Thought of the Week – 20th May 2024
How to Manifest without trying
WHAT WILL MATTER?
Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.
So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.
It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin colour will be irrelevant.
Thought of the Week – 13th May 2024 (3)
Photo by Marco Meyer on Unsplash
We are all “heroes in training”
Heroism is rather a mind-set or an accumulation of our personal and social habits. It is a way of being. And it is a special way of viewing ourselves. To be a hero requires taking effective action at crucial junctures in our lives, to make an active attempt to address injustice or create positive change in the world. To be a hero requires great moral courage. And each of us has an inner hero waiting to be expressed. We are all “heroes in training.” Our hero training is life, the daily circumstances that invite us to practice the habits of heroism: to commit daily deeds of kindness; to radiate compassion, starting with self-compassion; to bring out the best in others and ourselves; to sustain love, even in our most challenging relationships; to celebrate and exercise the power of our mental freedom.
“Isn’t it amazing?” she said. “The worst brings out the best in us.”
– Philip Zinbardo
Thought of the Week 13th May 2024(2)
Thought of the Week – 13th May 2024
Put Down Those Rocks You’re Carrying
Imagine that as a child you were issued a large backpack to wear at all times. At first you didn’t know what it was for, but then the adults around you started putting rocks in it that you then obediently carried around. After a while you followed their example and began to put rocks in there yourself. Over time, some of the rocks disappeared, but most didn’t, and by now that pack’s really, really heavy.
You often pull out some of the rocks and look at them. They don’t make you happy. In fact they make you miserable. Some at the bottom you never pull out—you might not even remember you have them–but still you carry them. This seems inexplicable. Why would anyone voluntarily bear such a burden?
Unfortunately these rocks are not chunks of shale or granite or sandstone. Those would be easy to get rid of! Instead they are bits of residual resentment, hatred, anger, guilt, and shame from injuries or injustices or mistakes you can’t or won’t or haven’t tried to let go of. The backpack is your mind; the weight of the load burdens not your back but your soul.
What follows are tips for cleaning out that backpack. If the pack’s stuffed full, it’ll take some mental elbow grease to do a good spring cleaning, but trust me, it’s worth it for the sunlight that will pour into your life. After that, there’ll be some ongoing maintenance to keep your pack light and your steps jaunty. Yes, there’ll be surprises. Rocks that you’ll swear you never picked up will somehow get in that backpack, and a few rocks will keep reappearing even after you put them down and down again. Still the effort’s worth it.
So how to get rid of these rocks? The first step is to realize that anger, hatred, resentment, guilt, and shame are not just weight, they’re toxic, poisonous to a healthy life. They cloud your judgement; they sap your attention and energy. They lead to bitterness, depression and despair. If you feed these toxic emotions, the rocks will grow until they’re all you have left. At its most basic, carrying around these rocks is a form of self-harm.
Instead when these emotions arise, acknowledge them, learn from them. Take action if appropriate. And then let them go. This doesn’t mean you should allow people who’ve injured you to do so again. But caution, wisdom, and courage prevent injury better than anger and resentment.
~Karen Lynn Allen
The whole fragment of the book
Thought of the Week – 6th May 2024 (3)
ONE TUSK 