First Section of Spark The Flame. Reminder that this is your Life.
“Be CONFIDENT for God created you to Experience Life with all its ups and downs. And every courageous move on your part will be matched with an equally successful result. Even though it may not seem that way. Love you so very much.”
-Zoraida Diaz
I found this poem tonight. I had written it on 4/4/2013 at 1am. This was a poem I wrote to myself; I was realizing and learning how I needed to feel love, instead of just logically knowing that I was loved. At the time I was referring to romantic love. Now I can probably expand this beyond that:
A Poem for Love for Me
It is not enough for me to know I
am loved, I need to Feel it.
I need to feel I am loved.
A week ago I realized a baby portrait of
mine has had barbed wire attached to
it all these years, literally. I could
not hold the portrait tight. I could
not hold it right.
Then I realized, that baby needs to be
held, not looked at. Not put somewhere
to be looked at. He
needs to be held.
And that is me. And it is a daily occurrence,
daily need. I need to feel it
everyday. Anything else is not enough.
Because When I don’t, I shrivel up and recoil,
and get cold and bitter. I cant live like
that.
I need to grow and open my heart,
open up, and bloom. I’ve come too
far, I must
continue opening and growing
I May forget these details, but my heart
will not. My heart knows
that it needs Love it can feel.
My heart will not let me
stay with anything else.
-Dr. Orlando Fernandez
The world belongs to optimists.
That’s all you have to say.
Just keep your eyes on those blue skies
And you will find the way…
To climb the mountain of success-
Now here’s the magic key:
That while you earn, you have to learn
To help humanity.
-Dr. Robert Kavesh (recently deceased)
No matter what, know that things can get better.
No matter where you are. Or what is going on. Regardless of the impacts of the past, the future can be very unpredictable.
No matter what we think is going to happen, or how we believe things will turn out, we don’t consciously know it all. We don’t know the details. And so often, wild, crazy things have entered into Life to be a part of reality.
Keep positive. Keep open. And definitely, please, stay real.
Keeping positive doesn’t mean denying the truth of the moment. Positivity that can spark change is about accepting the truth of the moment, being a “Yes” to it, with humility, love, connection, and optimism. Imagine the number of people who have done the worst things, and then turned their lives around. Imagine the many miracles people have experienced with seemingly no rhyme or reason, but which have been saving graces in their lives?
Keep positive my friends. Real to your self, your core, your Soul. And yet, positive. Loving. Accepting. Forgiving. Loving. Loving. Loving.
Blessings to you and yours. And all. One Love.
I have been struggling off and on with feeling meaning. It comes in waves. It’s difficult to define how long this last one was, I think it was on and off for almost a year. It was more on struggle this autumn until a few weeks ago.
I think there were a combination of things that helped alleviate it. My mom helped me paint to a much brighter color in my living room and bedroom. And she shared with me a meditation which put me in a purer state of Presence when listening to it. These things helped a lot.
One of the greatest contributions to my sustaining more meaning in these recent weeks is drastically reducing the noise that my brain listens to. I live by myself, and during my free time I’m normally listening to news, sports content, talks, etc. When I cut out all those things and just sat quiet while eating, while cleaning, while brushing my teeth, etc., I was in effect spending more time with a part of my self.
While I care about what’s happening in the world, possibly the greatest meaning is found within my self. Or at least, it was a huge factor that was not getting any attention to Be, and be Present, and quiet. Quiet so that I can discern and feel the meaning that exists in the fabric of the moment.
I feel a lot better now, having cut out a significant amount of distractions from my free time. I automatically sense more meaning in the moment.
The Door is within.
What the heck does that mean?
I feel like, whatever it is I’m looking for, asking for, wanting…, the access is inside.
It’s not like I need to search and find the door, the “thing”, somewhere out there. Maybe something specific, sure it is physically outside of your body. But as if it does not arrive in your path unless you have opened the door inside you. And that door is arrived as a vibration of your mind, your emotion, your being.
Imagine if you vibrate at certain levels, you actually see different things that exist on those levels. In this case, your own vibration is the door you are looking for to bring that which you want to you.
Now whether or not that thing is a good thing, is a different story, and one I might as well get to here : )
I say, shoot for health. Or meaning.
My uncle is about to pass away. He battled many things, one of which is addiction. I love him dearly.
My grandma passed away in late June. She raised me.
There was a challenging, yet beautiful connection between my grandma and my uncle (mom and son). I think they needed each other in some ways.
Love you both. I am glad my heart feels your loss…it will be a way to connect with you.
The best security we have is in who we decide to be, who our relationships are, and our faith in the higher power.
Allowing / Appreciating versus Pulling / Feeding:
If I find myself energetically feeding on someone, whether feeding through their body or some other way, and I tell myself and get myself to stop, I find that it equates to a change from taking to allowing. And inevitably that allowing transforms into or invites my appreciation.
So that got me thinking: if I did more appreciating of how things turn out and allowing instead of pulling, then I’d be more open to how Life wants to turn out, and I think I would be more aligned with the purpose and meaning of Life, which may be to: be surprised and enjoy it.
Right now, looks like I’m going through another identity shift or movement.
Im wondering whether I need to relax on myself, and my standards of discipline, a little, so that more joy enters my life.
I work really hard and diligently. My life is filled with beauty, love, blessings, and grace. Even with all these blessings, I have been missing a more consistent joy that I want. Even acknowledging that I want this joy, and having an idea of how to allow it (by relaxing more on my requirements and discipline), I feel better and more relaxed. Truly, I want to treat myself sweeter.💘💘
How do you appreciate something beyond being grateful? En-joy it. Live it. Liiiiiiiiiiive it.
This is an ancient concept: suffering is pain multiplied by resistance.
What this means is that the more we resist pain, the more suffering we endure.
The belief behind this is that pain in Life is inevitable. But suffering is an option.
Of course you can think of things you do to avoid unnecessary pain. But, what about necessary pain? It is in these times, when pain is necessary, that we need to allow it to work its purpose, or else we experience a suffering that comes from nonacceptance.
Short video from Meg LeFauve, writer/director for Pixar Animation Studios. Here she seamlessly weaves together faith, determination, belief, vulnerability, courage through fear, and other values, talking about her career.
“The opposite of belonging, from the research, is ‘fitting in.’ Fitting in is assessing, and acclimating. Here is what I should say, be. Here is what I shouldn’t say, here’s what I should avoid talking about. Here’s what I should dress like, look like. That’s fitting in.
Belonging, is belonging to yourself first. Speaking your truth, telling your story, and never betraying yourself for other people. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are. And that’s vulnerable.”
-Brené Brown
I love what Emily Esfahani Smith says. She is someone I can always count on, much like Brené Brown, to speak very authentically, with a powerful, conscious heart. Emily Esfahani Smith is a researcher and author. The findings that she speaks about are much of what I have noticed in my own explorations and trials and tribulations of experiencing meaning in life. I am grateful also for the interviewer who goes in rapid pace to ensure that Emily covers a lot of ground in useful depth of her knowledge in this area. I truly hope you enjoy this amazing interview.
“I feel like I belong everywhere I go, no matter where it is or who I’m with, as long as I never betray myself. And the minute I become who you want me to be, in order to fit in and make sure people like me, is the moment I no longer belong anywhere. And that is hard. I mean that’s a hard practice, that’s an everyday practice.”
-Brene Brown
Even where there is fear, it doesnt mean we wont overcome. That is where courage lives.
Just wanted to share, that it seems like I will be required to be mostly straightedge. Maybe a little portion of a hookah every once in a blue might be ok, but even that I dont know.
Looks like this leaves me with tea and hot sauce 🙂
I ran into this very nice talk, and included some great quotes below:
“…for a life to be meaningful, you cant keep looking at the life. You have to see how that life is placed in larger, broader context.”
“…a life that is rich in happiness and rich in meaning….theologian Frederick Buechner I think would label that: finding your calling.”
“Your calling, Buechner says, is that place where your deep gladness, and the world’s deep hunger, meets. Your deep gladness is about you, about what makes you engaged and alive.”
“Finding your calling is discovering what it is that makes you feel alive. And then taking those gifts and skills and moving them out into the world to feed the world’s hunger.”
“…the tension we feel between what we want and what the world needs, is in fact something we don’t want to eliminate, but instead we want to encourage and cultivate.”
“When the world pushes and presses and prods and occasionally pummels you, it is in those moments that you can begin to imagine something different. You need the world and all its adversity, just as desperately as the world needs you.”
“To lead a happy and meaningful life, is to understand the tension that exists between what we want and what the world needs, and to recognize that tension as the gift that it is.”
-Mark Hébert
“Happiness comes and goes. But when life is really good and when things are really bad, having meaning gives you something to hold on to.”
Emily Esfahani Smith
Open,
OPEN,
OPEN UP to the Beautiful Life I have Now.