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Givers and Takers   ACCEPT the LOVE, SEIZE the GOOD…why is that harder for some than… giving the Love…sharing the good? There are givers and takers, at first blush one might assume that the more challenging task would be in the giving rather than the receiving. However for many of us taking requires a much greater sacrifice... taking requires a drink of humility and trust that for some is just too bitter. So we quietly attempt to position ourselves in the seat of benefactor …hoping our acts of generosity will mask our inability to receive, but what we fail to see is that we are denying someone else of that very role. What appears altruistic and selfless is in fact our most selfish act...the giving has become the taking and such the taking the giving. Is this simply another symptom of a hungry ego, a need to feel grand and powerful? Yes and no, ego feed, no doubt, but for many, much more than the need to feel grand is fear…the fear of losing control…the fear of being let down, first by ourselves that we are not capable of answering our own needs...second by others, by allowing dependency on others we are exposing a vulnerability that is often too great a risk. Trust and Love …again it spirals back to here…like taking a crowbar to a rusted safe as we slowly pry it open the light begins to enter ...changing nothing inside merely illuminating the space...we must pry open our hearts and allow love and trust to irrigate its chambers. From here we will have the ability (if we choose) to cultivate the seeds of faith...faith in ourselves and faith in others and begin to engage in relationships of mutual dependence and support where we will permit others to share not only the joys of our successes but also the pain of our failures. Enjoying...perhaps for the first time in a long time a truly healthy relationship. MAJOR POINT…. PLEASE do not allow this to be misconstrued in an way as... [View Full Comment]

Givers and Takers

 

ACCEPT the LOVE, SEIZE the GOOD…why is that harder for some than… giving the Love…sharing the good?

There are givers and takers, at first blush one might assume that the more challenging task would be in the giving rather than the receiving. However for many of us taking requires a much greater sacrifice... taking requires a drink of humility and trust that for some is just too bitter.

So we quietly attempt to position ourselves in the seat of benefactor …hoping our acts of generosity will mask our inability to receive, but what we fail to see is that we are denying someone else of that very role. What appears altruistic and selfless is in fact our most selfish act...the giving has become the taking and such the taking the giving.

Is this simply another symptom of a hungry ego, a need to feel grand and powerful? Yes and no, ego feed, no doubt, but for many, much more than the need to feel grand is fear…the fear of losing control…the fear of being let down, first by ourselves that we are not capable of answering our own needs...second by others, by allowing dependency on others we are exposing a vulnerability that is often too great a risk.

Trust and Love …again it spirals back to here…like taking a crowbar to a rusted safe as we slowly pry it open the light begins to enter ...changing nothing inside merely illuminating the space...we must pry open our hearts and allow love and trust to irrigate its chambers. From here we will have the ability (if we choose) to cultivate the seeds of faith...faith in ourselves and faith in others and begin to engage in relationships of mutual dependence and support where we will permit others to share not only the joys of our successes but also the pain of our failures. Enjoying...perhaps for the first time in a long time a truly healthy relationship.

MAJOR POINT…. PLEASE do not allow this to be misconstrued in an way as to judge those who give… most who give do so with no ulterior motives, their actions are fueled only by a desire to improve the lives of others.

This is dedicated to those of us who believed we had constructed a fail-safe system to insure the safety of our hearts without realizing the most detrimental effect on our hearts is a lack of love.

 

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Our power and responsibility to create peace. "Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission." Ralph Waldo Emerson To work toward personal, interpersonal and global peace we must subscribe to the two following statements: 1) We are all personally and collectively responsible for creating peace. 2) We all have the ability to create peace, in our hearts, in our relationships and globally. To talk about being responsible for peace, we must first acknowledge that we are responsible for creating or restoring our own inner peace. Requesting that we take responsibility for our peace in no way underscores any pain or suffering we have endured. For those that have been personally persecuted or have first hand lay witness to a life of injustice and pain, finding that inner peace may be a far more daunting task. Or perhaps not…perhaps its equally hard for just us...the ordinary people…the ones who’s wins and losses can’t be found in any book or on the news, those of us who suffer silently from the benign chill of the world rather than the Artic frost, to turn a loving eye on ourselves and others. I would never attempt to rate one’s suffering against another’s, nor begin to judge the affect of ones life on any human heart. We are all wired differently, my thought is just that suffering on any level can harden ones heart and we need to work to soften it. Going on the assumption that we have all been hurt, even if we have lived a life entirely supported by the most loving and nurturing people we can not walk away unscathed by the events that have unfolded in our lifetimes. We all need to heal… heal our hearts and embrace peace. So if much of the pain we feel has been cause by others, how do we take responsibility for our peace? By understanding that although we may have little control over events that happen to us, we do posses complete control over how we wish to allow those events to e... [View Full Comment] Our power and responsibility to create peace. "Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission." Ralph Waldo Emerson To work toward personal, interpersonal and global peace we must subscribe to the two following statements: 1) We are all personally and collectively responsible for creating peace. 2) We all have the ability to create peace, in our hearts, in our relationships and globally. To talk about being responsible for peace, we must first acknowledge that we are responsible for creating or restoring our own inner peace. Requesting that we take responsibility for our peace in no way underscores any pain or suffering we have endured. For those that have been personally persecuted or have first hand lay witness to a life of injustice and pain, finding that inner peace may be a far more daunting task. Or perhaps not…perhaps its equally hard for just us...the ordinary people…the ones who’s wins and losses can’t be found in any book or on the news, those of us who suffer silently from the benign chill of the world rather than the Artic frost, to turn a loving eye on ourselves and others. I would never attempt to rate one’s suffering against another’s, nor begin to judge the affect of ones life on any human heart. We are all wired differently, my thought is just that suffering on any level can harden ones heart and we need to work to soften it. Going on the assumption that we have all been hurt, even if we have lived a life entirely supported by the most loving and nurturing people we can not walk away unscathed by the events that have unfolded in our lifetimes. We all need to heal… heal our hearts and embrace peace. So if much of the pain we feel has been cause by others, how do we take responsibility for our peace? By understanding that although we may have little control over events that happen to us, we do posses complete control over how we wish to allow those events to effect us. We are “Captains of our souls, Masters of our fate”. How we see the world and our place in it is entirely up to us. We are the stewards of our souls and of our hearts. In many ways, for some ,granting someone else the power to form our lives relives us of any responsibility to the outcome. It allows us full admission in the blame game. Although living in a controlled environment one may endure a life of pain and frustration, for some that pain and frustration may be alleviated by embracing the role of victim. Not to say there are not true victims, every minute, everyday, there are victims, victims of violent crimes, victims of natural disasters, as well as victims of circumstance, and not to say that the wounds from theses acts are not real, or they do not bleed. They are real, they do bleed, they bleed from our skin and they bleed into our hearts and our souls. But the power to stop the bleed is inside of us. The power to govern our hearts and souls is ours alone, one cannot have access to the inner sanctions of our hearts and souls without our permission. We must believe that the true power is the power inside us is ours, ours alone to protect or give away.[Hide Full Comment]