Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Oh, Those Little Surprises

Tags

Actions, Attitude, Blind-sided, Emotions, Execute, Plan, Surprises, Think

You ever wake up, looking forward to your day, and then get a phone call, email, or text that upends everything? Yeah, you know those days, right? The days you wish you would never have gotten out of bed, or called in sick to binge watch Netflix or get on your XBOX and get in some Call of Duty.

The key to getting through these days is to realize how important our attitude is. All of us get these “little surprises”. They are as common as breathing. So what do I mean by attitude?

Our attitude relates to how we deal with these surprises. Do we take them in stride or do we let them blow away our whole day, week, or month?

What I have found to be most effective is to not react so quickly. Take some time to understand what this surprise is asking of you. Do you need to fill out a form, make a phone call, or seek someone’s council? Decide what you need to do with whatever you got blindsided by. It may be as simple as marking a date on a calendar to revisit when you can do something about it. In other circumstances, you may need to sit down and put together a plan of action.

This planning phase takes a lot of “edge” off of the surprise and gets you thinking about how to solve the problem or finish this new task. The less emotion you are, the better. Just start brainstorming for ideas, write them down, decide which action makes the most sense, and plan out a course of action.

The next time you get blind-sided by something, take your time. Let the initial emotional reaction subside. Then think. You’ll find you always have a solution available.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Creativity

Tags

Brainstorming, Calm, creativity, decisions, Emotions, Freakout, Mistakes, Planning

“Creative people who cherish the gift of life often slip into the secret chambers of the creative mind. Their solutions are well-rounded, more sensible than those of people who rely solely upon reason as their mainstay. Gratitude unseals fountains of creativity, because a grateful person is relaxed. This allows him to take stock of his circumstances with an objective mind. A creative person often gets three-dimensional answers to his problems.” – Harold Klemp – The Language of Soul

Have you ever tried to solve a problem when you were emotional?

The emotional states, lock up our ability to tap into our intellect and creativity. Anger, fear, sorrow, or any number of emotions will circumvent our creativity and ability to think through a problem to its successful conclusion.

How do you fix this? Patience. Emotions pass. Relax. Brainstorm possible solutions in a non-judging way. After you’ve calmed down a bit and your emotions have subsided, you can now evaluate these solutions and pick the one that makes the most sense. Then you’ll have to decide all the steps that get you from where you are to the final solution you decided upon. Then, you’ll put the steps in logical order and determine how long each step will take. Then it’s nothing more than working through the steps.

Trust me. I’ve been in situations when I’ve been emotional and made the mistake of jumping to a conclusion. This mistake leads to more decisions and the whole thing will spiral out of control. You literally create more problems than you started with–all because you didn’t take the time to calm down and plan with a clear head.

I hope all of you have a terrific Saturday! I’m stoked that it’s November. This is my favorite time of year.

 

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Finding Truth

Tags

Contemplation, Emotions, Intellect, Intuition, Meditation, memories, Prayer, The Mind, Truth

No matter how much insight we gain about God, there will always be something that lies beyond the horizon of our understanding. That is simply the nature of truth.

—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

If you search for God, you will never find IT. God is within, buried beneath layers of the mind, the emotions, memories, intellect, and intuition. If we look deep enough, we will find God. Looking deep enough is hard because our minds are so dominant in this reality. To experience God, we need to peel back all these layers first. How do we do this?

We meditate, pray, or contemplate. In my religious path we contemplate. Contemplation is like meditation but active. Meditation typically requires us to focus on the breath, chant a mantra, or focus on an object in our mind’s eye. Contemplation requires us to visualize scenes and actively interact within. Prayer can achieve the same things by chanting a verse, focusing on a religious concept. Why do these activities help us? They focus on things other than our immediate environment. This focus projects us to another place. The more we practice prayer, meditation, or contemplation, the easier it becomes to lose ourselves in the act.

We must drop the mind. Some of you are asking, how in the heck do you drop the mind? You drop the mind when you realize that the mind is not you. You are something else. You are that which thinks about thinking. In my religion we call this being soul. Soul is the real you. It is that part of you that can watch your thought stream. Soul is not the ego. Soul is not your emotions. Soul is not your hunger or lust. Soul is not the part of you that thinks or remembers. Soul is not your intuition. Soul is you.

For some, this can be difficult to understand. It is difficult to understand because science and our society has taught us that the brain is us.  It is not. Soul is the real you.

No one will convince you of anything related to truth. Truth is something you find on your own. Finding truth takes work. It requires you to act, to take matters into your own hands. Once you find truth, you soon discover that it changes. This is the nature of things. It isn’t the truth that changes though. You change. As you change, truth takes on new meaning as you look at it through “new” eyes. Truth never changes, only illusion changes.

If you are unsatisfied with your current religious path or seek questions you cannot answer, look around this website: www.eckankar.org This is the website for my religious path. On this website you can request information. You may like what you find. I have been an Eckist for over 40 years. It is the only path I know. It is a blessing to be an Eckist. Check it out. You have nothing to lose.

If you visit this site, get the materials and still have questions, you are welcome to reach out to me directly. Comment on this thread with: “Contact me”. I hope you have a great Saturday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Series Sunday – The Character Trait of Detachment

Tags

Attachment, Contentment, Detachment, Emotions, Letting go, pain, Suffering

“Everything is temporary; emotions, thoughts, people and scenery. Do not become attached, just flow with it.”—Anonymous

Detachment is the focus for this month. So, this month I’ll continue to work on discrimination, tolerance, forgiveness, and contentment. Each month I add one more character trait I want to work on, just like Benjamin Franklin did in his time.

Detachment relates to a practice of letting go. We live in a reality of constant change. Our health changes, our appearance changes, our situations change, and our relationships change. Tomorrow, you could lose everything. Detachment allows us to live a better life because it frees us from the emotional upheaval we experience when we lose something. Attachment in a constantly changing world is painful. Everyone around us will pass away at some point. Our pets will pass away. Our relatives and friends will pass away. We will pass away.

Detachment doesn’t mean we live an unfeeling life. Detachment means we live life to the fullest, appreciating what we have when we have it. It means to cherish what you have at the moment. Living a detached life allows us to be content with what we have and helps us avoid the lingering pain that occurs when we attach ourselves to something. Detached people, express pain for their loss and get on with their lives. It is not emotionless; it is realistic.

I hope all of you are having a great Sunday! Today is my do-nothing day. I’ll be relaxing, playing games, and doing what I want today. How about you?

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesdays – Anger, Fear, Vanity

Tags

Anger, Emotions, Fear, Harold Klemp, Meditation, Prayer, The Language of Soul, Vanity

“When we reach the point in our unfoldment where we are treating others with love instead of fear, anger, or vanity, we’ve made a very important step back home to God.” —Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

How do we treat others with love? It is quite simple. We simply wish others well.

How many times have you reacted to someone else in anger or preached to someone from the pedestal of vanity? If you really think about it, both emotions are quite harmful and worthless in the end.

I tend to have the greatest weakness with vanity. When I am experiencing success with self-discipline, I tend to preach to others about how they are NOT. This is one version of vanity. Other types of vanity could be prejudice against another person, discriminating against someone, even the poor treatment of animals as if they were less important than we powerful humans.

Anger is a tough one because when someone does something to hurt us or violates our space after being asked politely to back off, we naturally get angry. I would never advocate turning a cheek in this respect. We all have a right to defend or stick up for ourselves.

In the end, each of us is simply Soul. If we can have compassion and understanding for other beings, treating them as Soul, our outlook can change a bit. There will always be someone to challenge you when you attempt to interact with them from “higher” ground.

What we are really talking about here is the ability to master the emotions. If we rise above them, they have no hold on us. This is hard, particularly when you are right in the thick of it. What I have found to work the best is to contemplate these emotions and really try to understand them. If you’re like me, you find that they are simply an illusion. When you get to the center of anger, fear, vanity, or jealousy, you find that nothing is there. It is just a way we REACT to the reality we are giving light to.

It is the REACTION to the things that are outside us that get us into trouble. One of the beauties of the human mind is our ability to replay these events in our mind and mock up different scenarios and situations that have invoked an emotion in the past. Once you experience this emotion, alter the environment or alter your way of reacting to it. You’ll find that you will become more centered and less likely to be thrown out of emotional balance. None of this is easy. You must want it. Experiment with this when you are meditating or praying. Play a situation that got the best of you repeatedly until it no longer affects you. Typically, once you master this situation, you will be better equipped to be in control and react less than you did before.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturdays – The Three Things…

Tags

Anger, Emotions, Fear, Jealousy, kindness, Necessity, Truth

Whenever you’re in doubt about any action, ask yourself: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? You can also ask, What would love do now?—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

This can also be said about the words we speak and the thoughts we have. Anger, jealousy, and frustration can all lead us to say things about others that we really don’t mean, but lose our ability to control in the present moment when the emotion of anger sticks its ugly head up. Why does this happen?

When the emotions kick in, particularly if they are strong enough, they literally block any mental processing. Have you ever heard the statement: “He was so mad, he couldn’t think.” This is the condition I am talking about.

It is hard to pull ourselves out of an emotional frenzy or firestorm when we are under their control. The best thing you can do if you recognize you are in this state is literally separate yourself from others until you’ve cooled down. It is also necessary to be aware enough to begin capturing the telling signs that your emotions are about to take over.

Initially, this is hard, but with practice, you will begin seeing the triggers that set you off. When you see them, you can begin working on de-escalation strategies so that they do not get the best of you. This is really important because there are some things your emotions will cause you to say that you can’t take back. The damage to another person can be irreparable.

Emotions are like a wave. They rise and they fall during an “episode”. They always have something that initiates them, they have a peak of expression, and then they subside. The human body can only sustain so much stress before the emotions will literally rip it apart. Anger and its cousin fear are the worst. Jealousy is definitely up there in the rankings.

How do we combat these nasty emotions? Learn what triggers them. If you understand the triggers you can avoid the rollercoaster before you hit the summit. The key is to recognize these emotions when they come, then let them go. This is not easy. It takes practice. One of the ways to learn how to do this is to simply try to engage the emotions at will just to get used to these feelings when they arise. You can do this during your meditation practice by imagining things that make you angry or jealous and mocking up scenes in your mind that spark these emotions. Once you achieve jealousy or anger, engage with it to really understand it. You’ll find that once you get inside these emotions there is nothing there. We learn that we created these out of thin air and we can make them go away the same way.

You can imagine anger or jealousy as a piece of paper. You crumple it up and throw it away in an imaginary trashcan. You could imagine your anger or jealousy to be a pile of dust on the floor and brushing it away with a broom. You could also imagine anger or jealousy to be a balloon. Popping it causes the jealousy or anger to dissipate.

The key to all of these exercises is to get yourself to slow down the escalation of these emotions so you can think. Thinking will allow you to really understand whether what you are going to say or do is necessary, kind, and truthful.

Enjoy your Saturday!!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk – Lisa Feldman Barret – Emotions

Tags

creation, Emotions, Lisa Feldman Barrett, The Brain, You are responsible, You're in control

Ok, folks. Here’s the first Ted Talk of the year. It’s all about emotions. I won’t put any spoilers here. Lisa Barrett provides some real insights into how our emotions work.

Enjoy!

See you next week!!

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Daily Quotes

Tags

Character, creativity, Emotions, Imagination, Responsibility, Wayne Dyer

“One of the most responsible things you can do as an adult is to become more of a child.” – Dr. Wayne. W. Dyer

This quote is terrific. Children are so open, so creative, so inherently happy—until they are socialized and their dreams and imagination dwindle away. To truly live, we have to capture that child-like curiosity, happiness, and imagination. This life can be a truly rich experience if we can only get these things back.

“I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.” – Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

This is about our internal attitudes and character. This eludes to one of yesterday’s quotes by Gandhi and Steven Covey. We cannot control what other people do, the weather, or world events. We can only control the way we react to these things. If you are unattached to things you will find that your life will become much less stressful and easier. If you are attached to things, it is like being an inflexible tree. When the winds of change come blowing, the inflexible tree will be snapped. The same things apply to us. We have to be flexible, take everything with a grain of salt, realizing that everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God and that God will never, ever give us a problem we are not capable of handling.

“Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.” – Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Have you ever done the experiment of imagining biting into a lemon? This is one of the typical thought experiments I think everyone has been hit within their psychology 101 class. When you imagine biting into a lemon your mind communicates this to your body and you start to salivate. The same thing happens when we worry about things, get angry about things, feel afraid, or sad or any number of emotions. We create them. This all drifts down from our emotional level of thinking and comes right into the physical body.

If you want a pleasant and calm life, imagine a pleasant and calm life and let go of the negative things, the anger, the jealousy, the fear, the attachment to a thing, place, or an idea, the lust for things. If you can focus on positive things, things that you are grateful for, happy, or excited about, your life will follow these imaginative thoughts. It’s the way this world—your world—works.

I hope you enjoyed today’s quotes.

See you tomorrow!

Stretching the Mind…

Tags

answers, consciousness, Emotions, ideas, Intellect, memory, questions, subconscious

“A mind stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

The mind is a collection of neural pathways forged by our senses, thoughts, and our experiences. The mind collects. The mind compares. The mind stores.

Each of us is unique because our senses and the neural pathways they create are forged by our circumstances. But is the mind all there is?

A mind is a tool. We exist beyond the mind but need the mind to negotiate the reality of this reality. We are our consciousness.

Think about emotions, memories, intellect, and subconscious. These collectively represent the mind, the combination of which are infinite when we deal with the world. When a particular experience is over you will come away from a collective experience with your own unique version of it. You interpret the event with your emotions, any memories that may provide some background, you evaluate the input with your intellect, and there may even be something in your subconscious that contributes to your experience. If you talk to others who experienced the event, there will be differences in each person’s unique way of interpreting the event.

Our consciousness allows us to be aware of things and to accept or reject them. Our consciousness is what allows us to think of things beyond what the mind has seen or collected. Our consciousness allows us to find new ways of doing things. How does this occur?

Consciousness is connected to a greater expanse. Some call this expanse God. Others call it the Universe. The name that is given to it is irrelevant. We can contact this expanse and find what already exists somewhere in infinity.

By doing so, we stretch. We become more aware each time we tap into this greater consciousness. The next time you have a problem to solve. Ask the question. Write your question down. Think about it before you go to sleep. The answer will come in some way. It could come while listening to a radio program, watching television, or surfing the Internet. You could see your answer on a billboard, in a book, or overhear someone in the coffee shop you frequent. The more aware you are, the easier it will be to find the answer to your question. The only caveat to this is to test the answer you receive. Ask for a confirmation. Sometimes the mind gets in the way. It doesn’t believe the answer it receives and will block some of it out. We will misinterpret the response we get to our question. The answer comes. They always come. What is important is becoming aware enough to receive them.

Until next time…