On some days I just don’t think about faith.  That doesn’t always mean that I am in fear, however.  I have learned quite successfully through the years that my fears are often (if not always) unfounded.  I have written proof that the world which seems to be shifting in front of me from time to time can often simply be a reaction to not knowing what the future really holds, and my failing to remember that I am not in the moment and instead projecting myself to whatever assumed time I am in fear of…

How many times have I told myself that everything happens for a reason?  How many times have I wondered just what that reason might be?  It certainly does take the power away from the perception of whatever paradigm shift  the mind will conjure when certain life twists and turns are presented.  The problem with this fear buffer is in the fact that it is always much easier to ponder when it is not about the fears and changes you are potentially experiencing yourself.

It is true for me that a lot of the dramatizations are just that.  They are the cliffhanger effect (what will happen?) 0r my day-to-day maze runs (a sense of confusion while seeking direction,)  over-exaggerated power struggles and stonewalls, all to help spice up what any normal human would hope to be a smooth sail through and successful journey towards a pleasant sleep at the end of a good day.

Some days are about the fear.  Adrenalin rushes that put a creative mind into storytelling mode.  What if…. I will say to myself.  What if this actually HAPPENS?

Good question.

How do I know that the things I fear are not something that I will end up either liking or even finding benefit from?   And how do I know that anything  I fear is going to happen at all?  Up until this point on my path I have not yet been afforded a crystal ball.  I do, however, have a very powerful sense of intuition… and it has been telling me that things are going to be a lot different than the messages I have been starting to get of late.

Like a game show, however… there may be some bluffing going on.  There could be some pieces that are not quite built in truth.   But things are out there and the future is morphing slightly in front of me.  Funny thing about the morphing…. it can morph back to an original shape or continue further into another one altogether.  What I am feeling today is uncertainty… which is a byproduct of seeing the world out of order…. and not being sure what the outcome will mean.

Fear.

But if I am to continue to learn and grow in this life I must always keep an open mind.  EVEN when the information in front of me is less than appealing or when my intuition rages that the truth is not being told.  Fear is false evidence appearing real.  I am coming to conclusions that are not necessarily the truth.  Even if they were, the fear is the suggestion that they would actually happen.  I do not know that to be a fact.

Coupled with faith comes trust.  Based on the experiences of my current piece of the path I would only have to conclude that I am being shown that something is going to change further than I thought it might in the first place.  But if change is constant and what I thought to be one thing is going to probably end up being another… what is to stop my own personal morphing?  One thing could be a domino effect to another.  If what I see is even remotely a reality for the future… it does not have to be mine.  I have choices.  Many of them.  So what, then, do I really fear?  Do I fear the path that I see…. or perhaps the one that I do not see?  Am I afraid of what might happen where I am or of taking the chance to change much more than I had thought to be possible as a result?

Is 2010 about making one of the biggest changes I have made in years?  Was today the beginning of an end… or the beginning of a brand new start?

Fear can be motivating.  The key is not to react to it.  I dealt with it today by writing.  In the end that seems to have worked.

… as for tomorrow?  I may have to do the exercise all over again.  Being human and uncertain can be very trying.  If that is what it takes… that is what I will do.

Be Happy.  Be Well.  Be.

Let me elaborate: Today I was reading a horoscope that told me that I must focus. In it was the following analogy:
One person works long hours, expends a great deal of energy, feels unable to take time off and expects to remain in such a situation for years to come. Another person does – and feels – precisely the same. But the first person is deeply dedicated to a project or plan. The second one is a prisoner who has been sentenced to hard labor. Here’s the difference between the two individuals in one word. Choice.

Thank you, Jonathan Cainer.

I work a lot. I work many hours and I am forever fighting the fight of balance in life. The scales have a tendency to tip in the direction of the career and job and I find myself allowing the slight disintegration of personal commitments and outside activities as a result. Truthfully the greatest percentage of the time there is balance. Beyond that the greatest percentage of the imbalanced time is something I do not necessarily mind. My mistake and habit is to take the times that I work too much and would prefer a little space and time as an imposition on my balance and life. This creates inward resentment and a “victimization” that is fodder for many a journal page.

The bottom line, however, is that there is nobody to blame for these resentments but myself. I have chosen to work and receive the paycheck that affords me the home, the travel and the things that I have and do. I could just as easily choose to say “no” when I am asked (or told) to do something that eats away at hours that I would otherwise consider mine… thus providing an imbalance. I could choose to not work at all if that were something that I wanted.

Starting to get the frustration part of the entry?

So it has become a very obvious to me that an old adage that I had been told many years ago remains true. There really are no “wrong” decisions or choices in this life. There are only the results and / or consequences of these decisions or choices. The resentments that I feel will only come out of the environment or overwhelm that I am feeling. People can push buttons, too much work can cause stress and fatigue. We are humans and humans are fallible in every way possible. When I complain, whether out loud or on the pages of a journal it is a release of stress… much like exercise or other forms of release. it is important to allow the tensions of the world around you to work themselves out. Bottled up energies built in any degree (little by little or a lot in a short amount of time) have the potential of blowing up in ways that may be uncharacteristic to our REAL personality.

I have been ultra-aware of my reactions to the world for months now. I have learned over and over that I am a better person when I do not allow the world to govern me… but instead, by stopping, thinking and breathing I am able to better govern it… and not in a sense of control… just the aforementioned awareness.

That is my choice. Working is my choice. Eating my meals is my choice. Getting out of bed in the morning and returning back to it at night are my choice. Pretty much everything I do is based on choice… and habit (which was built from choice). If I am choosing to do something and I am complaining about it it is my option to choose NOT to do it. If I choose not to do something that I am complaining about I must remember that there are ramifications and results that will follow. Invariably I will find myself either accepting those or complaining. Life is cyclical and nowhere near perfect. Perhaps some choices are easier than others. Sometimes we feel we have “no choice”… but that is usually and invariably a statement made out of the fear of what we feel would be the consequence should we make the choice not to do what we think we must.

So basically it is another exercise in reality. All it tends to do for me is stroke the curiosity gene. What if I were to make this choice or that one? What would be the consequence? How would the path change? How do I know that I could find a happier and more genuine life if I were to step out of what I think I am supposed to be doing in order to pursue what I really want. If I let go of the baggage that is tied to the result… it becomes quite a smile-inducing thought.

This is about letting go. But isn’t everything in the end?

Be Happy. Be Well. Be.

Tonight I had a very pleasant evening of fellowship and correct thinking. This is not so hard to come by… and often is done in my world by writing out the path to a better solution within blog passages and journal entries. Where I have discovered that my writing is always going to be my top and most effective means of therapy and communication (both inwardly and to the world,) I am not at all opposed to re-learning some of the skills I have been taught in the past in order to better situate myself for the next chapter of my life.

My path is like anyone elses. Some days I walk along and it is lined with trees and flowers. I can smile and I can feel the sense of accomplishment and pride. Other days I am out of sorts… I am distressed or in dis-ease. I am hungry, angry, lonely or tired. The path feels like mud and I can either be stuck or moving painfully slow. It is as if the path is blocked… a shield, a door, a barrier. But it is, as I learn over and over again, only as temporary as I choose it to be.

Choice, as I have discovered is my friend and my enemy. With it I am able to do the things I would like to do… and be the person I want to be. Without it I can feel trapped or imprisoned… thwarted and victimized. For the most part I have learned that I am the one choosing the latter. Rarely, if ever, it would seem, am I actually without choice. What I am actually experiencing is the inability to act upon a choice that I may want to make. In other words… I can choose to do something but that doesn’t mean it is going to be done. I can choose right now to move to London but the frustration or aforementioned ill feelings disguised as a lack of choice are actually my human “inability” to follow through on the choice that I would like to make. It is better stated that I am not actually making a choice if I am not following through… so the feelings of frustration are about that old cement shoe: FEAR.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with acceptance? Pretty much everything, the way I see it.

If I am in acceptance of the world around me.. the way that things “are,” the place that I may be and the pieces of the puzzle that are causing me any sign of the dis-ease that disguises itself as problems and drama.. is no longer given the priority it can demand. The line says: Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. It would be an easy choice to take the acceptance each day, would it not?

Although life is not that simple, it isn’t as “difficult” as it sometimes can be made out to be either. The fact that I relearn again and again is that I can be my own worst enemy. I would tend to believe that this is not my infliction alone, but it is my experience to share and grow from. In the amount of self-examination and thinking I do it is always rewarding to see results. When I woke up today I knew that a choice had to be made and because I knew of my inability to know what that choice should be I have found constant struggle. Suddenly remembering that the acceptance of my world AS IS is the form of surrender that I want to do each morning and evening… I felt that I could breathe and allow the choices to reveal themselves when the time is right. I accepted the results that would come as opposed to needing to create the results myself… thus eliminating the need to “choose”… for now.

If a choice is to be made mine will be acceptance. My choice tomorrow will be the same. This is the renewed mantra for the surrender that is necessary for me to make sure that my goal to live each day as a happy man is achieved. I accept the results… and stay out of them. I accept that I will more than likely stumble, fall and need to pull myself up again. I accept that I am human and that some of the moments that are not “happy” will only provide me with the balance and education to enhance the moments that are. I accept that I will need to be patient and aware for those moments.

I accept it all.

Be Happy. Be Well. Be.

It has been important to remind myself that in surrender I am not giving up who I essentially am. I am not giving up on choices or choosing direction. I am not becoming a doormat or a puppet by letting the world or those around me dictate what I do. I am, instead, becoming stronger, gaining choice and insight and seeing my life with an improved view that is becoming more and more clear by the day. The clutter of self-will can be debilitating. With clarity comes option, with option comes opportunity, with opportunity comes growth, with growth there is learning and with all there is happiness and peace.

That is the goal.

I know in the past I have considered the concepts of acceptance and surrender as “giving up.” The word surrender potentially describes a loss where there must undoubtedly be a winner somewhere else. Surrender is not about winning or losing as much as it is about knowing what is best for success and happiness. It is not about letting go of control as much as it could be about gaining options for future choice. In surrender I am not powerless, as odd as it sounds the act of surrender is actually giving you a better definition of power back… power with a different focus and an enlightened motivation.

In surrender I have always found myself “lighter.” In self-will there is a general heaviness of thought and emotion. I am trudging endlessly towards what I believe I need in self-will. I convince myself that there are certain things, people, places, and choices that are what I am supposed to be or have. In focusing so heavily on these things I lose sight on most of the world around me. I begin to focus on the negatives that will mount as a result of the inevitability that my will isn’t always what the world is going to provide. When a soul in self-will is not seeing what it wants to see it becomes a person persecuted. In persecution (at any level) there is no happiness. It becomes a question that some may need to ponder… but in the end really doesn’t merit comparison:

Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

To make matters a bit more confusing I should preface that I am not saying that being “wrong” is the answer to happiness. We must make correct decisions and choices for our lives every waking day. I don’t want to be wrong about the things that are going to make the differences in my world. I make decisions every day fully knowing that I would prefer to be right within them. There are two ways to look at this sort of conundrum. One is to remember that there is really no “right” or “wrong,” there are only the decisions we make with the consequences or results to follow. If they are “right” all is well with the world. If they are “wrong” one could say there is a lesson to be learned. Another way to look at this is to remember that being “right” at all costs is about the ego. Perhaps being wrong teaches us humility. If I insist to myself that I must be something or people “owe” me this or that… I am in a major period of self-will. Nothing is that absolute as much as I might try to convince myself otherwise. If I deserve something it will happen. If it hasn’t happened it may not be in the plan and thus, I may not deserve it the way I thought. If, perhaps, I did deserve it and it does not appear there must be something else out there on the path. My demand that I still deserve what has not appeared is not going to do anything outside of making ME (and perhaps those around me) miserable. Is that worth it?

All humans deserve happiness. That doesn’t mean we are always going to be happy, that simply is not going to be possible. If I didn’t know the emotions outside of happiness I would have nothing to gauge that against. If I was happy all the time I would probably not learn very much about the value of life or others within it. It is perfectly natural for me to continue feeling that I deserve happiness. We all do. To expect it, however, is the downfall… expectations can be brutal. To strive for it through methods such as surrender is admirable and smart. If I were to do a scientific study of the how I have felt during different phases of my life I can guarantee that I have been happiest during periods of surrender and peace, and unhappiest during periods that I have tried to control all the results. I would venture to guess that in self-will I wouldn’t recognize a lot of the happiness available to me. That is one of the greatest losses of being too focused on the self only.

The bottom line is that I am feeling more powerful in surrender than I have in self will. I have to admit that when I am trying to run the show I lose the perspective that is required to honestly be the best I can be. The path is limited and I suffer that consequence. If surrender feels that you will not get what you want… I would suggest another review. It is always good to remember that what we want is different than what we need. What we THINK we want is going to end up cheating you somehow. Let it go.

Be Happy. Be Well. Be.

This boils down to perception and a reminder that I cannot control most things in my life (outside of choice.) People love to suggest what you should be doing and how things should be. For the most part these suggestions are honest and sincere. They are welcomed and since I would never claim perfection, sometimes necessary. But they are not the definition of my character. They are not an illustration of who I am. They are often snapshots in a very large and often crowded collage filled with pieces that build a whole. I rather doubt that anyone can claim perfection (and we all know all who do are usually a bit oblivious to reality anyway.)

In knowing who I am I must always look for ways that I can improve. Change is a luxury and a willingness that will provide a bigger and better palate to help further define my life canvas. If my world were a mural it would be a very diverse and interesting one. I have been through many things… some that I considered deal breakers, some that have made me aware of a spiritual guidance. Everything blends from one scene to the next… many things showing up in different forms and colors throughout the ongoing work of art. It is all very colorful with smatterings of darkness that always presents itself with an indication of a light ahead.

What people see is not always an accurate representation. Nobody can be the same person each and every day without being disingenuous to some degree. Perhaps, however, a little bit of a “cover” is necessary from time to time. An acting job to represent yourself in some places or with certain people in order to make sure that the patterned world is kept in line. I can create characters and have done so many times throughout my life.

But sometimes it is not my character that may need to be changed.

I have worked very hard to build a life and lifestyle lined with karmic thought and sincerity in action. I am honest and I am committed to the work and relationships that I have within my daily life. In my personal life I have maintained a very gracious and admirable persona. I am honorable, and I am sought for advice, help, guidance and friendship. I am helpful and always honest (there is no reason for me to lie…) I do what is in front of me and I am helpful because I believe through life lessons that one must “give it away to keep it”. I am not acting in my personal life unless somebody hands me a script. I am what I am and that person is happy and well-adjusted. I have tried it other ways and they did not work.

I wonder sometimes if there are times in my work world that produce a behavior that I am not happy with if the change is something that should be required within or if, in fact, I should ask myself if it is not the environment where the reaction is produced? I sometimes wonder why some places do not examine the stresses of a workplace and provide some form of training or sensitivity program to acknowledge what could be dealt with in different ways. For some it may be easier to look to the employee as the issue but, in fact, it may be important to recognize the situation as well. I do not and will not absolve myself from any behavior I produce. I do not point fingers nor do I wish to do anything but walk through any piece of my being that is not working 100% to my liking. One must walk through to resolve, any sidestepping would only result in the issue reappearing in other ways or places. But if I am to be the soul reason for something that must be recognized I am forced to ask myself if I am better off finding a situation that would not produce the stresses in the first place… or should I say “abundance” of stresses.

In July I am examining my future. I know who I am and there is nothing to be ashamed of. Every person is different. Every person handles life (and stress) differently. But there is no reason I should be defined by mistakes. I am not willing to be afraid of them or to feel that is what people will see in me. If it is, that would be a perception I have no control over… but it would also be an incorrect one. To try and avoid mistakes is like walking on a landmine. If I had avoided the mistakes of my past I would not have become the person I am today.

I suppose the difference today is in learning that I am not willing to allow others to define my character. It is a rising in personal strength and a reminder that I am a hell of a lot better and stronger than I have given myself credit for in the past. I know who I am, I know my motives and intentions. I am absolutely comfortable with it all.

Be Happy. Be Well. Be.