pay someone else to do your laundry. You can throw away your dirty clothes and buy new ones. You can adjust your attitude about doing your laundry. If you create a new attitude about doing your laundry, perhaps by creating a game out of doing your laundry or combining your laundry with something enjoyable like listening to music or a favorite podcast, you’ll slowly transform this drudgery into an enjoyable part of your day. You can “train” yourself to like this work by combining the work with something you enjoy.

What other ways could you take a task of drudgery and change your attitude about it? Another way is to do this task for God. Perhaps your brother, sister, mother, or father need their laundry done as well. Do it for them. Are there any other ways we could change our attitude about doing something we consider distasteful? Use your imagination. Your creativity is boundless, once you begin using it. Come up with a creative solution to overcoming your attitude about any work you do. Once your attitude changes about a particular job or task, you’ll find that doing the task is no longer difficult. You may even find yourself enjoying this task.

Try these techniques out. I think you’ll find that once you make an internal change to your attitude, you’ll find more and more things become an absolute joy to do on a daily basis and are no longer a task of drudgery.

If you have any techniques that you’ve used to adjust your internal attitude about something, some place, some person, or some task, feel free to share that. I’d be very interested in hearing about it.

See you tomorrow…

Daily Ramblings – Problems are Blessings?

Tags

Blessing, challenge, God, Learning, Loving, Self-realization, Testing, trouble

“No problem is given man which is greater than himself. Each being is tested according to his capacity; none are tested beyond it. Each problem which man encounters has a spiritual solution, and each person has his troubles at the point where he is most negative and vulnerable.” – Paul Twitchell – The Shariyat Ki Sugmad

Two Critical Points

This is a quote a came across a few years ago. This quote has two critical points that have proven themselves to be true more often than I can recall. The first is that we are never given a problem that is beyond our capability to solve. The second is that we will always be tested where we are weakest.

This is comforting, isn’t it? If we are never going to be hit with a problem we cannot solve, we have nothing to fear, because regardless of the problem, we will overcome it. Some problems may be overcome in the short-term, while others may take years to get through. The point is that if a problem is no larger than our capacity to solve it, there’s nothing to worry about.

Let’s examine the next point. If we are self-realized, meaning we know ourselves well, then we should be able to predict where that next test or problem is coming right? Well, yes and no. The human mind cannot grasp an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being. Subsequently, God knows you better than you ever will and IT knows exactly where you are your weakest. So, prediction of your next challenge may not be so easy to see.

When are we really learning? Are we driven to God and improvement when things are going our way and easy, or are we driven to God and improvement when things are tough? You guessed it. The learning and growth opportunities are typically brought about when we are presented with a problem and things are tough.

The Good times – The Bad times

This is human nature. We relax and enjoy the times when there are no problems. We get into gear when the problems arise. These periods of rest and challenge fluctuate throughout our lives. God knows when you need a break, God knows when it’s time to test you again, and God knows exactly where you need to be tested.

Why do the tests exist at all? The tests are designed to teach us to be more focused on others than ourselves. They are designed to teach us about divine love. They are designed to teach us how to solve the problems we have so that when others run into those same problems we can help them (We’ve already been there and done that.)

Problems are Blessings

When you really look at it, the rest periods we receive are a blessing, but so too are the rough spots. It really depends on how you look at the situation. The rough spots are stepping stones. These stepping stones are for learning to be greater than we were yesterday. So, enjoy the good times, but also be thankful for the tough times. Without these tough times, we wouldn’t have anything to compare to them and we will miss out on enjoying the really good times that always come.

When we can truly feel blessed when trouble comes we will have finally understood that there are no troubles or rest periods. The life we have been given is a blessing because we have been held in the arms of God the entire time.

Until next time…

Daily Ramblings – Turning Points

Tags

change, decisions, fate, future, improvement, Life, new

My life has been one, long, on-going adventure. It started in the early 80s when I enlisted in the US Army and began a 20-year career. What I’ve discovered over the years, particularly when I reflect on my life, is that there are turning points. These turning points are those actions that cause a move from one place, one person, or one attitude for another. This change, in my experience, has always been better for myself and those around me at the time.

Once such turning point came in August of 2003. One morning, I awoke and complained to my wife at the time that it felt like I had dislocated my hip. She got up and immediately called a doctor and I was set up for a meeting on a Monday morning. When I went to the doctor, he mentioned that I had been in for numerous visits concerning my lower back. In light of this, he recommended that I get an MRI and have it analyzed by a neurologist.

A few weeks later I got the results. They felt it was a herniated disc. The doctor upon receiving the results felt it might be a little more and sent me on my way to a neurosurgeon, who, in his opinion, would have a better idea of what might be going on. I met with this neurosurgeon about a week or so after that.

When I met with the neurosurgeon, I was surprised by the small office. I figured a neurosurgeon had to make a lot of money and would have all kinds of staff running around, a large office with all kinds of books, and a large desk with all of his degrees on the wall behind him. This wasn’t the case. To my surprise, his office was small, because he was never in it. He was one of many doctors in this office complex who split their time between this small little office and an operating room in the nearby hospital.

When I settled into my chair, the doc showed me a model of a human spine. He showed me what discs were affected and what he proposed to do, to alleviate me from the pain I had been experiencing for over a month. He also had me take a look at the pictures of my MRI, showing me what a normal disc looked like, compared to the distorted pictures of my discs in the MRI pictures. Obviously, I agreed to surgery. I was in a lot of pain, and my discs, the two largest discs in my back, were ruptured, with fragments of them drifting about. The doc told me the key problem is the lower disc, which has been rubbing on the nerve bundle that runs down the left leg, called the Sciatic nerve.

After my surgery, the pain was gone, but I had lost some feeling in my left leg. This was caused by the nerve damage the disc had done to that nerve bundle. It rubbed a hole in this bundle of nerves and did damage to them that would take a long time to heal. In light of this surgery and the result, my Army career was over. I opted to retire and put in my retirement paperwork when I hit my 20 years in October of 2004.

This turn of events also motivated me to go to school to get a degree before I retired. I was laid up for some time and had plenty of time on my hands. I earned a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree before I left the Army and got a great job with a prestigious firm in Los Angeles. Because of this move, so many things have unfolded.

This turn of events motivated me to get a degree, motivated me to retire, and motivated me to work in a field that was highly lucrative, which is why today at the young age of 53 I was able to retire and truly pursue what I love—writing. There are many more of these turning points throughout the last 12 years since my Army retirement. Interestingly, when the decision was made to leave the Army and go to work in the civilian sector, a calmness overtook my life, like a recognition that I had done the right thing. Have you ever experienced a turning point like this? A point which resulted in a major change in your life where the situation you found yourself was monumentally better than the situation you were in previously? If so, comment here. I’d love to hear your story.

Until next time…