Tag Archives: Oprah

Inspiration

How To Stop Deflecting Miracles

Waterfall Is there someone in your life you aren’t completely satisfied with? Is there someone you are holding something against?

When I asked myself these questions the answers surprised me. The people in my life with whom a small sliver of dissatisfaction sometimes remains, people who I might want to do something for me or act differently, are generally not unfriendly acquaintances. Rather, they are those I love, and have the deepest connections to.

A grudge is the continued non-forgiveness of another human being, whether it is for something they did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say, or for their inability to make you feel whole and happy. Allowing yourself to look clearly at your non-forgiveness, without self-judgment, is the first and vital step to releasing yourself from the negative consequences of unconsciously wanting others to be different.

When I remind myself that fear and resentment, in whatever forms they appear, prevent my life’s purpose from unfolding, a choice is presented. In this instance I can make a new decision and choose to love being in the moment I am in. Reminding myself that this decision causes a chain reaction of miracles makes this choice all the easier.

The brilliance of this Super Soul Sunday video with Marianne Williamson is that she not only defines miracles and how they occur, but it is also made clear that allowing every individual to be on their own life path is essential to their highest potential as well as to yours. It is so easy to resent where people are at on their journeys, even more so in situations where they disagree with or harbor resentment towards you. But dealing with the consequences of your own resentment is not easy. Knowing that your inability to completely accept other people can prevent you from moving forward towards the miraculous makes the choice to love a more accessible reality.

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consciousness

How To Complain

Have you ever let go of a persistent unhelpful pattern of thought?  As I’ve attempted to let go of automatic thought patterns I’ve noticed that my mind has no shortage of other patterns that work just as efficiently as fuel for thought.

One of the easiest thought patterns to get trapped in is complaining.  Complaining can be effortless, especially when it involves a situation where a correction really needs to be made.  But situations can be righted in ways that don’t create personal blame, negative energy, and food for more autopilot thinking.  A helpful question to ask before complaining about a situation is, “Am I taking this personally?”  Right away a space is created between your reaction and your conscious self.

I’ve been too excited about the rebroadcast of Oprah and Tolle’s A New Earth web-series, and I love the following video because it so clearly lays out the two ways to complain, their consequences, and how to end up with your desired outcome.

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Ego

“How To Cure An Addiction To Drama”

Does drama seem to follow you wherever you go?  Do you just want a moment of peace, but find that it is ever elusive?  In my own life I can see moments where unhappiness and drama reigned supreme, and while I genuinely wanted peace, the ego within me lived for and on those dramatic moments.

When situations seem out of control, and your reactions seem like the only appropriate responses to such craziness, take a step back and witness your sense of self becoming all wrapped up in those outer situations.  Feel the need to react, and watch the tirade of thoughts that follow. This creates a small space that is enough room for your true self that only wants peace to shine through and provide clarity and equanimity.

I’m so excited that OWN is re-broadcasting the webcast of Oprah and Eckhart Tolle’s chapter by chapter discussion of A New Earth.  One of the great gems of wisdom from these discussions is this clarifying piece on how to cure an addiction to drama.  If you witness yourself complaining, blaming, or discussing the shortcomings of others, (and really who doesn’t), this video is a breath of fresh air:

 

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Inspiration

The Best Advice For Helping A Suffering Friend

How can you alleviate the suffering of those around you?  When I find that someone is suffering I immediately want to help, I want to “fix” their problems.  But if you’ve ever had someone jump in with advice when you were telling them of your suffering, you know that their advice, while sincere, didn’t diminish your pain.   In the video below Thich Nhat Hanh shares the best advice I’ve ever heard for how to help those around you who are in pain.

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consciousness

What I Know About You

Katie, Joey, and GregA few weeks ago I heard a speaker on education, but instead of learning about adolescent behavior I was taught a lesson in the behavior of my own mind.  A person in the back of the auditorium had been chatting throughout the session, and my mind was not okay with it.  Instead of focusing on that which I had showed up for, my thoughts were preoccupied with judgement.  Even afterwards when the event had passed and was no more than a thought in my mind, I chose to keep the memory of a person I deemed “rude” alive through further internal judgement, not to mention commiserating with my friend who had also noticed this slight disruption.

In my last post I celebrated the incomprehensible mystery that is every individual human being.  When my mind was busy judging a person for behavior I felt was unacceptable I was operating completely unaware of this intrinsic truth.

How do we foster compassion for other human beings when it is so easy to reduce them into nothing more than thoughts in our heads?  The following video with author Karen Armstrong, on Super Soul Sunday, offers concrete tools for experiencing the depth of inherent mystery within all people:

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Inspiration

“Follow The Aliveness”

Waterfall by Peter Spero

Photo By Peter Spero

I love to sing and dance.  I sing and dance alone, I sing and dance around friends, I even love to sing and dance in front of an audience.  But thus far in life I have not created a career out of singing and dancing.  While I love to perform on stage, what I truly enjoy is expressing myself through music, whether someone is watching or not.  As a teenager, throughout all of the normal trials and tribulations I experienced going through high school, what carried me through was the thought, “As long as I can play guitar I’ll be okay.”  No matter what life situation I encountered, I experienced joy when I was playing music.

By no means am I a great musician.  Everyday I enjoy listening to musicians whose talent and skills will always be far superior to my musical capabilities.  Does this take some of the enjoyment away from singing and dancing?  Not in the slightest.  On the contrary, I am truly thankful for the musical gifts more talented artists share with the world for our enjoyment.

At the end of the day, I can still sing with my family.  I can always dance around my own living room.  In these instances of action I truly experience life.  Attaching my identity to the thought of “being a singer” or “being an artist” pales in comparison to that felt present moment experience.

This video of Mark Nepo is truly liberating.  If you have a passion going unfulfilled, or are being blocked from your own creative expression, Mark offers a freeing perspective:

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spirituality

Don’t Go There…

A lot of things get to me.  If you’ve read past posts on this blog you’ll know a handful of those things.  Did someone say bugs?  Being “rubbed the wrong way” is a common human experience.  Someone says or does something that really gets you angry, or brings up past pain.  Then there are the smaller annoyances that easily damper our mood.  A few examples spring to mind: traffic, cleaning up after people, being ignored.  

One of the most prominent downers for me is tone of voice.  When someone speaks to me in, what I perceive to be, a negative tone of voice I easily feel hurt or offended.  Michael Singer, author of The Seat of the Soul, calls these our “thorns.”  What, if any, is the purpose of these thorns?  How do you get rid of them?  

The first step comes from realizing that, no matter how truly disturbing the situation is, being disturbed is in no way helpful to you.  Feeling disturbed doesn’t change situations.  Solutions arise when you feel free and spacious within, when your energy is high and can find like pathways to match its own positive frequency.  This doesn’t mean ignoring your feelings.  On the contrary, it means relaxing and allowing yourself to feel the negative energy fully, letting it pass through your awareness until it dissipates.  What are your thorns? This conversation between Michael Singer and Oprah is infinitely helpful in learning what to do about our thorns:

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Inspiration

Personality or Prisonality

Is your personality a prison?  Do your likes and dislikes, wants and fears, opinions and attitudes interfere with your life? 

I’ve never been a morning person; I would rather stay up late and sleep late.  In my life there have been countless examples of that aspect of my personality keeping me from experiences I would have loved.  During the summer in which I “woke up,” experienced a new level of being present, I suddenly realized that I could be a morning person if I wanted to.  The only thing keeping me from engaging in countless early morning activities was the fear of the voice in my head that would be furious to be thinking at 7:00am, and would ceaselessly continue its complaints until I was back in bed.  Since I had stopped taking that voice so seriously, I realized that I could be a morning person if I so chose to be. I joined a choir that met at 8:30am on Sundays.  This might sound ridiculous to all those who wake up at 3am to get to work at 5am everyday, but for me 8:30am on a weekend was never even an option. 

Are you not a morning person?  Do you dislike waiting?  Can you not stand loud restaurants?  What are the parts of your personality that are keeping you from experiencing the fullness of life and your true authentic power?  In his book, The Seat Of The Soul, Gary Zukav defines authentic power as, “when the personality comes fully to serve the energy of the soul.”   In this video Gary and Oprah discuss where your authentic power comes from and how it can change your reality:

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consciousness

“Stop Trying to Read Other People’s Minds”

Rolling CloudsHas someone ever told you an assumption they had about you, and you thought, “Where did that even come from?”  Several times throughout my life friends have regaled to me their thoughts about my actions and motivations that had nothing to do with my actual experience.  When you’re on this end of an assumption, it is easy to see how inaccurate and unnecessary assumptions are.  At worst, assumptions can be destructive and hurtful.

It is a lot harder to notice assumptions when you’re the one assuming.  I am positive I make several unconscious assumptions every day.  For example, when I’m choosing a TV show to watch at night I’ll think, “My boyfriend doesn’t want to watch this.”  Or when I’m talking to a friend I might think, “They don’t want to hear this piece of advice or story that I have.”  Assumptions are like a cancer, they multiply without discretion, until they destroy whatever they were attempting to create.

In this video from Super Soul Sunday Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, lays out the roots of assumption and how to control those thoughts:

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Ego

“Scarcity Culture”

airplaneWhat decisions does fear make for you?  How do you react when you feel like you’re not enough?  The ego lives life through you by making you believe you are the ego.  That you are not safe, that your existence is precarious.  It makes you believe others’ perceptions of you, along with objects and thoughts, validate your being.

Of course, this is all true of the ego!  The ego is the mind when it attaches itself to objects, and thought forms.  It needs that attachment for its existence.  Without it, you would take back your life, and the ego would cease.  What would a life free of fear, judgment, and attachment look like?

The “Scarcity Culture” that Dr. Brené Brown discusses with Oprah, on this episode of Super Soul Sunday, is an example of a world created by the ego.  A world created by attachment, fear, and separation.

 

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