I decided to update this old blog post (Random Thoughts) and add ideas as they occur to me. I hope one or two catch your attention and are useful for reflection and contemplation.
The Ego and the Mind:
- Make friends with your mind—or live in a tiny room with your worst enemy.
- And don’t fight with your thoughts. It’s like fighting with a pig—you never win and only get covered in muck (adapted from G.B. Shaw).
- Thoughts are the voice of the ego, beliefs are its bones. Never trust your own beliefs!
- The Ego’s four dark aspects:
- The wish to be special and the center of the universe
- The need to control everything and everyone
- The urge to judge and criticize
- The tendency to self-deception and blindness.
Relationship:
- Love rests on a foundation of tolerance, acceptance and understanding.
- Relationship is the marriage between Sharing, Loving and Growing.
- Intolerance and indifference are addictive. Like all addictions, they blind us to our chains.
- Sometimes an old relationship is only the lingering fragrance of nostalgia.
- True humility is without self-denigration.
Compassion and Love:
- Charity is intelligent love in action: head, heart and hands working together.
- Compassion is the touchstone of a true human being (see Charter for Compassion).
- Life is the path; love is the compass.
- Balance compassion with clarity and firmness; compassion without boundaries is simply mush.
- We cannot be human if we are cut off from humanity; compassion and love links us into one glorious whole.
Pain and Purpose:
- Pain is unavoidable, suffering is optional; do not suffer for no purpose.
- Purpose and happiness are the difficult choices; meaninglessness is the lazy option.
- Our life purpose is the reflection and manifestation of our Inner Nature.
- Why struggle; why not dance?
Intention:
- Ego intentions inflame desire; Self intentions expand the soul.
- Intention requires effort and surrender; it is the movement from will to willingness.
- Intention is a message from the conscious to the unconscious, from small-self to soul, from ego to Inner Nature.
- Vision does not define a destination; it creates a pathway for our intentions to unfold.
- Embrace everything with gentle persistent curiosity.
Vision and Spirituality:
- Only words filled with Spirit touch the soul
- Surrender to the moment; God is in each moment.
- Dreams: night-gardening for the soul.
- Balance effort with surrender: do what needs doing – let go of the outcome.
- Certainty is blind; embrace not-knowing if you want to see.
- Be inwardly attentive; discover how rich you are.
- When in doubt, be still, quiet and patient.
- We are a travelling flame of awareness that illuminates only the present moment.
- God is the unfolding experience of divine presence; there is no God without experience.