Life is a funny thing that happened to us on the way to our grave...

I am old school, I still believe in respect.

"In each one of you there is a hidden being, still in the deep sleep of childhood. Bring it to life! In each one of you there is a call, a will, an impulse of nature, an impulse toward the future, the new, the higher. Let it mature, let it resound, nurture it! Your future is not this or that; it is not money or power, it is not wisdom or success at your trade — your future, your hard dangerous path is this: to mature and to find yourselves."

Hermann Hesse

Learning is no longer an improver; it is merely the most expensive time-filler the world has ever known.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper and if they don't comply just let them be and run as fast as you can

Neither looks forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.

Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked

“The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think of us.”

The search for a lifestyle involves a journey to the interior.

This is not altogether pleasant experience, because you not only have to take stock of what you consider your assets but you also have to take a long look at what your friends call 'the trouble with you.'

Nevertheless, the journey is worth making.

I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum

The only FREEDOM you truly have is in your MIND, so USE it. 

Tolerance only for those WHO AGREE WITH YOU is NO TOLERANCE AT ALL.

You are FREE TO CHOOSE, but you are NOT FREE from the CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR CHOICE.

Justice suffers when men refuse to STAND FIRM for WHAT IS RIGHT.

The UGLIEST THING I've ever SEEN is a HUMAN BEING WITHOUT COMPASSION.


love light and peace
nab/ps/smoh

Osho, once said, “Nothing fails like success”.

You discover a lot about yourself when you hit rock bottom and the same can be said about putting yourself back together again and pushing forward! Life is a process of learning and growth that never truly ends.

Observe your successes and notice the failure of what was promised.
This is because any desire is only a dream, a future program you bought into. Failure or success is head trips, not anything real.

Life is only this moment, no other time is true, real, or existential. This moment is a state of awareness, relaxation, peace, and contentment. We find this moment when we stop and observe. This is what meditation is all about.

I have recently been looking at expectation and how when we have this it causes suffering when it often doesn’t work out the way we want. I have never thought to put failure into this equation until now. We have success based on our expectations. Specific desired outcomes. When this doesn’t happen we see it as a failure and again we suffer. 

So to sum up, we only have the present moment and in that respect, every moment we are working towards a goal is actually the “success” whatever the outcome. 

Are you feeling lost in the world?

Just follow your bliss...

love light and peace
ps/smoh

LIFE IS SO BRIEF and TIME IS A THIEF when you're UNDECIDED. And like a FISTFUL OF SAND, it can SLIP right THROUGH YOUR HANDS.

May you feel the sacred gift of your humanity, the depth of love within your heart, and the brilliant light of your soul

love light and peace

ps/smoh

Our conversation at breakfast's table this morning was 'selfishness'.

What we get when we don't want to tell others what to do is more room to see what we do when we don't wait for anyone else to change. 
It is a form of self-love, not wanting to tell anyone else how to live life.
It's a free gift we can only lose one way.

- We are waiting for what we are when we are not waiting, peace is that dreadfully silly.
- Two sets of rules: the rules and the other rules
- We are not guided to anything; we are just falling along randomly, reverse engineering meaning from whatever it looks like we're doing; artists crafting a lifespan out of shits and giggles.
- We do what we love not because it saves us from irrelevancy or redundancy or because it validates who we are compared to who they are or even because we are compelled to do it. We do what we love because it's cool, that's all.
- If we do what we don't like, we at least like discomfort.
- We all have to do things we don't like in life' is a personal philosophy, not a statement about reality.

Healthy portions of selfishness are what tears down the walls.


love light and peace
ps/smoh

A NOTE TO A DEAR DARK FRIEND...The ego points out your flaws; your Spirit concentrates on your perfection. The ego sees your darkness; the Spirit sees your light. Look at your circumstances with the illumination of your heart. Don’t focus on the shadows, but rather the light.

Yes, I know the government is corrupt. 

Yes, I know there are people conspiring. 

Yes, I know people can lack integrity. 

Yes, I know that western culture is materialistic. 

Yes, I know that corporations are self-serving. 

Yes, I know that the media is manipulative. I share many of your concerns.

And I also know that we cannot change the world without acknowledging what is wrong. I know that we must stand against that which shames, oppresses and damages humanity. I know that we should not ignore the injustices and put on a fake smile. I know that we must find our voice and stand our ground. I know that we must fight for our right to the light. 

I believe deeply in forwarding moving criticism.

But something doesn’t feel quite right. You complain all the time. You have made negativity a full-time job. You don’t make an effort to find solutions. You blame everything on the world out there. You don’t actually do anything positive to effect change. And you seldom acknowledge the positive steps humanity has made. You seldom acknowledge the beauty around you. You almost never see the light in the darkness.

I know something from my lived experience. I know that the light is always there. It is there, in the breath that keeps you alive, in the smile of a child, in the one more chance to find your path. It is there in the rise of the feminine, in the therapeutic revolution, in the burgeoning quest for authenticity. If you can’t see it, then the issue is a personal one, for there are signs of progress everywhere.

And I also know from a lifetime of overcoming that it is possible to hold it all at once. 

To fight against injustice while still embodying the light. 

To see where we are lacking, while rejoicing in our abundance. 

To express our anger, and to live our gratitude. 

To feel overwhelmed by an unfair world, while still achieving our goals. 

To admit how far we have yet to travel while applauding how far we have come.

And so I wonder what lives below your perpetual negativity? Apart from the problems with the world, what happened that darkened your lens? 

What made the glass so empty? Is it really all about the world ‘out there’, or are there also unresolved personal experiences that need to be healed? 

What are you really trying to express the lack of love, attention, and satisfaction in your life? 

What is your deeper complaint? 

What lives below this victimhood? 

What needs to expressed and resolved so that you will see some light shining through again?

Please don’t wait until the world is perfect, for it will never be so.

Dear friend, how can I help you to believe again?

In these unusually dark times, I see how easy it is to be swallowed up by discouragement. The collective shadow has come to the surface, fast and furious. At times, it can be very difficult to hold to the light. Those of us who find it, let's spread it around. Let's lend it out. Let's give some away. This is how we will make it through these challenging times. By passing the light back and forth. By sharing the light...

love light and peace

jb/ps/smoh

Speaking my truth is the most effective tool I have found and what I value most in others

I've heard some women say that a man "completes them". 

If they are "completing" you, then you didn't have enough of "you" to begin with. A good relationship *adds* the two of you together... it doesn't take the lacking of one and then eliminate them. 
Stay an individual that shares a *part* of yourself with another... don't just become whole by being in a relationship.
This goes for men as well as women. Some men fear being alone, so the need to the company of a woman to feel complete... to feel as if they have a purpose. You need to have YOU first, *then* you have something to offer another.
A relationship should be the icing on the cake for a person, not the thing keeping them together.
It's all about agreement and equality. If the woman is *genuinely* happy in her situation, be that being a full-time housewife, or a high-paid lawyer, or doctor....more power to her.
The challenge is that many men, not all... MANY, aren't supportive in *any* of those situations.
So many men use the "power" they have as a bread-winner against the woman... and if the woman is the bread-winner, the man is insecure and threatened.

However, this status wasn't about "fault"... it was about maintaining individuality.
Nobody should validate who you are, male or female!

Nobody completes you, you are who you are as a person. its like saying am 75% and you're my 25 %.
Nah you are the 100% he or she is just the extra added bonus to add to your life. don't underestimate who you are.


love light and peace
ps/smoh

People pleasing are a self-protection pattern. 

If we keep them happy, they won't turn on us. 

But it comes at a terribly high price because, in our fixation with keeping others happy, we undermine our own happiness. 

In our desire to placate others, we deny ourselves.

Perhaps it’s time for a new way: Please others, when it truly pleases you.

People pleasing and unreciprocated kindness will wear the kindest person thin.

When one finally realizes what it is, they begin to understand the definition of self-love and leave those persons behind and change their patterns.

They also recognize when a person is offering kindness as an underlying manipulation and they then can choose not to participate in it because they know it is unhealthy and the cost is too big.

With most all things, if one peels the onion back far enough, fear is almost always at the core.

Stomp it out and replace it with self-love and love those who TRULY love you.

Nobody can make you happy, nobody can make you unhappy.

Rather, you are constantly invited to meet what remains unmet in yourself, to touch what you never wanted to touch, to explore the vast field of your own aliveness.

Making others responsible for how we feel is the beginning of all violence, both internal and external, all conflict between people, and ultimately all wars between nations.

Let others off the hook. 

Embrace what is alive in you. Learn to embrace your own feelings, however intensely they burn and scream for attention.

Celebrate the life in your loneliness, the vibrancy of your disappointment, the electricity in your sadness. 

Kneel before the power in your anger; honour the burning creativity of your fear.

From this place of deep acceptance, you do not become weak and passive. 

Quite the opposite. 

For now, you enter the world from a place of non-violence, and therefore immense creative power and you are open to the possibility of deep listening, honest dialogue, and unexpected change.

You are complete; nobody else can give you that, or take it away.

Don't seek happiness; be it, know it as your very essence.

love light and peace

ps/smoh

Empathy/Empathetic V Empath/Empathic are two very different things, are they not??

Empathy is an interesting word, often mistaken for something quite different, unhealthy boundaries, not knowing where we end and the other begins. 

I think of how often I remained connected to hurtful people and others to me when I was hurtful because I imagined myself empathic. And maybe I was but that didn’t have to mean that I endured their madness. 

Our empathic capacity can be as misdirected as any other ability. Just because you can feel where someone is coming from, doesn’t mean that you have to put yourself at risk. 

When we allow 'empathy' to keep us invested in that which brings us suffering, when we confuse it with a boundaryless way of being, it becomes just another word for misplaced faith and self-hatred. It is empathy run amok. 

It abuses your gift. Better to not turn your compassionate nature against yourself. Empathize with humanity, but shield yourself from harm.

The empath must learn boundaries and honor their instincts to survive... I'd rather be seen as rude than let anyone take their 'stuff' out on. Sometimes the strays you bring home will eat you alive in return.

Empathize is literally to be listened and validated.
That’s it. 

Sympathize is trying to fix. 

Sympathy it’s when one hasn’t learned to empathize.

I believe the age of sympathy it’s coming to an end. We do not need fixing, we need to be listened to and accepted our feelings.
When we learn to empathize we will no longer sympathize, no more fixing, no more dependence.

Empathy is what makes us human.

When there’s a fresh wound in your heart,
keep it open until it heals.
Air it out. Understand it. Dive into it.
Be fierce enough to become it.
If you ignore it, it won’t be able to
breathe.
If you ignore it, it will merely deepen,
spread and resurface later,
wanting to release.
And when later happens,
it will hurt even more,
because when later happens,
you won’t know what
you’re bleeding for.
Remain with it until it clears,
and watch the beauty pour
into your openness.
Remain open to feel lightness.
Remain open to feel free.

love light and peace

ps/smoh

An incredible writing. Rumi is my favorite poet.

"There is one thing in this world that you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there’s nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.

It’s as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. 

So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don’t do it, it’s as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. 

It’s a golden bowl being used to cook turnips when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It’s a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.

You say, 

“But look, I’m using the dagger. It’s not lying idle.” 

Do you hear how ludicrous that sounds? For a penny, an iron nail could be bought to serve the purpose. 

You say, 

“But I spend my energies on lofty enterprises. I study jurisprudence and philosophy and logic and astronomy and medicine and all the rest.” 

But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. 

If you don’t, you will be like the man who takes a precious dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. 

You’ll be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly ignoring your dignity and your purpose." —Rumi

love light and peace
ps/smoh

The more I wake up the less people I want around....

I don't really mind spending time without people. I rather look forward to it. It is in my silence and in solitude that I am most connected to my own truth.

It feels challenging to endure situations when I need to show up and be with people who are not aligned with my healing. Some of these situations are not completely avoidable. However, I am learning to keep my head above muddy waters when I must be present in people situations where my heart feels uncomfortable.

We each have our own path. When we are present with ourselves or others regardless of their own perspective, experience, view it allows for awareness and growth to take place.... integration of the whole self, and we need to allow for the diversity for each individual experience with no expectations or ideologies in place. 

Otherwise, it is a projection of how we think it should be.

Having said that relationship, friendship change and redefine all the time... you don't need to lose anyone .. it is respectfully adapting and bending and asserting needs. Yours and theirs through communication. And allowing yourself and others healthy space and opportunities to grow. If we take it as rejection or personal.. that can create angst and hurt.

People who have never moved away from home, will not experience this as deeply with friends or family members. Yes, everyone does change within time but It all comes down to what we want out of life. Comfort or Courage.....comfort brings us safety and not much change, whereas Courage creates a world of uncertainty in where we are headed in life. 

Guess everyone is different in how they see this world and what makes us all special. Takes all kinds of views and opinions to make this world to go around. 

I am thinking a lot about resurrection today. Not the resurrection of a being after they pass, but the resurrection of those healthy parts of the self that get buried along the way. 

So much can get lost in this mad world- our optimism, our receptivity, our callings, our openness to love, our connection to our souls and bodies. They can get lost, and they can be forgotten, as we armor up to deal with life's disappointments and challenges. 

At the same time, I try to never forget that it can all be resurrected when we do the work to peel back the layers and remember ourselves. It's all still there, perhaps a little dusty but still in there, waiting in the wings to be lived. 

If I had one wish for all of you in the year to come, it is that anything beautiful that got buried along the way is given the opportunity to come back to life. To regain its full form. To rise into awareness. To en-light-en the path ahead. We get buried much too early in this world. 

Let's dig ourselves out...

love light and peace

ps/smoh

I believe in forgiveness. I believe in second chances.

Being judgmental on someone’s previous chain of thoughts from years ago only promises and clarifies how petty the human race can be.
People grow, they learn, educate, experience, they go through tests and trials, and they mold. Not only do they mold their actions, but they also mold their character, sense, and ways of judgment. They modify what they’ve been taught, to adjust to what is acceptable and approachable TODAY.

Never ever apologize again and again just to appease someone!

We have all said and/or do things at some point in life that would wreak havoc in today’s society. The world needs to stop expecting that everyone must “pay” for their mistakes for the rest of their lives. It is pathetic how unforgiving society has become and how focused on finding everything wrong with what people say or do.

There's not a perfect bone in any of us and we need to accept that, I don't have a perfect bone either, we do make bad choices along the way and that's why it's called the past, cause it's in the past, and we don't live there anymore. Those weren't mistakes, it was the times!! And now times are changing so you do not need to apologize for anything!! Moving forward

It's true, without our mistakes, how do we grow? 

The world is too sensitive nowadays. Everyone has become so soft. And this is a typical example of no matter how much good u do in the world your worst/bad sells more.

We have set the bar for support, integrity, and friendship. No one should be condemned twice for the same crime/offense. 

Let us give people room to grow and mature.

ps/smoh

Every soul has a unique role to play in this dance of sacred imagination....

It’s up to you it’s always up to you. 

You can deny, repress, distort, and bury your unresolved wounds all you want. You can re-frame them, pseudo-positivity them, detach from them, bypass them. 

You can rename yourself, hide away in a monastery, turn your story around. And you can spend all your money on superficial healing practices and hocus-pocus practitioners. 

But it won’t mean a damn thing if you don’t do the deeper work to excavate and heal your primary wounds. The material is still there, right where you left it, subconsciously ruling your life and controlling your choices. 

This is the nature of unhealed material it is alive, and one way or the other, it will manifest itself in your lived experience. It will language your inner narrative. It will obstruct your path and limit your possibilities. It lives everywhere that you live. And so you have to decide to excavate it and bring it into consciousness where it can be worked through an integrated, or repress it and watch it rule your life. It’s one of the hardest truths we have to face: If we don’t deal with our stuff, it deals with us.
There is no way around this. 

Choose.

If we don't deal with those wounds, they will deal with us . . . and it is always up to us. 

"Choose". No blame placing, no pointed fingers, no assigning whose 'fault' it is - those are avoidance and delaying tactics. If we want to survive we must fight. We must struggle with the poison within us to clean and heal our lives.

Most of the greatest achievements on the planet are unknown to other private overcomings, silent attempts at belief, re-opening a shattered heart. These are the real heroes. The real path of champions truly lies within the transforming of suffering into the expansion, the clearing of horrifying debris, the building of a healthy self-concept without tools. 

The greatest achievers have found a way to believe in something good, despite being traumatized and fractured on life’s battlefields. 

No matter what else they accomplish in their lives, they are already champions. Such words of empathic understanding and a recognition of what courage is for some just to keep going.The sea of trauma, a hard sea to sail through. 

Too many beautiful souls are trying, even if it seems they are not!! Pure-hearted people if naive can get trampled almost to death by society and the awakening to a world of what seems like scary perpetrators, a deeply embedded pattern, recognizing, acknowledging even this can be traumatic in itself. 

One day the world will realize that it is much harder to heal a shattered heart than excel at worldly matters. Gold medals all around…

We come into human form so open, so trusting, so vulnerable. And then we shut down to stay alive. And then we confuse our adaptations with our authenticity, our wall sticking to us like crazy glue. As complex as the process of breaking our walls is, in a way, it’s quite simple. We are just trying to open again. We are just trying to surrender to who we really are. 

This is the work of all truth-speakers and heart-lifters- to remind us of our misplaced magnificence, to raise our authenticity to the rafters of consciousness, to get real again. 

May we continue to support this intention in each other. Joy to the inner world!

love light and peace

ps/smoh

Just look beyond the surface of the people you meets and find their true humanity.

Find the courage to confront our own insecurities and attitudes, as we meet those in others who are violently opposed to our thinking, and to find the connection between us all.

Sometimes we are angry at someone who was important to us. And sometimes, we don’t have an opportunity to resolve it with them. Perhaps they have faded out of our lives, or perhaps they have passed away. This may trouble us, leaving us feeling guilty or ashamed. But what must always be remembered is that sometimes people wanted us to be angry with them.

They wanted there to be a rift between us. Because it’s the way that they barricaded themselves against the connection. It’s the way that they avoided vulnerability.

Sometimes the real issue does not lie within the conflict itself, but in the purpose that it served. Sometimes, the conflict was just their way of hiding from love.

They wanted you to be angry at them because that felt easier than being close.

Conflict is not always what it seems.

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.

Forgiveness is not a concept. It’s a process. 

And, if you choose not to forgive at the end of that process, it doesn’t mean that you are unhealed. It doesn’t mean that you are a lesser human. It doesn’t mean you are not spiritual or evolved. It doesn’t mean you will come back in the next lifetime to live it out again. It may just mean that forgiveness is not actually in your integrity. 

The assumption that forgiving the abuser is the benchmark of a completed emotional and karmic process is the mistake. 

The real benchmark of resolution is whether you have gone through your emotional process authentically and have arrived at a place where the negative charge around the experience has dissipated. 

Perhaps you will learn some lessons, or perhaps you will eventually be legitimately liberated from the memories. 

Perhaps you will work it through so completely that you have very little energetic charge around the events. 

Or perhaps you will actually realize that forgiveness is not essential to your healing, and not your responsibility. 

The point is that focusing on our responsibility to forgive a wrongdoer sidetracks the whole process. Your sole responsibility is to arrive at whatever destination is true to you.

I always think self-forgiveness is much more important than forgiving others. When I focus on that wounds heal much faster.

Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.

We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us; we must take it upon ourselves, 

love light and peace
ps/smoh

Wake up every morning with a purpose...Happiness In Your Life!

Every day without exception my alarm goes off at 6.15 am
Even though the thought of sleeping in tempts me, I manage to force myself up and happy to be awake.


Happy New Year everyone
May 2019 kiss you full on the lips

love light and peace

ps/smoh