Step Outside to See the Soul Within

If you could step outside yourself and see you as your soul sees you, things would look a lot different. What you would see is the body, with a mind, consciousness, and a personality. But you, the observer, are the soul within — the soul that is the embodiment of lifetimes of experiences and knowledge, and not subject to the compulsions of this particular body. If you have read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, you understand this concept.

We are born with certain traits and certain experiences that shape our lives to some extent. But it is your soul that makes you you. It is the soul (or your conscience, if you prefer) that has the ability to override your impulses and prejudices that have been conditioned in you because of the person you were born and the experiences you have had.

We are here to overcome.

Overcome our prejudices, our painful life experiences, even, in some cases, overbearing parents who want us to live the lives they choose for us. We are here to overcome our human nature and live from the soul.

Life is about listening to our inner wisdom. About doing what we feel in our heart is right. About believing what we feel in our heart is right. About living in a way that we feel in our heart is right.

“Right” is different for everyone. We are all on a different path. We may all be going to the same place ultimately, but there are many ways to get there, and many experiences to have along the way.

If we could step outside ourselves to observe not only ourselves, but to see each other in the same way, as souls having a human experience with the particular bodies and life experiences we have chosen, we would be much less judgmental. We would be more understanding and compassionate. We would be more willing to forgive when someone gets lost in hatred and prejudice. Their soul’s knowledge is being overridden by their mind/body.

They have succumbed to the human experience in its worst form.

But don’t blame them.

We are here to experience this existence in all it has to offer. Every mistake, every step we take, is a learning experience for the soul. When we arrive on the other side, we review what our soul has learned. We look at the times we have overcome, and the times we have not. We look at the pain and damage we have caused to other souls on our life’s journey; and the pain other souls have caused us.

We can minimize this damage on both fronts if we simply try harder to understand, and to see ourselves as souls first, humans second. I try not to hurt others, though I know sometimes I do. But pain serves a purpose, both for us and for them, and sometimes it’s necessary for growth. All we can do is try to minimize the pain we inflict when it is in our power to do so.

When someone hurts me, I remind myself that they simply don’t know any better; that they are doing the best they can with who they are and what they know at the time. When I can keep this perspective in focus, it helps with my healing. They will have to figure this out for themselves (and maybe they will, maybe they won’t), but at least I can benefit from a higher understanding.

We are here to overcome. Listen to your conscience. It is your soul speaking.

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“Just a Minute”

“Just a minute.” How many times do we say this to our kids, only to return to whatever we were doing and forget about them? Guilty as charged. I don’t know how many times I have turned and said this to my son, only to return to the computer and completely forget he was waiting for me to listen to him.

He’s better about it now that he’s a bit older, and he even shows traces of patience that were lacking in his younger years. But he still feels neglected in the moment.

What are we teaching our kids?

That whatever is on the computer is more important than they are, when they are standing right in front of us? That we love our work more than we love them? That whatever they have to say is not as interesting as our emails or whatever is on YouTube?

Our children are the most important parts of our lives. They are our greatest responsibility. It’s our job to teach them that they matter. If you’ve seen the movie The Help or read the book, you know that the maid Aibileen makes her neglected little charge Mae Mobley repeat these words so that she never forgets: “You is kind, you is smart, you is important.”

It’s not the maid’s responsibility to teach our kids this. Nor is it the responsibility of the daycare provider, the teacher, the cub/girl scout leader, or our kids’ peers. It’s up to us, their parents, to make sure they know how valued they are. And one way to start is by not ignoring them when they deserve our attention.

It’s so easy to be distracted by the TV or computer or video game. But when cyberspace takes up more of our attention than our own kids do, then it’s time to make a change. Be in the moment with your kids. Make them feel important.

Today, make an effort to make time for your children. Turn off the computer or TV and give them your undivided attention. In these days of “multitask or die,” our attention is rarely undivided. Do something fun together. Play a board game. Play cards. Read a book together. It doesn’t matter what you do, just BE there for them.

It’s your job, and yours alone, to make sure your kids feel like they matter.

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Responsibility and the Next Generation

I ran into a friend at the grocery store (I’ll call him Dave) and we got to talking about our kids, who are in the same grade at school. Specifically, we started talking about responsibility and how times have changed. He noted that when he was 11 years old, he had a paper route and was responsible for going around and collecting over a hundred dollars every week from his customers and getting that money to the paper. When he was a little older, he worked at a store where he was given the key when the owner was away, was responsible for the cash register, and so on.

When I was young, I was the primary babysitter for a number of families in the neighborhood. I babysat for this particular family that had four children, the youngest a baby in diapers, the oldest probably seven at the most. The parents (who deserved the much-needed break) would stay out until midnight. I handled everything for those four children for the hours I was there. I had to be in my early to mid-teens when I babysat for them. I also got a job as soon as I could drive, and worked my way through college.

My son is 12, almost 13. He is an only child, so has never had babysitting experience. I tried getting him to cut the grass last year (just my own grass, not anyone else’s), but he didn’t do a very good job. He starts things, but he doesn’t finish them. Similarly, Dave described his daughter as “lazy,” saying she doesn’t want to do the work she needs to do, either schoolwork or otherwise. Similarly, my son will work on what interests him, but will tend to ignore the rest.

This is the future of America.

I can only assume that these kids will learn responsibility someday, maybe just later than Dave and I had to. We grew up in a different generation. In my case, my parents gave us food, clothes, and a roof over our heads, then left us to our own devices. I don’t recall them bending over backwards to take us places (we rode our bikes or walked), make sure we were happy, or even occupied. I do remember getting an allowance, but I learned responsibility because I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted something, I had to get it or do it myself. I learned to be independent, which has served me well in life.

Flash forward to today. My son is an only child, and admittedly, I spoil him, but I want to be involved in his life. I tell him I love him daily (and he rolls his eyes, but appreciates it anyway), I tell him how important he is to me, and, yes, I do bend over backwards sometimes to make sure he is happy, within reason. I want to be sure he never feels ignored or neglected, so it’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

But how will he learn responsibility? Gradually, I hope, without being thrown into the fire to learn it. Granted, he is learning it at a slower rate than my generation. But I believe he’ll get there. He is already showing signs of greater ownership.

This next generation is our legacy. It’s our responsibility to make sure they are responsible. I hear a lot of negative comments regarding Generations X and Y and how they feel entitled. Whether this reputation is deserved or not, they likely didn’t have to work so hard for the things they have. Nor has my son. But they are the future, so I have to believe they’ll figure it out at some point.

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The Power of Helping Others

I have always been self-sufficient until recently, so it’s been a strange and humbling experience lately to have friends offer to pay for me. I never asked for help, because I willingly put myself in my current financial situation when I left my well-paying job to be a freelance writer. I have made many adjustments in my life and in my spending as I build my business. I don’t get out much, and when I do, I go cheap. I can handle it, but what’s hardest is the effect of this change on my son. He misses going places, going out to eat, and going on vacations. The days of pizza delivery are a distant memory. And while I believe this situation is temporary, it’s still hard on both of us.

I have always been generous to my friends. If they didn’t have money and I did, I paid. If they needed something, I gave it to them. I did this because I could, not because I thought that one day I would need that generosity in return. But I have received that generosity in return. And the friends who have paid for drinks, meals, and movies are not necessarily the same friends I have paid for in the past. It’s gratifying to know that I have friends who truly care, and I am honored and blessed to have them in my life.

What goes around comes around. It’s about paying it forward and helping those in their hour of need. I have a friend who is doing what she can to help a family in need in Arkansas. They have no heat, no electricity, and have a 2-year-old granddaughter living with them in deplorable conditions.

It’s eminently true that no matter how bad things are for you, there is always someone who is worse off. Things may be tight for me right now, but at least I have a nice home and heat.

If you feel fortunate in your life, then consider giving to someone who is truly in need. It might be a friend, a neighbor, a family member, or a stranger. Find someone and pay it forward. You will benefit by learning to be generous and helpful and grateful for what you have; the person receiving learns to be humble and grateful for caring people; and the world becomes a better place.

To see more on the family in need in Arkansas, see http://www.4029tv.com/r-video/30210786/detail.html

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The Power of Forgiveness

Life is painful enough without creating more pain for ourselves. Although it is often difficult, one of the best things we can do for our mental and spiritual health is to let go of grudges and forgive.

By holding a grudge or giving someone the cold shoulder, we may think we are hurting the person we refuse to forgive, but in reality, the person we hurt most is ourselves. We internalize all that negativity. We feed upon it until it feeds upon us in the form of cancer or some other illness. We can literally make ourselves sick by wallowing in negativity.

Forgiveness is very healing, not just to the person we forgive, but more so to ourselves. Forgiveness washes away the hatred, the pain, and allows us to heal inside. By forgiving, we no longer internalize negativity. Our consciousness reaches a higher level, as does the energy we project, which emanates outward to all, and inward to ourselves.

When we forgive someone, we breathe a sigh of relief and feel like a weight is lifted from our shoulders. We feel lighter and more energized as the negativity is released and we fill up with the higher energy. We are happier.

When we can see each other as well-meaning souls within flawed human bodies, we begin to understand that our actions, even if hurtful, are based on the best we knew and the best we were at the time. This is based on our upbringing, personality, and level of spiritual awareness. But as we increase our spiritual awareness, we increase our understanding, which leads to compassion, which leads to forgiveness, which ultimately leads to healing. This is very powerful, and a very important evolution in our conscious awareness.

Holding a grudge is easy—but destructive. Letting go of it is the true test of human evolution. It’s “taking the high road.” It’s more difficult, but we have the choice to view others with love and understanding rather than hate.

Love is always the path to healing. Hate never is. When given the opportunity, we can all make the choice to evolve.

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The Price of Making Assumptions

I used to be very good at making assumptions. I used to tell sarcastic jokes at the expense of my friends and family (and self-deprecatingly at my own expense) just to get a laugh. I assumed, of course, that others found these jokes as funny as I did, until a couple of people commented to me that they were offended, not amused, and I was once told I was “mean.” Being mean was never my intent, but I realized that if that was the perception of me, then I was way off the mark in my assumptions, and possibly losing friends in the process.

In my younger days, I used to assume that if I was interested in a guy romantically and he paid attention to me, that he was interested in me the same way. But as so often happens in life, we often assume incorrectly. It never failed that when I assumed a guy liked me, he was actually just being nice; and when I assumed a guy was just being nice to me, it was actually because he was interested. This, of course, led to confusion and embarrassment in these (and subsequent) relationships, and led me not to trust my judgment.

I used to assume that other people had an easier life than I did, or had never known loss or pain. Until I found out the story behind a man I worked with. He seemed to have an ideal life: good job, lovely wife, nice house with some extras. I wondered why, being a little older, he wore braces on his teeth, but I never asked. I just assumed he was straightening his teeth later in life.

Then one day he told me about his accident. He was biking in the evening (it was dusk or dark) and was hit by a car. The driver didn’t bother to stop, just kept on going. But my friend didn’t learn that until later. He went flying off his bike and landed on pavement, and his bike was totaled. He told me he doesn’t remember the accident at all. What he does remember is “waking up in the hospital screaming.” Those were his exact words.

He told me about the pain he went through, the damage that had been done (including to his teeth — hence the braces) and how the accident set him back. I was astounded, because he was one of the most positive, happy people I knew. But his positive attitude was his choice. He was able to put the past behind him and move forward without hatred, without despair, without remorse. He didn’t chide himself for his decision to ride at night, he didn’t live in perpetual hatred of the driver, he simply accepted what happened and looked to the future with a positive attitude.

I gained a great deal of respect for him that day and learned a lot about how to be by looking at the example he set. I also learned not to be so quick to judge or make assumptions about other people. You never really know what someone else has been through unless you know them extremely well — and that’s only if they’ve decided to share it with you. We choose to keep many things to ourselves.

If there is anything I’ve learned in this life, it’s that we should not be too quick to make assumptions. You can’t see how deep a well is by looking at the surface. You have to peer down into it to really get a sense of its depth. So it is with people. Unless you know someone very well, do not assume their life is easy. You have no idea what things they have dealt with and continue to deal with. Just because a person’s pain is not worn on their sleeve doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

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The Reason We Are Here

It took me many years to figure out the purpose of life, and it has been a gradually unfolding process. Before I “got it,” I was walking the Earth asleep. Everything seemed random; nothing had a purpose to it. The very first time I heard someone say, “Everything happens for a reason,” I was shocked. I hadn’t noticed that in my life at all. I hadn’t even heard that before, and I was in my 30s. I could not have been more spiritually asleep.

But as happens in so many lives, it took a life-altering tragedy to wake me up. For some, it’s the death of a loved one; for others, a severe accident or the onset of a fatal disease; and for others, extreme heartbreak. For me it was my divorce. Tragedies in our lives are wake-up calls to make us remember where we come from. We come here with a veil between us and our Source, and it is the life experiences we choose that help us remember our real Home and our real purpose.

We plan our lives before we come here, with members of our soul groups agreeing to help us in our journey. We plan who our parents will be and why; what color, ethnicity, and race we will be and why; what sexual orientation we will be and why; what challenges, disabilities, or experiences we will have in life and why. All these things serve to teach us something we need for our soul’s development.

It might be to learn greater compassion for others; to learn to love ourselves more; to heal a hurt from a past life that has stuck with us and is hampering our growth in subsequent lives. We may choose a life in which we will be shunned or persecuted, the point being to either increase our compassion for others who are also shunned or persecuted, or to create a karmic balance for ourselves because we shunned or persecuted others in a past life.

There is karma, but not in the sense that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people and eventually everyone will “get theirs.” As you well know by your own observations, that just isn’t how it works. Good things happen to “bad” people and bad things happen to “good” people. We design this as well, but it is not some cosmic punishment “forced” on us—it is something we agree to take upon ourselves.

For example, a soul who was a cruel or abusive mother in a past lifetime may agree to incarnate in another lifetime as a child who is abused to understand the pain she inflicted in the past life. The two souls involved may agree to switch roles for this purpose, but it is done out of love for each other, not to inflict punishment. This is simply another way for us as souls to reach an understanding of all the experiences life has to offer. We come here and experience many lifetimes. If we don’t learn a life lesson we set out for ourselves in one lifetime, we agree to come back in another life that will teach us that lesson again.

Likewise, if we take our life prematurely by committing suicide, we agree to come back in another lifetime to learn the lesson that was cut short. There is no judgment for our actions on the other side; only love, compassion, and understanding by the Beings that are there to help guide us through this process.

Earth is the most difficult school there is. With so much pain, hatred, and negativity, we learn through opposites. We learn what we want by experiencing what we don’t want. We learn to survive, to persevere, to rise above. We battle addiction and win; we suffer loss but manage to find happiness again; we overcome childhood abuse to grow up to be responsible adults who help child abusers. Life can be a constant struggle to overcome.

When we realize that painful experiences create soul development and bring us closer to our Source, we can learn to be grateful for them. We learn greater compassion for ourselves and for others. We learn that love is all that matters. We learn that helping ourselves and other souls on their spiritual path, done out of love and not judgment, is our purpose. When we learn to see each other as the soul within, we can forgive more easily, understand more readily, and have more compassion for those who have hurt us.

In a soul’s final incarnation, the soul imparts all the wisdom it has accumulated over its lifetimes to other souls. That is the final exit strategy. If what I’ve written rings true for you, then you have a lot to think about. And if it doesn’t (because not all are ready to hear it), then Godspeed on your own journey to enlightenment.

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Out With the Old, In With the New

The ending of one year and the beginning of another is a time for taking stock of our lives. It’s the time to throw out our old garbage—physical, mental, and emotional—and start fresh. Many people choose to make New Year’s resolutions at this time. It’s a time of positive change, of hope. Other people conduct a thorough house-cleaning as a way of starting fresh.

There are many cultural year-ending rituals that may be superstitious in nature but which can serve as a mental cleansing as we prepare for the coming year. One ritual involves taking a bucket of water and throwing it out the front door as a way of cleansing your house of all the bad from the past year and starting clean. A ritual from the South involves eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve for good luck. Each pea has an eye on it, so those who eat them are looking toward the future.  Another ritual from Spain involves eating 12 grapes at midnight, also for good luck.

One ritual involves burning an item that represents something painful in your life that you want to release. For example, burning business cards from a job you’ve left, or a photo of an ex. A well-known forgiveness exercise involves writing a letter to someone who has hurt you (including all the hurt, fear, sadness, and suffering that person has caused you, ending in your forgiveness of them) and burning it to release all the pain so you can move forward.

The type of ritual is not as important as the effect it has on the one performing it. Anything that creates a mental, emotional, or physical cleansing is helpful to your soul. We need to regularly get rid of psychic “junk” that is holding us back. In this way, we can truly move forward with hope into a new year without being weighed down by the past.

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