Today is going to be a good day. It is. There is no question. We all know that firmly.
Whether the day is filled with joyful reward or even if awful events transpire within it, we can still silently and wordlessly inform ourselves that the day will absolutely be faced by the strong and capable person that is always alive within us all. But…
We must actively conjure this version of our Self. We must feel our posture rise, and our breathing deepen. We must feel a sense of energy flowing through us. As physicists confirm, we are literally made of energy. Let us get it all pointed in one direction. Toward whatever life demands or offers.
Thoughts about limitations are irrelevant when 100% is involved. Today we are sure that, with whatever resources we have available to us, and in whatever balance is required, we will meet the day with the clarity that goes with giving the universe 100%. That is a small price for to pay for a sense of living with powerful direction and purpose.
Even if we experience events like frustration or anger, we must accept that sometimes we are the student and sometimes we are the teacher. If the universe needs us to be the villain for a scene or two, then we must accept that these events happen in all lives and move on with our strength intact.
Our job is not to use our little thoughts to question the wisdom of an infinite universe. Conscious, word-based, me-centered egotistical thinking reduces our sense of flow, which we experience as something having gone wrong for us. But…
Healthy rivers include both eddies and rapids. A flowing river moves past those in their own time, without complaint.
Breathe deeply. Let us live today with our souls open. Today, we make enjoying the experience of life a priority over liking the specifics of the day. That through-line is what allows our power to engage with our lives. Today let’s make life itself an active pursuit.
Deep breath. Let it out slowly. Focus. Breathe deep again and power up. Let us begin.
peace, s
Following a serious childhood brain injury Scott McPherson unwittingly spent his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and the self. This made him as strange to others as they were to him. Seeing the self-harm people created with their own overthinking, Scott dedicated part of his life to helping others live with greater awareness. He is currently a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB, where he finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.
A lot of the reason that people feel like they may not be doing the right thing in life is because they have pre-constructed the concept of success in their imagination and what they imagine isn’t an action, it’s a definition or result. While a healthy person is merely fascinated by what they’re doing, someone lost and uncertain will be trying to raise their value, status or power in some way, shape or form.
The truth is, fame and fortune are not at all what makes a good life. Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize almost because he was a famous iconoclast, too dedicated to his own curiosity to ever get anywhere had it not been for the fluke that his curiosity primarily landed in one field (while he was well respected in many). But if his passions had not been in physics right while physics was literally exploding (he worked on the atomic bomb), his life may have been much less notable. Likewise, most truly great lives are not noticeable to anyone but the people living them, and those closest to them.
Just as I had cared about the big exciting things I was doing, she was caring deeply about the smaller more intimate details of life. Where I might be inspiring or informative, she offered comfort and support. She earned the love of her family throughout her life. She was enthusiastic about her work while she was a worker, and as a homemaker she was one of those dream Moms who always has a warm smile and fresh homemade food. She was also a very dedicated and loving parent and stand-in parent to her own child and many others.
A lot of my students come to me with an issue or a problem. In most cases, their attraction to solving that issue will cause them to see most of the lessons through that lens. But every now and then I get a more philosophical student, who comes with a problem but quickly finds themselves, like me, fascinating by these very ideas themselves.
They were sitting in a coffee shop. The decidedly unsettled woman twitched a statement his direction. “I can’t paint.”
That last statement shot the eyebrows of her companion up. He was thoughtful while she fidgeted even more, checking her phone. He broke her attention away from it when he spoke. “What if it’s not balls?”
“Can’t be. I’m sitting here. I’m not doing anything. I’ve stopped the flow of the balls.”
Many people today complain of being incapacitated by their choices and their search for inspiration, meaning and purpose. This discomfort arises not from being lost, but from being confused.
Life we demand that we reinvent ourselves at least once every decade. Maybe it’s from healthy to cancer patient, maybe it’s from a parent of young adults to an empty nester, but whatever it is you will be lost at first as your brain attempts to adapt to its new role. We aren’t failing when we feel that, we’re just walking along blind, following a wall by feel. And where does this wall lead? Forward.
There is a constant communication system between us and our soul that can be represented by science as the chemistry associated with our feelings. As most of you know from reading this blog or other sources, that system gets overwhelmed and confused by a constant stream of ego-based personal thoughts.
Stephen Hawking could have just been a depressed kid who did next to nothing. That was what the odds said. That would be his ego’s argument. But rather than self-discuss those odds with himself, Hawking took that time and mental energy and instead learned about science, and in doing so he became one of the most famous in history. There’s a huge lesson for all of us in the example of his life. Undoubtedly the majority of people at the time would never have believed that he could have achieved what his soul lead him to achieve.
Much like the film 
Jack Nicholson is living the life we all believe we want. He has wealth, power, and the beautiful companions he surrounds himself with are easy to come by. But he’s dealing with a potentially fatal disease regardless, and all of his control of the hospital cannot help. Meanwhile Freeman feels like he’s dying with his dreams left inside of him, unlived. Nicholson has money, Freeman has dreams, and so despite the laments of Freeman’s wife and family, the two men set off together to tick off the items on their respective bucket lists.
Money, travel, achievement nor power can hope to bring us the peace, connection and value that comes from our relationships with those around us. As the old saying goes, they don’t put luggage racks on hearses. We all only have so much time. Sure, there’s things we want. But how many of us would trade the value already in our lives to get it?
Our egos have a desire for predictability precisely because they are created by the fixed ways of thinking that we have been subconsciously taught. Any impediment to our original direction is always seen in direct relation to that direction. It might create glee because we compare it favourably to our expectations, or it may create suffering via our unmet expectations.
You’re busy trying to maintain or improve your life. Maybe you’re physically busy but a lack of time to plan means that you never get to arrange the moves that would save you. Or maybe you have too much time to plan and you procrastinate through over-consideration; you literally think yourself into non-action. Either way, it doesn’t seem like you’re moving forward. Or are you?
Just as their are agonised people in every situation, there are also very contented people living in almost every circumstance you can imagine, including suffering from illness and living in poverty. The fact that that is true doesn’t have to prevent us from being motivated to easing suffering, but it does point to the fact that the externals of our lives are not what dictates a good or bad life experience. You can’t make decisions about your life that build a perfect life.
Don’t do this to beat yourself up as though you made a mistake though. Do this and truly contemplate that the thoughts you’re having today are just that; thoughts. They are now judgments about then. They are not reality, reality changes as you change. Even the past.