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Print it, or put it on your desktop as a reminder to focus on a given part of your Life. Remember, there is no pressure to evolve. We make steps, big or small as we are inspired to do. Just do not underestimate your ability to make powerful changes in your life. Never make that mistake.
PRIORITIZE MY BODY.
Physical Health and Self Esteem.
Our bodies are our temples. The most important aspect of our lives. Even our spiritual nature and well being are governed ultimately by our physical health. Everyone has a different relationship to their health. What keeps many people from truly taking care of themselves is that they compare themselves to others. They think health is time in the gym and six pack abs. Throw that out the door. Our goal here is simply to do things that help us to heal, feel energized, and keep from habits that are slowly or quickly destroying our selves. It is also to love every cell in our body without needing anyones else’s permission to do so
What is our best practices differs from one person to the next. For one person that may be a daily walk around the neighborhood and a little shift in diet, cutting down sugar intake and eating more veggies. For another it might be a membership at a climbing gym and an intensive cleansing diet. So step one is to know who you are. If you are athletic you know. If you are not athletic that is not a problem. But you still need to find joy in taking care of yourself, allowing your body and your organs to be nourished and serve your well being and happiness. 5 minutes of stretching a day. 5 minutes of calm breathing. Setting up a diet plan that does not have to be too strict, after all, we do not want to go on a rollercoaster ride. We want to find things we can continue to do. If you know you have been lazy in regards to your physical health, this is your image.
What else? Do things you love. Eat healthy foods you love. Walk, hike, ride a bicycle, find an exercise you love and just do it to move your blood around and get some oxygen flowing. Give your self time to come with a plan that suits you and your disposition. Maybe you are athletic and always wanted to run a marathon. You have always wanted to push your self just to prove you can do something. Or perhaps you are athletic and need to focus on avoiding injury and addressing long term health. Many athletic people wind up in poor health when they get older, the most important time to be healthy. We think health is for the young who can use it. This is a dangerous road. Is this us? You can figure out a way to improve your physical health. You have many options. When you see this image it is to remind you that your body is a temple. And it is never too late or too soon to figure out how to be nicer to your body.
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PAY ATTENTION TO MY MIND.
This image is meant to remind us how precious our mind is. At the end of the day it is really just another organ. It is just that, because we perceive through our brain, pain and pleasure, our emotions, not to mention all of our senses, we tend to have a very challenging relationship to our brains We start to think we are all the chaos that is traveling through them. The core of healing this relationship lies in our ability to nourish calm and feed our brains with positive things.It is separating our selves from all the thoughts that can go through our minds It is taking time to look in the mirror and realize that our mind is not us, it is just a part of us. We do not have to take everything it throws at us seriously. We need to learn to separate our selves from the banter of our mind, the source of all of our doubts, fears and blindness. Meditation is key here, but we have many ways we can meditate. Anything that we do that slows us down, focus on breathing and stop thinking so much is a meditation. If you like aggressive music, find some calming music without lyrics. Listen on your headphones while you are cooking or working in the garden.
Study your mind. Our greatest suffering lies in the attachment we have to all of our thoughts, often driven by the past. If you are busy minded in a way that is just annoying to your soul, it is time to pay attention to your mind, to allow the wisdom of your soul to take priority. Again, we are just prioritizing things here. There is no need to rush into an overnight mastery of our mind. This is a lifetime of work. We just want dedicated to developing long term practices over time, so we take first steps, things that can lead us to best practices that suit our personal nature and lifestyle. It is never too soon to pay attention to the health of our mind, Our mind like our body is a thing of habits. The longer we allow unhealthy habits the more challenging they can seem to be to address. Our minds are masters of convincing us this. What is our soul telling us?
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FOCUS ON MY HEART.
To put our attention on our heart is not necessarily about love. Although that is not entirely true. When our heart is healthy love will find its way in. So. this image is really one of healing and of educating the heart. It asks what is a healthy heart? The heart, as we all know, needs education. It needs to know how to prevail in world that can be so kind and selfless one minute, and so cruel and selfish the next. We want to believe love is the answer. It is, in a way, but only part of that answer. If we fail to accept this, Our heart swill always falter and leave us bitter as to the ways of love.
At some point in life we need to dedicate a portion of that life to addressing what is really love and what is a healthy and wise heart. This does not come by default. We need to put aside our past notions, feel what we are feeling, however joyful or bitter that may be, and just spend some me time with our our hearts. Perhaps it could be said that our masters degrees in life lie in our hearts. Sure they do. We earn them outside of our hearts, but the degree arrives when our most profound wisdom settles into our hearts. We should all know there is no limit to the love or pain our hearts can feel. If you do not agree, just give it some time. The pain a heart can feel cannot be measured as is true for the love that can fill it. The spoiler is that our hearts cannot hang on to anything. They do not have arms or hands to grab with and there is a reason for this. Our minds are grabbers, fueled by fear and addiction, but our minds can’t really hang on to anything either. Not endlessly. This is the beginning of understanding our hearts.
To truly understand our heart, we must take a spiritual perspective or we will suffer for it. There, I said it. You have to understand a spiritual from of love or your heart will always let you down. No one can endlessly fulfill your heart without letting you down, and you cannot endlessly fill someone else heart without letting them down at some point in some way. This is not failure. It is called being human. In this image you will see a lotus, the symbol of spiritual becoming. My personal guru has a meditation that he uses all the time, in which we breathe and imagine this lotus opening and closing in the heart. The importance of this is that we think a healthy heart is an open heart, but this is not true. It is wise for the heart to also close. Not to go cold and slam shut. But to respond wisely to life, as well as our need to heal, strengthen and assimilate the lesson fo our life. We should not rush to force wisdom on our hearts nor be ashamed if our hearts are closed, healing or perhaps waiting to unfold. Our hearts are tied to our souls more than any other part of us, and our souls are wise, unlike our foolish, often selfish minds.
When we look at this image we need to take a deep breathe say, it is going to be okay. Your heart is the busiest thing in your body. It gets no rest. You rely on it more than anything else, if it shuts down that is game over. Even your mind gets more rest than your heart. Yet somehow, through the joy and pain of it all, it keeps going. Our job is to bring wisdom to our hearts. We owe our hearts that, so they do not have to carry the burden of excessive pain along with everything else they need to do for us. Most people have no idea the amount of love that can be felt in their hearts just by being still and allowing unconditional love to enter. It crushes everything we think about love. It almost seems unfair to feel unconditional love for no reason at all. Who are we to feel and accept such a thing? We are wise, that is what we are, to accept such a thing. We choose to no longer play the fool, the game that the only love that can heal us must come from someone else. That is just a game we play, and yes, a game we are taught. Wisdom, fulfillment, requires we re educate ourselves. This is a commitment to find and embrace self love. Self love is warm and beautiful and inspiring. There is not an ounce of loneliness in it, nor any burden on anyone or our selves. It is worth whatever time it takes, whatever lessons we must learn. This love is wise beyond words and nourishes branches that create true friendships and meaningful purpose.
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SIMPLIFY MY APPROACH TO LIFE.
Life gets complicated for us all. The question is what is life complicating and what complications are we adding to the mix just to say, look at me! I can complicate things too! I have a masters degree in personal complication. Why? Because a part of me loves difficulty, and when things don’t feel difficult enough, my tendency is to make them more difficult. This has given me a sort of strength and resilience for managing complexity and yet, in age, this starts to backfire. Maturity does not like unnecessary wasted energy. Nor do our soul, or life for that matter. What are you doing? This is what life asks us. Our soul is always in tune with life, even if our state of mind is not. This image reminds us to simplify. Get rid of clutter. Get rid of the things we do not need. If you look at this image, you will see several figures in the background. These represent all the various parts of us that can be running around, coming and going through hour heads as we navigate the complexities of our emotions and the world around us. In the center, a clear and simple soul. This is the true us, regardless of what madness is running around or what complexities we are creating in order to make life interesting. Complicating life can become an addiction. Trust me. I know. And that addiction, like all others, can be easily validated by all the other people doing the same. Simplicity, my friends, is a gift we must eventually give our selves. Life will always be more complicated then we would like, but we need to remind our selves the best of us needs little, is the simplest of things, and that is okay to honor this part of our self even if we need to get up in the morning and navigate a complex world.
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MASTER MY ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE.
I was in my mid twenties when I first travelled abroad. I spent my youth as a very amiable guy, adept at getting a laugh or endearing others as needed. It was, and still is, an honest extension of who I am. However, it wasn’t until I was in a place where I could not use my speech and language to connect to others that I realized how much I relied on my communication as a means for approval. At first, it was incredibly uncomfortable, but after a few days I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. The burden aspect of speaking left. Suddenly, I was able to really listen, even if that meant not understanding what others were saying. I was reading facial expressions and moods, enjoying the non verbal communication and picking up what I could and discovering that people did not need me to entertain them. Just being a calm presence makes just about anyone a welcome addition to anywhere.
We live in a culture that trains us to talk, often too much. Silence is awkward, that is what we are trained to feel. How did this happen? We watch movies and shows where the center of attention is often someone blabbing away, and everyone is competing for that moment to be heard, to express their character, even if that is annoying. Here is the thing, once again, we have two opposing issues. The first is the quiet one who never speaks their mind, to the point of compromising their empowerment. There is a wisdom to quietness, yet we all know that people can leverage that to disempower others. If that is us we need to start practicing the art of being honest and forthright in conversations without getting emotional about it. Quiet people often feel reactionary when they speak up. It is a big moment for them. This is often just a lack of comfort, a lack of familiarity with being forward. So, perhaps this is alarm for those who need to speak their mind more, who need to learn to be comfortable being calm, articulate, yet honest. I know I struggled with this as I came from a family in which both of my parents took over conversations. It was pointless to speak as that was always met with some argument or competition for self importance. Any verbal challenge was an offense not to be tolerated. I learned to stay quiet, out of trouble. Very common.
On the other side of things we have those who talk too much. Hey its me! I’m talking! Listen to me! The problem with this is aging. When we are young we all rant on about this or that. As we age, it all becomes too much for others. Our energy, including the energy it takes to listen becomes too precious. Loud people get bitter because no one wants to listen to them anymore, but they fail to see the chore it always was to do so and that people start to separate themselves from those who are verbally demanding because it is too exhausting to pay attention. Is it time to become better listener? It is time to address the work it takes others to listen to us? I have come to enjoy the company of people who speak as needed and have no problem with not conversing at all. This is nourishes wisdom. It destroys the need to seek approval or gain unnecessary attention through communicating. Rewiring our speech can be an extremely emotional thing, forcing us to address our past, how we grew up and our sense of what others owe us or we owe them. All these things lie in our speech. Every nuance, for better or worse, of who we are lies iin the things we do, or do not say, even the tone and volume of our voice. Everyone, repeat, everyone should take a window of time in their life and examine how they communicate. It is one of the most powerful ways to rewire how you think, how you engage, and how the world responds to you and even rewards you for who you are.
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HEAL THE PAST.
We all know this one too well. The past tugs on us all. It is just a thing it does. Sometimes it is just like a mosquito flying around that we are endlessly trying to swat away. This is again, a very human state of affairs. It is a fine art of life to know when to ignore this part of us that wants to live in the past, when to give it some attention, perhaps some love, or perhaps swat in the face, and when to perhaps retreat and do a deep dive as to what is really going on and how do we settle something in us that refuses to respond to our inner mosquito swatter. We have to recognize, it is human nature to define ourselves by the past. It is also human nature to attempt to protect our selves from the traumas of the past by hanging on to pain, perhaps recreating those traumas inside, or outside of our minds.
What we see in the image is the best of us heading forward in life toward our potential. And yet there is also our shadow self heading to the past, lost in some memory, traumatic experience, fear, or unresolved aspect of our nature. There is a small shadow figure on a dark lotus. The dark lotus represents that nothing in the past is living. Regardless of how vivid our memory, it is only a memory. What is past is gone. And yet there is glow around the figure. This is because this unresolved part of us is taking our energy away. That is when we know we need to give the past its proper attention. We do this to move on. That is the goal. The past provides us with room and board for an endless stay if we should choose to do so. It will always be there, and it will always be the same past with the same result. The future guarantees nothing which is a perfect excuse to extend our stay in the past. Rest assured whatever gnaws at you from the past will own you until you come to terms with it and re invent your relationship to it. This not only messes with our mental health, it can eventually wreak havoc on our physical health.
This image is a permission image. One of the challenges of facing the past is how weak we can feel in the face of our past traumas. What a puppet to our emotions we can feel like. It can feel almost shameful as to what we can hold on to and how challenging it can be to just let go. Again, standard human affairs. It can be hard to trust in what is ahead of us, in the notion that we can heal, overcome, and become something much more at peace than we ever imagined. Sometimes we need to return to something in the past just to properly flip it the big finger, a resounding, I am done with you. For this to work, we need to also let go of the anger, sadness, or fear that comes with these things. When we look at this image we need to say to our selves, let’s get past this, but let’s do what we need to do to achieve that.
We need to remind our selves that whatever may be lurking in our past sucking the life out of us is something that millions of others have also face,d no matter how ugly it may seem. Blame has a shelf life. Self punishment as well. Sometimes we need to go somewhere we we can feel weak to heal deep wounds. I am a fan of the ocean for this purpose. Weakness is never addressed by dumping that on anyone else. This is an ownership issue, if we want to heal. Our greatest evolution only comes through learning how to address this critical aspect of all of our self healing processes. I can tell you at 60 years old, it is a tremendous challenge to build best practices in dealing with this part of our nature. All of our cruelest inner beasts feed from the misgivings of our pasts, as much as they do anything, which is why it is critical to spend some time here. Yes, we all need to pony up and get on with life regardless of our pasts, but we will have times when our souls will not allow us to proceed until we do some serious deep healing. The art of self repair is the greatest art we will ever learn and it is no easy feat, yet it is critical to our well being. Okay, past, what is your dealio? Let’s do this. Time to pull some weeds. That is all it is. Weeds.
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OVERCOME MY FEAR OF THE WORLD.
Empower my ability to navigate life wisely.
I am a spiritual person, whatever that means. Yet I fully understand that all rewarding lives are achieved in the practical, physical world. Many people do a lot of work on the inside and yet they struggle endlessly with the outside world. Indeed the world gives us many unavoidable struggles. Add to this the notion that freedom is not a familiar thing for our lineages. All of our roots end up somewhere where we must do what we are told to do or meet a fate that is not so welcome. The world is not our business, that is where we come from. It is the business of those who have the power and positions to navigate the world. The question this image asks us is, is there something in life we are failing to achieve, or perhaps just understand, because we are afraid to investigate the systems of the world and how they apply to our visions? We see 3 worlds. To the left, a shadow world of all things that exist that we can fear if we choose. On the right, a world of possibility, perhaps a world of unrealistic fantasies. In the middle we stand being open, seeking to discover the inspiration, motivation, and wisdom to navigate the world as it is. Beneath we see waves, there to remind us that the ability to adapt to change must go hand in hand with whatever wisdom we discover and follow.
The world is humbling. To investigate the world and how it truly works is to swallow that jagged little pill. And yet if we are to leverage any freedom we may have, it demands we be fearless in understanding and navigating the bittersweet nature of the world, its systems and politics, its rites of passage, as well as the various forms of deception and misdirection that we are fed on any rewarding path. When we look at the world, do we say, let’s do this! Let’s go! Or do we say, no thank you. Not a fan. I’ll leave that for someone else. And of these answers, does the answer we choose serve us wisely?
Is the world holding you back, or is it your fear of the world? What is important here is not that we have a Phd in geography or world politics. Our world wisdom is relative to our vision of where we want to, or need to go. How does the world operate relative to our nature and aspirations? Take your time. This is a thing, like so many things in life, that we get half way there from books and videos. The other half we can only get by jumping in. We are married to the world whether you realize it, accept it, or not. There is nothing we can accomplish that is rewarding without becoming ”world savvy”. Is it time to break down our fear of the greater world around us. Remember, there is a powerful reflection here as just as it is within us, it is far too easy to drum up fear, paranoia and excuses in regards to the world. We have a million reasons to fear the world outside as we do the world inside of us. Fear is never the wise option. To begin with fear, this is normal. We overcome by knowing ahead of time we are in for a bittersweet story. Do we want to live, or observe? This is always up yo us.
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HEAL MY RELATIONSHIP TO PEOPLE.
This image is meant to ring another alarm bell. We can go through life seeking to be popular or accepted. To the other extreme, we can seek to be the hermit, escaping the challenge of having to deal with others. There is a healthy and unhealthy way to go about anything. There is a healthy way to be a hermit. If we are lonely and butter, we are not a healthy hermit. We can have lots of friends, but if most of them are empowering an unhealthy version of our self, we need to address this. People offer our greatest rewards and challenges in life. They are our greatest allies and our greatest enemies, roadblocks. They are often mirrors to parts of our selves, other people make fantastic excuses for why we can’t do things, and other people can be the most powerful way for us to validate that we can never change, we stuck because this is what others are doing to us. Perhaps this aspect of life most separates those who find rewards from those who grow old and bitter. The secret to people lies in accountability. Who are we? Who are we choosing to surround our selves. Do we have realistic expectations of others? Any expectations of others? If we are growing increasingly bitter at those around us, it is time for a deep dive here. This may require a good counselor. It certainly requires the ear of someone who is not a complainer. Life is bittersweet. People are that same thing many times over. How do we choose to navigate that reality in a way that leaves us with a reason to be joyful and engage with others?
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