Over the last 24 hours, the following three posts came to my attention, in the following order:
- From Ron Head: Choices, Choices, Choices — The Council
- From Heaven Letters: Foremost, Be Honest with Yourself
- And from Pema Chödrön: How to Move Forward Once You’ve Hit Bottom.
I got a lot from reading these three posts. Maybe you will, too :).
Here’s a sample from the first, about how to make choices:
Shift your attention. Your attention, as you have learned in this life, is given to thinking about and understanding what to do next and how to do it. We would offer a much simpler and easier to apply guideline for you to follow, and one that will put you into far closer touch with the greater self that you are. Move your attention as often as possible to your heart. What does that mean? It means asking yourself, “how does that make me feel?’ “How will it make me feel?” “How do I feel about that?” “How can I feel better?”
Now the feelings that you have are a language in themselves you know. They are the way in which the greater self that you are speaks to you in each moment of your life. You have been conditioned over vast reaches of time to ignore this and proceed as if it were unimportant. But when you begin to pay attention, you will find that it will become what is referred to as The Still, Small Voice Within. It is the I Am. Listen to her. Listen to him. And don’t only listen. Find ways to act upon what you hear, what you feel.
A couple bits from the second:
You choose your priorities. There may be many reasons why you choose the priorities you do and why you do not choose the priorities you do not choose. It is best to be outright honest with yourself.
and
What obstacles do you have that you give in to?
The point here is not to kid yourself.
And from the third link:
And here is the advice Trungpa Rinpoche gave me. He said, “Well, it’s a lot like walking into the ocean, and a big wave comes and knocks you over. And you find yourself lying on the bottom with sand in your nose and in your mouth. And you are lying there, and you have a choice. You can either lie there, or you can stand up and start to keep walking out to sea.”
So, basically, you stand up, because the “lying there” choice equals dying.
Metaphorically lying there is what a lot of us choose to do at that point. But you can choose to stand up and start walking, and after a while another big wave comes and knocks you down.
You find yourself at the bottom of the ocean with sand in your nose and sand in your mouth, and again you have the choice to lie there or to stand up and start walking forward.
“So the waves keep coming,” he said. “And you keep cultivating your courage and bravery and sense of humor to relate to this situation of the waves, and you keep getting up and going forward.”
Trungpa then said, “After a while, it will begin to seem to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller. And they won’t knock you over anymore.”
That is good life advice.
meaningofstrife 