"You Are Enough

It’s easy to feel uncared for when people aren’t able to communicate and connect with you in the way you need. And it’s so hard not to internalize that silence as a reflection on your worth. But the truth is that the way other people operate is not about you. Most people are so caught up in their own responsibilities, struggles, and anxiety that the thought of asking someone else how they’re doing doesn’t even cross their mind. They aren’t inherently bad or uncaring — they’re just busy and self-focused. And that’s okay. It’s not evidence of some fundamental failing on your part. It doesn’t make you unloveable or invisible. It just means that those people aren’t very good at looking beyond their own world. But the fact that you are — that despite the darkness you feel, you have the ability to share your love and light with others — is a strength. Your work isn’t to change who you are; it’s to find people who are able to give you the connection you need. Because despite what you feel, you are not too much. You are not too sensitive or too needy. You are thoughtful and empathetic. You are compassionate and kind. And with or without anyone’s acknowledgment or affection, you are enough."

~ Daniell Koepke
Rivers in the Ocean
Unknown artist

The disturbing truth is that coming to the end of suffering isn’t really a personal matter at all. Coming to the end of suffering has to do with reality and truth, with what’s real as opposed to what’s not real, and valuing what’s actual instead of what’s imagined. The whole process of awakening from the dream is very profound, and for most people there’s a real difficulty and even a disturbing quality to it because it means we have to look at ourselves in the mirror. I don’t mean looking at ourselves in the mirror the way we usually do - with regret, judgment, and blame. I mean looking in the mirror in a different way, where we’re finally willing to see we are the ones who are causing our suffering, and it’s we alone who can find the way out.


Adyashanti

Falling into Grace

Lakota Prayer

Great Mystery,
teach me how to trust
my heart,
my mind,
my intuition,
my inner knowing,
the senses of my body,
the blessings of my spirit.
Teach me to trust these things
so that I may enter my Sacred Space
and love beyond my fear,
and thus Walk in Balance
with the passing of each glorious Sun.



According to certain tribes, the Sacred Space is the space between exhalation and inhalation. To Walk in Balance is to have Heaven (spirituality) and Earth (physicality) in Harmony.

At the core of this timeless wisdom is the word “trust”. When did we stop trusting ourselves? When did we start giving that trust, that power, away?
In many ways the spirit path is a process of reestablishing that trust with the infinite that resides within us, just waiting to be activated.

This stillness of awareness is all there is. It's all one. This awareness and life are one thing, one movement, one happening, in this moment -- unfolding without reason, without goal, without direction. The ultimate state is ever present and always now. The only thing that makes it difficult to find that state and remain in that state is people wanting to retain their position in space and time.

"I want to know where I'm going. I want to know if I've arrived. I want to know who to love and hate. I want to know. I don't really want to be; I want to know. Isn't enlightenment the ultimate state of knowing?"

No. It's the ultimate state of being. The price is knowing.

Adyashanti

I spent 5 years hurting a good woman by staying with her but never fully choosing her.

I did want to be with this one. I really wanted to choose her. She was an exquisite woman, brilliant and funny and sexy and sensual. She could make my whole body laugh with her quick, dark wit and short-circuit my brain with her exotic beauty. Waking up every morning with her snuggled in my arms was my happy place. I loved her wildly.

Unfortunately, as happens with many young couples, our ignorance of how to do love well quickly created stressful challenges in our relationship. Before long, once my early morning blissful reverie gave way to the strained, immature ways of our everyday life together, I would often wonder if there was another woman out there who was easier to love, and who could love me better.

As the months passed and that thought reverberated more and more through my head, I chose her less and less. Every day, for five years, I chose her a little less.

I stayed with her. I just stopped choosing her. We both suffered.

Choosing her would have meant focusing every day on the gifts she was bringing into my life that I could be grateful for: her laughter, beauty, sensuality, playfulness, companionship, and so … much … more.
Sadly, I often found it nearly impossible to embrace – or even see – what was so wildly wonderful about her.

I was too focused on the anger, insecurities, demands, and other aspects of her strong personality that grated on me. The more I focused on her worst, the more I saw of it, and the more I mirrored it back to her by offering my own worst behaviour. Naturally, this only magnified the strain on our relationship … which still made me choose her even less.

Thus did our nasty death spiral play itself out over five years.

She fought hard to make me choose her. That’s a fool’s task. You can’t make someone choose you, even when they might love you.

To be fair, she didn’t fully choose me, either. The rage-fueled invective she often hurled at me was evidence enough of that.

I realise now, however, that she was often angry because she didn’t feel safe with me. She felt me not choosing her every day, in my words and my actions, and she was afraid I would abandon her.

Actually, I did abandon her.

By not fully choosing her every day for five years, by focusing on what bothered me rather than what I adored about her, I deserted her.

Like a precious fragrant flower I brought proudly into my home but then failed to water, I left her alone in countless ways to wither in the dry hot heat of our intimate relationship.

I’ll never not choose another woman I love again.

It’s torture for everyone.

If you’re in relationship, I invite you to ask yourself this question:
“Why am I choosing my partner today?”

If you can’t find a satisfying answer, dig deeper and find one. It could be as simple as noticing that in your deepest heart’s truth, “I just do.”

If you can’t find it today, ask yourself again tomorrow. We all have disconnected days.
But if too many days go by and you just can’t connect with why you’re choosing your partner, and your relationship is rife with stress, let them go. Create the opening for another human being to show up and see them with fresh eyes and a yearning heart that will enthusiastically choose them every day.

Your loved one deserves to be enthusiastically chosen. Every day.
You do, too.
Choose wisely. ॐ

"Choose Her Every Day (Or Leave Her)" by Brian Reeves

https://bryanreeves.com/choose-her-ever ... -leave-her

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.


Chief Seattle

Spiritual people can be some of the most violent people you will ever meet. Mostly, they are violent to themselves. They violently try to control their minds, their emotions, and their bodies. They become upset with themselves and beat themselves up for not rising up to the conditioned mind's idea of what it believes enlightenment to be. No one ever became free through such violence. Why is it that so few people are truly free? Because they try to conform to ideas, concepts, and beliefs in their heads. They try to concentrate their way to heaven. But freedom is about the natural state, the spontaneous and un-self-conscious expression of beingness. If you want to find it, see that the very idea of "a someone who is in control" is a concept created by the mind. Take one step backward into the unknown.


Adyashanti

Elizabeth Gilbert
MERCY

Dear Ones -

It's been a tough few weeks here on Planet Earth. A lot of violence, a lot of suffering, a lot of sorrow and anger and reaction and revenge.

Beirut, Paris, and now Mali. Attacks upon the innocent by the ignorant. The rise of Isis. The desperate plight of refugees. Everywhere I look, I see tender-hearted people who are in pain, and hard-hearted people who are in rage. It's very hard to process, very hard to bear.

In response to it all, we can also witness a very natural human movement happening across the world — namely, an impulse toward CLOSING EVERYTHING DOWN.

Close your borders.
Close your town.
Close your wallets.
Close your eyes.
Close your heart.
Close your mind.

(By the way: You know you have a problem when the most powerful people in the world become terrified of the most powerless people in the world. When wealthy, lucky and safe people are afraid of poor, hungry, and endangered people, this is not good This is a sure sign of panic, if ever there was one. And nobody is at their best when they panic.)

But this is what most humans do when we feel cornered and threatened. We close everything down. We do it on a global scale and we do it on a personal scale. We lose our mercy. All too often, our mercy is first thing to go when we feel overwhelmed. We start saying to our fellow man: "Your suffering is not my problem. I have enough problems. I don't have any space to imagine your nightmare, because I'm too busy living out my own nightmare. Goodbye." (Or maybe even, in stronger moments: "Go to hell.")

I've done it; you've done it.

I'm guilty of this; you're guilty of this.

I've closed my heart to people, and I've had other people close their hearts to me. I've experienced the death of mercy from both sides — and it's hell, from both sides. (I certainly know this to be true: Anytime you tell another human being to go to hell, you can be sure that you are already there yourself.)

Mercy is HARD. Staying soft and open in a difficult world is HARD. Forgiveness is HARD. Sharing your resources is HARD. Communication is HARD. Empathy is HARD. Humanity is HARD. Compassion is HARD.

These feel like soft words, but they are not soft, and they are not for amateurs. These words push you sometimes to very difficult and uncomfortable places in your mind and in your heart. These words challenge you. These words push you to think past your own needs and fears and emotions. These words force you to listen to people you can't stand, and to be generous to everyone — sometimes to the point that it chafes and stings. Sometimes to the point that you must make difficult sacrifices. These words make you suffer at times, because they feel so impossible to achieve. These words are the hardest work in the world, because the easiest thing in the world is exactly the opposite — to just shut yourself down.

But the problem is — when we shut ourselves down, we lose our mercy, and without mercy, we are all doomed. Without mercy, nobody is safe.

Every great teacher who has ever lived has taught this exact lesson.

It's always the same lesson: MERCY.

And until somebody can give me a better idea for how 7 billion human beings are meant to share one very small planet in peace (or — for that matter — how one complicated family is meant to share Thanksgiving dinner in peace; or — for that matter — how one self-hating human being is meant to make friends with herself and stop hurting herself), then I will keep fighting for mercy.

I'm not a master of mercy by any means, but I have met some genuine masters of mercy, and they have the right idea. They are onto something big. Even when they are exhausted, they radiate love, because they know this vital truth: Mercy is the hardest challenge on earth, but it's always worth the work.

Keep your hearts open, everyone. Don't give up on us, or on yourself, or on anybody. Keep your mercy alive.

Onward,
LG


Elizabeth Gilbert via fb

Philip Ruch, "Zentrum für politische Schönheit" im Spiegel-Interview Nr. 48/2015


Spiegel: Was ist politische Schönheit?

Ruch: Die Reaktion der indischen Regierung auf die Anschläge in Mumbai 2008 war ein Akt von seltener politischer Schönheit: Statt einen Krieg mit Pakistan loszubrechen, statt massiv die Rechte der Muslime einzuschränken, was viele politische Beobachter erwartet hatten, bewies der Staat die Größe, den Angriff auszuhalten. Menschen, die gelernt haben, Angriffe auszuhalten, die sich nicht gezwungen sehen, jeden Angriff blind zu vergelten, sind etwas unfassbar Schönes. Sie können Terroristen durch deren eigene Taten demütigen, und zwar dadurch, dass sie sie damit alleinlassen.


++++++++++++++++++++

Bis auf den letzten Satz: Full ACK - danach: ist es sinnvoll, Menschen zu demütigen und sie allein zu lassen?

Frieden ist eine Eigenschaft in dir. Du kannst ihn nicht außen finden. Krankheit ist eine Form der äußeren Suche. Gesundheit ist innerer Frieden. Er macht es möglich, dass dich ein äußerer Mangel an Liebe nicht erschüttert und du dadurch, dass du Wunder akzeptierst, fähig bleibst, die Zustände zu berichtigen, die von einem Mangel an Liebe in anderen herrühren.
(Kap. 2, I, 5., 8-12)


Entwicklung ist ein Prozess, in dem du von einem Grad zum nächsten fortzuschreiten scheinst. Du berichtigst deine vergangenen Fehlschritte, indem du vorwärts schreitest. Tatsächlich ist dieser Prozess in zeitlichen Begriffen unverständlich, weil du zurückkehrst, während du vorangehst.
(Kap. 2, II, 6., 1-3)


Quelle: Ein Kurs in Wundern [S. 18 und 20]