HOW BIG IS YOUR SACK?
We all carry emotional baggage to varying degrees–painful childhood memories, grief over the loss of a loved one, the devastation of a marriage or relationship break up, the trauma of physical or sexual violation.
We all carry emotional baggage to varying degrees–painful childhood memories, grief over the loss of a loved one, the devastation of a marriage or relationship break up, the trauma of physical or sexual violation.
The Key to Love
The word ‘love’ is perhaps one of the most casually used terms in the English language – so much so that it has become an umbrella term for a whole variety of very different emotions!
The 79th verse of the Tao Te Ching, which has been especially helpful to me personally, can be called “Living Without Resentment.” We’re asked to change the way we hold resentments following a difference of opinion or an outright quarrel. Now what causes annoyance and anger after a dispute? The generic response would be a laundry list that detailed why the other person was wrong and how illogically and unreasonably they behaved…
You hear people say this all the time: “I have a right to be upset because of the way I’ve been treated. I have a right to be angry, hurt, depressed, sad, and resentful.” Learning to avoid this kind of thinking is one of my secrets for living a life of inner peace, success, and happiness. Anytime you’re filled with resentment, you’re turning the controls of your emotional life over to others to manipulate.
If what you think is what you create for yourself, then only think about the positives. If everyone would take responsibility for their own lives then the world would be a much better place.
Even in the healthiest of relationships, opportunities abound to find fault, criticize or “tweak” the other person no matter whether we are talking about a mate, a child or a friend. Most of us were raised in an environment where rather than focusing on the positive, we were taught to zoom in and dwell on the negative. Breaking that habitual way of thinking is a matter of conditioning our minds to refocus and learn to love with abandon, without any requirements, without any rules and without any limitations.
In truth, there is no life outside of the present moment. Sooner or later, we must all come to terms with this simple fact.
If you are to awaken fully into the present moment, and remain fundamentally grounded in Presence, then you will have to liberate yourself from entanglement in your own past. It is not the true past. It is the remembered past, which you access through the mind whenever you think. You will also have to free yourself from the imagined future, which is nothing more than the past projected forward. It is simply a fantasy.
The road to bliss is a process—a process within you, your community, your state, your country and your world. Within each of us is the ability to choose harmony and peace over dissonance and vengeful, fear-based reactions to the circumstances of life. If we choose to follow our hearts and listen to our spirits, we can choose a better way of thinking and acting.