Forgiveness

Perhaps one of the most difficult things we will ever do in life is forgive ourself. Sometimes we hurt ourselves, make bad decisions and virtually harm our own lives for the simple lack of our own ability to forgive ourself.

It's not an easy thing to get past. We have to first recognize it to begin with and the pain of it all can force you to keep it buried for years or even a lifetime. No matter how deeply you bury it though it will not prevent it from hurting you further. No it's pretty much guaranteed that if you bury and hold onto it it will in fact hurt you very much and over and over again until you dig it up and deal with it. It's that simple and just that complicated.

We often find it much easier to forgive other people then we do to forgive ourselves. Isn't it ironic that we find it much easier to live a life of self punishment rather than face our own demons and finally forgive ourselves.

If you want to fix your life. If there are holes; if there is pain; if you know you keep making the same mistakes over and over, perhaps in different ways but perhaps similar. Then it's time to dig up what's inside of you. It's time to forgive yourself for you are human. You are not perfect. You have made mistakes. We all have. It is time to let it all go and forgive yourself. Then and only then can you really move on in your life and grasp the life you secretly envision for yourself.

Walk with me today. Give me your hand and let us walk down this road together and ask ourselves for the forgiveness we desperately seek in the depths of our beings. Walk with me today and be free to live the life you desire.

Why is love so painful?

Osho:

Love is painful because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms; love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new. The old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. You will be moving in an uncharted ocean. You cannot use your mind with the new; with the old, the mind is skillful. The mind can function only with the old; with the new, the mind is utterly useless.

Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he will try for the first time to be on the wing.

The fear of the unknown, and the security of the known, the insecurity of the unknown, the unpredictability of the unknown, makes one very much frightened.

And because the transformation is going to be from the self towards a state of no-self, agony is very deep. But you Cannot have ecstasy without going through agony. If the gold wants to be purified, it has to pass through fire.

Love is fire.

It is because of the pain of love, millions of people live a loveless life. They too suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative; it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste; it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle.

The man who is without love is narcissistic, he is closed. He knows only himself. And how much can he know himself if he has not known the other, because only the other can function as a mirror? You will never know yourself without knowing the other. Love is very fundamental for self-knowledge too. The person who has not known the other in deep love, in intense passion, in utter ecstasy, will not be able to know who he is, because he will not have the mirror to see his own reflection.

Relationship is a mirror, and the purer the love is, the higher the love is, the better the mirror, the cleaner the mirror. But the higher love needs that you should be open. The higher love needs you to be vulnerable. You have to drop your armor; that is painful. You have not to be constantly on guard. You have to drop the calculating mind. You have to risk. You have to live dangerously. The other can hurt you; that is the fear in being vulnerable. The other can reject you; that is the fear in being in love.

The reflection that you will find in the other of your own self may be ugly; that is the anxiety. Avoid the mirror. But by avoiding the mirror you are not going to become beautiful. By avoiding the situation you are not going to grow either. The challenge has to be taken.

One has to go into love. That is the first step towards God, and it cannot be bypassed. Those who try to bypass the step of love will never reach God. That is absolutely necessary because you become aware of your totality only when you are provoked by the presence of the other, when your presence is enhanced by the presence of the other, when you are brought out of your narcissistic, closed world under the open sky.

Love is an open sky. To be in love is to be on the wing. But certainly, the unbounded sky creates fear.

And to drop the ego is very painful because we have been taught to cultivate the ego. We think the ego is our only treasure. We have been protecting it, we have been decorating it, we have been continuously polishing it, and when love knocks on the door, all that is needed to fall in love is to put aside the ego; certainly it is painful. It is your whole life's work, it is all that you have created -- this ugly ego, this idea that "I am separate from existence. "

This idea is ugly because it is untrue. This idea is illusory, but our society exists, is based on this idea that each person is a person, not a presence.

The truth is that there is no person at all in the world; there is only presence. You are not -- not as an ego, separate from the whole. You are part of the whole. The whole penetrates you, the whole breathes in you, pulsates in you, the whole is your life.

Love gives you the first experience of being in tune with something that is not your ego. Love gives you the first lesson that you can fall into harmony with someone who has never been part of your ego. If you can be in harmony with a woman, if you can be in harmony with a friend, with a man, if you can be in harmony with your child or with your mother, why can't you be in harmony with all human beings? And if to be in harmony with a single person gives such joy, what will be the outcome if you are in harmony with all human beings? And if you can be in harmony with all human beings, why can't you be in harmony with animals and birds and trees? Then one step leads to another.

Love is a ladder. It starts with one person, it ends with the totality. Love is the beginning, God is the end. To be afraid of love, to be afraid of the growing pains of love, is to remain enclosed in a dark cell.

Modern man is living in a dark cell; it is narcissistic. Narcissism is the greatest obsession of the modern mind.

And then there are problems, problems which are meaningless. There are problems which are creative because they lead you to higher awareness. There are problems which lead you nowhere; they simply keep you tethered, they simply keep you in your old mess.

Love creates problems. You can avoid those problems by avoiding love. But those are very essential problems! They have to be faced, encountered; they have to be lived and gone through and gone beyond. And to go beyond, the way is through. Love is the only real thing worth doing. All else is secondary. If it helps love, it is good. All else is just a means, love is the end. So whatsoever the pain, go into love.

If you don't go into love, as many people have decided, then you are stuck with yourself. Then your life is not a pilgrimage, then your life is not a river going to the ocean; your life is a stagnant pool, dirty, and soon there will be nothing but dirt and mud. To keep clean, one needs to keep flowing. A river remains clean because it goes on flowing. Flow is the process of remaining continuously virgin.

A lover remains a virgin. All lovers are virgin. The people who don't love cannot remain virgin; they become dormant, stagnant; they start stinking sooner or later -- and sooner than later -- because they have nowhere to go. Their life is dead.

That's where modern man finds himself, and because of this, all kinds of neuroses, all kinds of madnesses, have become rampant. Psychological illness has taken epidemic proportions. It is no more that a few individuals are psychologically ill; the reality is the whole earth has become a madhouse. The whole of humanity is suffering from a kind of neurosis.

And that neurosis is coming from your narcissistic stagnancy. Everyone is stuck with one's own illusion of having a separate self; then people go mad. And this madness is meaningless, unproductive, uncreative. Or people start committing suicide. Those suicides are also unproductive, uncreative.

You may not commit suicide by taking poison or jumping from a cliff or by shooting yourself, but you can commit a suicide which is a very slow process, and that's what happens. Very few people commit suicide suddenly. Others have decided for a slow suicide; gradually, slowly, slowly they die. But almost, the tendency to be suicidal has become universal.

This is no way to live, and the reason, the fundamental reason, is we have forgotten the language of love. We are no more courageous enough to go into that adventure called love.

Hence people are interested in sex, because sex is not risky. It is momentary, you don't get involved. Love is involvement; it is commitment. It is not momentary. Once it takes roots, it can be forever. It can be a lifelong involvement. Love needs intimacy, and only when you are intimate does the other become a mirror. When you meet sexually with a woman or a man, you have not met at all; in fact, you avoided the soul of the other person. You just used the body and escaped, and the other used your body and escaped. You never became intimate enough to reveal each other's original faces.

Love is the greatest Zen koan.

It is painful, but don't avoid it. If you avoid it you have avoided the greatest opportunity to grow. Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is agony, but out of the agony, ecstasy is born. Yes, you will have to die as an ego, but if you can die as an ego, you will be born as God, as a Buddha. And love will give you the first tongue-tip-taste of Tao, of Sufism, of Zen. Love will give you the first proof that God is, that life is not meaningless.

The people who say life is meaningless are the people who have not known love. All that they are saying is that their life has missed love.

Let there be pain, let there be suffering. Go through the dark night, and you will reach to a beautiful sunrise. It is only in the womb of the dark night that the sun evolves. It is only through the dark night that the morning comes.

My whole approach here is that of love. I teach only love and only love and nothing else. You can forget about God; that is just an empty word. You can forget about prayers because they are only rituals imposed by others on you. Love is the natural prayer, not imposed by anybody. You are born with it. Love is the true God -- not the God of theologians, but the God of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the God of the Sufis. Love is a tariqa, a method, to kill you as a separate individual and to help you become the infinite. Disappear as a dewdrop and become the ocean, but you will have to pass through the door of love.

And certainly when one starts disappearing like a dewdrop, and one has lived long as a dewdrop, it hurts, because one has been thinking, "I am this, and now this is going. I am dying. " You are not dying, but only an illusion is dying. You have become identified with the illusion, true, but the illusion is still an illusion. And only when the illusion is gone will you be able to see who you are. And that revelation brings you to the ultimate peak of joy, bliss, celebration.

Osho, The Secret

An excerpt from my book... a few quotes

Perhaps if we were less concerned about others learning a lesson,
We would remember that we are ALSO the student. ~ Katrina Mayer's Wholarian Vision

‎"When you make personal investments in others,
you might not be the one to reap the returns.
You don't invest to receive; you invest to give."
|Scott Carbonara|

Accept everything about yourself--I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end--no apologies, no regrets.
Clark Moustakas

‎"When you know yourself you are empowered. When you accept yourself you are invincible." – Lifford

When you look in the mirror you see yesterday, for yesterday’s thoughts brought you today’s results. If your not happy with what you see reexamine your thinking. The first step to a better future is better thoughts. Your life is whatever you are thinking & whatever you are thinking eventually you will see in the mirror.

You were born an original masterpiece...don't die a copy of someone else.

Life IS good! Life IS so easy! All good things COME to ME!!! I deserve ALL good things life has to offer! -The Secret

Nothing is impossible...the word its self says "I'm possible"

Remember, if you feel like you are going the wrong direction in your life, God does allow U-turns.

I'm Smiling. why? Because I have my health ,my family, a wise head, a good heart, an honest mouth, a clear conscience and a cloud in heaven reserved for me.

The difference between a successful person and others is not lack strength, not lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will. Vince Lombardi

Be still in yourself and listen with your whole heart....

‎"I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains."
~ Anne Frank

When you come to a wall, you can either climb it, or you can simply walk around until you find a door. Don't make life so hard, - look for the doors!

We're all connected. It isn't us and them. Everything is all connected. We are all one energy. We share in everything. So let us share in positive energy.

We owe nobody nothing but love, Just love, Sweet love, straight from the heart.... ~Etana

‎"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes. "
~ Charles Swindoll

My Grateful Heart

And to think all I had to do was read a book.

Yes it was that simple. Well, I read two books. One titled Lord, I Believe written by Jim Ayers, the second was The Secret written by Rhonda Byrne (both available on Amazon.com). Both taught me alot. How to be true to myself and my higher power. How to think and focus all my positive energy to make good things happen in my life. How to believe in myself that I could indeed have things and do things without being completely unsatisfied in my life.

I live a happy life now because I also learned to be grateful. A grateful heart carries so much power. If you enjoy what you already have than you will immediately be blessed with more because you appreciate it. It's much like a relationship. You give love and get love back. It works much like that in the Universe. If you give you shall receive ten fold. I learned to give, but never expected to receive. If you EXPECT to receive and you are only giving TO receive then of course it won't work. You have to be true to your heart first. Do what your heart tells you to do.

These days people do what their head tells them which soon leads to unhappiness, negativity, and a bad attitude. Attitude is also a big deal. Which comes from thinking positive. I try everyday to wake up and smile first thing and immediately be grateful I am here one more day. I love waking up in the morning with a fresh new start to show the world new and exciting things I have read, or seen, or heard.

I am happy in my own life. I may not have alot and I may be a single mom barely making ends meet, but I am truly happy in my life. Why? Because I have a grateful heart and things happen to fall into place as I need them to.

Have an Attitude of Gratitude and you will get far...

Intro

Now you have seen an original poetic piece from me. I am sure you would like to know a bit about me and how I got to be all about positive living. It all started in September 2010 when I turned 30 and realized that now I am "officially" an adult as my Mom put it. I have made it through the scary learning 20's and have thought I knew it all at times and never really knowing anything. Being a single Mom, and working harder then anyone I knew just to keep afloat. I felt that I had to do SOMETHING to change the mess I was in. I then realized I needed more than just my job and my son. I started dating again, but even that turned out badly. Before we split he had introduced me into a wonderful church and invited me into his life of AA and they all welcome me with open arms. I still love them and always will but I really can't say if I needed the steps but I do know the concept of AA can be for ANY issue you have in your life. I feel that even though I wasn't addicted to alcohol I was addicted to negativity and self loathing.

Soon after he and I split put more effort into thinking positively and having a grateful heart. I found that my life completely turned around just by thinking positively and being thankful for what I have. Knowing God would provide for me the things I needed and would open doors to help me make something better for myself.

The last few months I have spent finding myself with a pure heart and soul. I decided clearing ALL negative things, people, everything, out of my life would be the start I needed. I have found that sharing my inspirations and seeing how they make others so much happier that maybe I could continue on helping at least one person a day. I was lead to a page on Facebook by a friend who is also in AA and this page is made mostly for recovery from whatever you needed. I read their words and it touched my soul so deeply that I HAD to spread that same joy. I started posting it on my personal page, against the annoyed friends wishes, LOL. I decided in early March 2011 that I should make my own inspirational page that I could share with more than just my personal friends.

So Positive Inspirations was born. And now here I am with the same in a blog for more lengthy inspirations. I hope that you all enjoy this and that these words are able to help you in reading them as it helps me to write them. You all help me as much as I help you by commenting and sharing in your own experiences. So please, share this with everyone you know. You never know whose life you will save by just a few encouraging words.

For Today...

For today,

I will be grateful in my soul for what I have been given

I will be grateful in my heart for the beat and rhythm

I will be grateful in my mind for thoughts that make it run

I will be grateful in my voice and all that makes me hum

For today,

I will put others first and love them all

I will help others up from far and helpless falls

I will make others see the light and know what lies ahead

I will show others the peaceful walk and how to clear their head

For today,

I will stand with feet rooted

I will stand with shoulders squared

I will stand with arms stretched upward

I will stand prepared