I offer this simple prayer to you in hopes that your days ahead are filled with peace and love. Please pass it on. Enjoy the day...Namaste
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I love you.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry for anything said or done, by me or anyone with whom you and I associate, which has caused you pain or sorrow. I’m sorry for anything that has not been said or done, by me or anyone with whom we associate, that has resulted in your pain or sorrow. I’m sorry for anything that has happened to cause you suffering, for as long as we have been with each other…for as far back in our past as either of us realize.
Please forgive me. Please forgive these moments when your experience of me in your life results in pain and sorrow to you. Please forgive these thoughts and feelings I have, the actions I take as a result of them, and the harsh consequences they bring upon you.
Thank you! Thank you for being You, for being in my life. Thank you the forgiveness you offer me in return for my contrition. Thank you for your petition to the Divine on my behalf, for the purpose of forgiving my thoughts and feelings of fear that result in ill-fated moments between us. Thank you for turning these fearful thoughts and feelings into Love.
I love you!
Thursday, December 20, 2007
I'm learning how to blog
You will note an addition along the right margin of my blog, on my evaluating a course in blogging from the same company that produces Simpleology. I'm doing this for at least two reasons:
- I want to make certain I'm providing the best for you that I possibly can. I know I can write well, but can I blog well? That's what I want to learn.
- I would certainly enjoy making a blog for profit as well as fun. Whether or not it is this blog or another one I write remains to be seen.
In any event, I'm grateful for the opportunity to take the course. I will weigh in on it after I've completed it.
Enjoy the day! Namaste
- I want to make certain I'm providing the best for you that I possibly can. I know I can write well, but can I blog well? That's what I want to learn.
- I would certainly enjoy making a blog for profit as well as fun. Whether or not it is this blog or another one I write remains to be seen.
In any event, I'm grateful for the opportunity to take the course. I will weigh in on it after I've completed it.
Enjoy the day! Namaste
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
In the big picture, we all are...
I've been busy. Not an excuse for failing to write here...I've spent my free time as lavishly as I have ever done, and perhaps not as haphazardly as I used to. It depends on your perspective. In any event, I could have taken the time to write, but until now I've had nothing I could articulate properly that would justify taking time away from anything else.
I've had opportunity to do a lot of soul searching since my last post. I'm travelling more for my work nowadays than I used to, and windshield time is a wonderful way to get in touch with yourself if you leave the radio off. I've realized that the radio is a great way to temporarily dumb down the voices in your head, but overall has little value if you're working toward achieving enlightenment. I'm looking for inspiration more often than I am entertainment or information, and real life encounters provide far more inspiration to me than anything else.
I realized, too, after several comments from friends who read my blog, that I can't simply be another person who contributes to the global dia-blog at an average or below-average level. Your time is far too valuable to be taken for granted, and so is mine. My time spent away from my keyboard is usually spent with my family, and lately during this holiday season, my friends. I do not intend to depart from any lifetime wishing I would have spent more time at the office, or at work, or even writing.
What I choose to write about has to come from my soul and touch yours, or I've wasted both our time.
Having said that, what I'm about to express in terms of gratitude seems morose if taken in the wrong context. Please read straight through before rendering judgment.
I've had encounters recently with a few people who are, at the moment, less fortunate than me. One gentleman told me his story about how he bought a one-way bus ticket from Milwaukee to look up a lady friend here in the Twin Cities. He had no address or phone number for her, only knew that she worked in one of the hospitals in the area. I was sitting in the Crystal Court at the IDS Tower, waiting for my wife and daughter to finish a little shopping, and was engaged in asking this gentleman questions around his predicament: What was the name of the lady-friend (to see if I could Google her for him)? Where is he staying? How is he getting home? What about the apartment and job he left behind? (Basically, I was vetting him for what came next.) I asked him what I could do to help. He thanked me for the time spent talking with him, and asked if I could spare a few dollars to go toward a meal. I did what I felt I could and wished him well. I didn't know at the time why I felt compelled to ask him so many questions, and yet felt good that I did what I thought was the best I could do.
Fast forward to about 2 hours ago. I'm on my way to my hotel for the evening, and miss my exit off the freeway. A few miles down I take the exit I know has a way to get back onto the freeway going the other direction. This is within the Twin Cities metro, on I-394 going into Minneapolis, and invariably some soul is standing at the top of the exit hoping for a handout. I forget this reality until he stares me in the face as I approach the top of the off-ramp. This evening there was a gentleman, probably in his 50s, with long white hair and a beard, and the stub of a cigarette in his mouth. He was not standing with his sign, but sitting on the ground (20 degrees above with a little wind, in case you're wondering about the weather). I dug through my wallet and gave him what I felt I could; he expressed the humble gratitude of someone in his predicament. With two left turns I was back on the highway and he was gone from my experience.
As I left him and turned back down the highway, I was asking the questions to myself this time: Why did I give him such a paltry amount? I could have done a lot more for him...why didn't I? It was only when I got to the hotel that I realized what that encounter was to me: A reality check on my own perception of where I stood in life, right at this moment. In my youth I aspired to be the Good Samaritan; here I was instead checking myself against this gentleman who needed whatever I had much more than I possibly did. By the time I decided to go back and make amends, he had already moved on.
The real kicker is that, as I sit here finishing up this entry, I'm thinking of the last time I had to go down to the bank to borrow some money to keep things going during my business dry spell. All the questions the banker asked me, all the inadequate answers I could only give him at the time, because those were the only answers I thought I had. I didn't blame him...that was his job. Yet it didn't feel any better being on the banker's side of the conversation as it was on the side of the two gentleman I met...in fact, in retrospect, it felt a lot worse afterward. I judged these two individuals based on who they appeared to be right now, not who they could be or who they were. And certainly not on who they are...children of the same Universe I belong to. No one ever aspires to reach the situation they were in, unless they are working themselves up from a far worse one.
What I'm grateful for is not that these poor souls are in the state they are in, but that they crossed my path when I need to meet them most. As I encounter these souls, I usually don't figure it out until after we've parted. I'm happy to say my timing is improving, although I realize I need to work on it. My goal is to get to the point where I never ask why or how, I only ask what I can do to help, and then I do more than is asked.
Because, in the big picture, we all are in the inside what we see and encounter on the outside. And to the extent I can help another soul on their journey, my journey will have been helped as well.
Thank you, dear reader, for your time. Enjoy the day! Namaste
I've had opportunity to do a lot of soul searching since my last post. I'm travelling more for my work nowadays than I used to, and windshield time is a wonderful way to get in touch with yourself if you leave the radio off. I've realized that the radio is a great way to temporarily dumb down the voices in your head, but overall has little value if you're working toward achieving enlightenment. I'm looking for inspiration more often than I am entertainment or information, and real life encounters provide far more inspiration to me than anything else.
I realized, too, after several comments from friends who read my blog, that I can't simply be another person who contributes to the global dia-blog at an average or below-average level. Your time is far too valuable to be taken for granted, and so is mine. My time spent away from my keyboard is usually spent with my family, and lately during this holiday season, my friends. I do not intend to depart from any lifetime wishing I would have spent more time at the office, or at work, or even writing.
What I choose to write about has to come from my soul and touch yours, or I've wasted both our time.
Having said that, what I'm about to express in terms of gratitude seems morose if taken in the wrong context. Please read straight through before rendering judgment.
I've had encounters recently with a few people who are, at the moment, less fortunate than me. One gentleman told me his story about how he bought a one-way bus ticket from Milwaukee to look up a lady friend here in the Twin Cities. He had no address or phone number for her, only knew that she worked in one of the hospitals in the area. I was sitting in the Crystal Court at the IDS Tower, waiting for my wife and daughter to finish a little shopping, and was engaged in asking this gentleman questions around his predicament: What was the name of the lady-friend (to see if I could Google her for him)? Where is he staying? How is he getting home? What about the apartment and job he left behind? (Basically, I was vetting him for what came next.) I asked him what I could do to help. He thanked me for the time spent talking with him, and asked if I could spare a few dollars to go toward a meal. I did what I felt I could and wished him well. I didn't know at the time why I felt compelled to ask him so many questions, and yet felt good that I did what I thought was the best I could do.
Fast forward to about 2 hours ago. I'm on my way to my hotel for the evening, and miss my exit off the freeway. A few miles down I take the exit I know has a way to get back onto the freeway going the other direction. This is within the Twin Cities metro, on I-394 going into Minneapolis, and invariably some soul is standing at the top of the exit hoping for a handout. I forget this reality until he stares me in the face as I approach the top of the off-ramp. This evening there was a gentleman, probably in his 50s, with long white hair and a beard, and the stub of a cigarette in his mouth. He was not standing with his sign, but sitting on the ground (20 degrees above with a little wind, in case you're wondering about the weather). I dug through my wallet and gave him what I felt I could; he expressed the humble gratitude of someone in his predicament. With two left turns I was back on the highway and he was gone from my experience.
As I left him and turned back down the highway, I was asking the questions to myself this time: Why did I give him such a paltry amount? I could have done a lot more for him...why didn't I? It was only when I got to the hotel that I realized what that encounter was to me: A reality check on my own perception of where I stood in life, right at this moment. In my youth I aspired to be the Good Samaritan; here I was instead checking myself against this gentleman who needed whatever I had much more than I possibly did. By the time I decided to go back and make amends, he had already moved on.
The real kicker is that, as I sit here finishing up this entry, I'm thinking of the last time I had to go down to the bank to borrow some money to keep things going during my business dry spell. All the questions the banker asked me, all the inadequate answers I could only give him at the time, because those were the only answers I thought I had. I didn't blame him...that was his job. Yet it didn't feel any better being on the banker's side of the conversation as it was on the side of the two gentleman I met...in fact, in retrospect, it felt a lot worse afterward. I judged these two individuals based on who they appeared to be right now, not who they could be or who they were. And certainly not on who they are...children of the same Universe I belong to. No one ever aspires to reach the situation they were in, unless they are working themselves up from a far worse one.
What I'm grateful for is not that these poor souls are in the state they are in, but that they crossed my path when I need to meet them most. As I encounter these souls, I usually don't figure it out until after we've parted. I'm happy to say my timing is improving, although I realize I need to work on it. My goal is to get to the point where I never ask why or how, I only ask what I can do to help, and then I do more than is asked.
Because, in the big picture, we all are in the inside what we see and encounter on the outside. And to the extent I can help another soul on their journey, my journey will have been helped as well.
Thank you, dear reader, for your time. Enjoy the day! Namaste
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