LIFE WISDOM
LIFE WISDOM comes out of experience--yours and that of others. The clips have been collected over time, words that made a difference. They come from contemporary WonderSpirit kind of resources. May they empower and inspire you.
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| Say WOW When you See a Bus
by Patti Digh
There is a pure and shining glory in the world of my toddler daughter, Tess. It is called a bus, a "big, big bus," to be exact.
For Tess, there is absolutely no greater joy, no surprise more full, no experience more fantastic than that moment of sheer ecstasy and full-body wonder when she sees a bus. Like somone with short-term memory-loss, each one is her first: "WOW!!! A BUSS!!!" she says with every fiber of her being. "A BIG, BIG BUS!" For someone so small, she has quite the lung power, a voice that carries for some distance, making heads turn in her wake....
Being around her is like getting a PhD in exhuberance.
Her's is a joy we all know--before we divide ourselves and wall off the part we keep to ourselves, the part we hide for fear of ridicule.
I once read of a man who went into a kindergarten class and asked how many of the kids could sing--every hand shot up immediately. How many could dance? Same response. How many could paint? Again, all hands shot up eagerly. He then went into a college classroom and asked the same questions. Did he get the same response? No. No hands went up. What happens in those years between five and eighteen to our sense of joy and possibility and personal command of the universe?
We learn to mask ourselves, our surprise and our glee, our sense of self-worth and self-loathing: Don't say you can paint, because someone else might paint better than you do and people will judge. Don't say you can sing, because you're no Johnny Cash. Don't say you can write if you're not on the New York Times best-seller list. Don't express your sheer wonder at the sight of a bus--that would mark you as unsophisticated and naive.
We don't often allow ourselves to be surprised as adults. Our unwillingness or inability to be wowed is exactly the problem--we equate being surprised with being unprepared and naive....
It is that sense of mystery and wonder and intense focus and fascination we lose as we age, that we need to recover, reclaim, own, cherish, and share....
37 Days: Do It Now Challenge
Give voice to that inner child of astonishment and surprise and sheer joy. Let's all agree to be willing to be surprised by the bus, the fire truck, the shell on the beach, the life.
Life is a Verb - 37 Days to Wake up,
Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally
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| Facing Reality
Something that is reality seems like it deserves your attention. “It’s true, after all, it’s true. Shouldn’t I document it? Shouldn’t I count it? Shouldn’t I make the statistics of it? Shouldn’t I tell others about it? Shouldn’t I warn my children about it?”
Shouldn’t we beat the drum of these things that we do not want, because they are reality, and therefore make them more reality?
And, we ask, why would you do that? Why not look out into the database of creation and selectively sift the realities that you want to replicate, and beat those drums? And your answer is never a good enough one. It is: “We do it because it’s reality. We do it because somebody else did it.”
If we were standing in your physical shoes, we would not let the reality of something be our basis for attention; we would let the feeling-vibration of it be our basis. So we would start saying to anyone who was interested in knowing what we were about, “If it feels good, I give it my full attention; if it doesn’t, I don’t look at it at all.”
And you know what they’ll say? “You should face reality!” So answer back, “I do—I do it all the time. I’ve just become a more selective sifter of the reality that I face. Because I’ve begun to discover that whatever reality I’m facing; whatever reality I’m talking about, thinking about, remembering, regurgitating; whatever reality I’m making statistics of; whatever reality I’m holding for very long in my vibration, becomes my own reality. And I’ve become particular about the realities that I replicate in my experience because I’ve discovered that I can create reality. I can create reality! I can create reality—and I can choose the reality that I’m creating.”
Oh, we love saying that to you. You are creators, and you can create anything that you want, but there’s a better way of saying it: You can and will create anything that you are giving your attention to.
Esther and Jerry Hicks
(The Teachings of Abraham)
Ask and It is Given
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