The Daily Guru

[caressa]

Be aware of your motives

"Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything."

-- Anthony de Mello

"Remember, most of the things you think you need are ego trips designed
to bolster your image and your perception of security.... You'll waste
a lot of energy satisfying your ego only to find that, as soon as it's
got what it wants, it ignores all your efforts and promptly nails
another list of demands to your forehead. The ego will always try to force
you to slave for its vision. I wouldn't stand for that BS if I were
you."

-- Stuart Wilde

"We have no need to teach pure motives to the mind. All that is
necessary to make the mind pure is to undo the negative conditioning to which
it has been subjected; then we will be left with pure, unconditioned
awareness."

-- Eknath Easwaran

[caressa]

Travel with awareness

“...focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in
finishing an activity but in doing it.”

-- Greg Anderson

Travelling brings me wonderful opportunities to build awareness. When I
get into the car, for example, I set an intention to drive well and
stay alert to what other drivers and pedestrians are doing. When I
realize that my mind has drifted and I’ve slipped into autopilot, I gently
bring my focus back to the present.

It’s also a time when I can pay attention to my reactions. Does
irritation arise when someone drives too quickly or slowly, or when I get
stopped by a yellow light? Being aware of the irritation gives me the
opportunity to acknowledge and then release it. If I choose to, I can be at
peace anywhere – even on the road!

“Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going
to fast -- you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”

-- Eddie Cantor

[caressa]

Opportunity

“We are continually faced with great opportunities which are
brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.”

-- Margaret Mead

“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”

-- Francis Bacon

"What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can
wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no
knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door
leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to
pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your
personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live -- with
your self-respect alive and growing."

-- Maxwell Maltz

[caressa]

A new view

A friend shared this moment of awakening. She was moaning, “I never get
anything done.” Her companion replied, “Perhaps you never get
EVERYTHING done.” Oh… of course!

A shift in perspective can bring both understanding and release.

“Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned -- not to
see what is not.”

-- Maria Mitchell

[caressa]

A new view

A friend shared this moment of awakening. She was moaning, “I never get
anything done.” Her companion replied, “Perhaps you never get
EVERYTHING done.” Oh… of course!

A shift in perspective can bring both understanding and release.

“Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned -- not to
see what is not.”

-- Maria Mitchell

[caressa]

Did you find joy?

"The future, higher evolution will belong to those who live in joy, who
share joy, and who spread joy."

-- Torkom Saraydarian

Joy, as the energy of love, is the highest vibration on this planet.
Everything in the universe is energy; it can be measured and reduced to
vibrational frequencies. It’s a universal law that as we think and feel
we vibrate, and as we vibrate we attract. When we are in the high joy
vibration, we attract what is for our greater good.

The Ancient Egyptians saw Joy as a sacred responsibility. They believed
that upon their death, the God Osiris would ask them two questions:
"Did you bring Joy?" and "Did you find Joy?" Those who answered ‘yes’
could continue their journey into the afterlife.

For at least the next week or two, ask yourself these two questions
each and every day: Did I bring joy? Did I find joy?

"Man loves because he is Love. He seeks Joy, for he is Joy. He thirsts
for God for he is composed of God and he cannot exist without Him."

-- Sathya Sai Baba

[caressa]

Imprisoned by your thoughts?

“Problems exist only in the human mind.”

-- Anthony de Mello

For most of us, there’s always a long ‘to do’ list. That’s a fact.

And it’s easy to feel victimized. ‘Poor me!’ That’s not a fact – that’s
a choice.

Experiment with your life to explore how much your mind is your jailer.
Simply let go of the ‘oh woe’ kinds of thoughts. Silence your mind. Be
right here, right now. Decide what you will do now and do it, without
buying in to the mind’s sob story. When one task is done, you can then
choose another.

Allowing the mind to agonize about the size of the ‘to do’ list just
makes us tired before we even get started. It doesn’t have to be this
way.

“Don't water your weeds.”

-- Harvey Mackay

[caressa]

A new look at old attitudes

“I can change. I can live out my imagination instead of my memory. I
can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past.”

-- Stephen Covey

I was eating lunch with a friend who shared that she disliked one of
the vegetables on my plate and hadn’t eaten any since childhood. I
suggested that sometimes our tastes change and maybe she could give it
another try. She did, and to her surprise, she enjoyed it. Her world became a
little richer as she opened to new possibilities.

Is there something in your life you might be willing to give another
try?

“Change. It has the power to uplift, to heal, to stimulate, surprise,
open new doors, bring fresh experience and create excitement in life.

Certainly it is worth the risk.”

-- Leo Buscaglia


The Daily Guru

[caressa]

Motivational Message:

LOOK AT THINGS AS THEY CAN BE


Your range of available choices right now has no limits.
The only limits you have are in your mind.
You've got it in you to succeed.
Just make up your mind and stick with it.

You weren't born with any limits on your powers
or any set limits to your capacity.
At any moment, you have more possibilities than you can act upon.

Imagine your possibilities and your vision expands.
Capture your dreams in your mind and your life becomes full.
Reach out and touch the limits of your being in your mind.

You can, because you think you can.

[caressa]

MOTIVATIONAL MESSAGE

IT'S NEVER OVER UNTIL IT'S OVER


The power to hold on in spite of everything, to endure,
this is the quality of a winner.
Your greatest glory is not in never failing,
but in rising every time you fail.

It's your constant and determined effort
that will eventually break down all resistance
and sweep all the barriers before you.
Persistence means taking pains to overcome every obstacle,
to do all that's necessary to reach your goal.

All great achievements require time.
Endurance is the crowning quality of success.

SPIRITUAL MESSAGE

Do you own your life?

"The meaning of life is to give life meaning."

-- Ken Hudgins

When we own our lives, we accept what we've inherited and the
experiences we hold in our memories. We also claim our right to create new
conditions if we're not happy with what's come before. We assume
responsibility for changing what does not suit us. We acknowledge our own special
talents and skills, and truly comprehend our right to enjoy the
journey. In short, we embrace the meaning and purpose, the mystery and the
beauty of our lives.

Do you feel that you own your life at the moment?

"I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for
myself... and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part."

-- Shirley MacLaine

"Life is too short to be little."

-- Benjamin Disraeli

"Every man dies, but not every man lives...."

-- Garth Brooks

[caressa]

PROGRESS BEGINS ONE STEP AT A TIME


There is no sudden leap to greatness.
Your success lies in doing day by day.
Your upward reach will come from working well and carefully.

Good work done little by little becomes great work.
The house of success is built brick by brick.

Adopt the pace of nature. The secret is patience.
A bottle fills drop by drop.

[caressa]

YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK

Whatever you plant in your subconscious mind
and nourish every day with conviction and emotion
will one day become a reality.

Constant repetition carries conviction.
Repeat something often enough and it will start to become you.
A change in what you tell yourself
will result in a change in your behavior.

What you impress upon your mind,
you'll inevitably become.
Self suggestion will make you master of yourself.

[caressa]

What inspires you?

“It is never about how good your voice is; it is only about feeling the
urge to sing, and then having the courage to do it with the voice you
are given.”

-- Katie in ‘True to Form’ by Elizabeth Berg

How often have you allowed fear and your inner critic to stop you from
doing something you were inspired to do?

Helen Keller said, "Life is either a grand adventure or nothing.” When
we allow fear and criticism to stop us in our tracks, we give up that
grand adventure. What a waste!

“Be an all-out, not a hold-out.”

-- Norman Vincent Peale

[caressa]

DON'T BELIEVE IN MIRACLES, DEPEND ON THEM

You don't need an explanation for everything.
There are such things as miracles,
events for which there are no ready explanations.

Future knowledge may explain these events quite simply.
Any form of sufficiently advanced technology
can be quite indistinguishable from magic
when it's introduced for the first time.

Seeing, hearing, feeling are all miracles
as well as each part of you.
Seeing is not always believing.
You know much more than you understand.

Have the vision to see invisible things.

[caressa]

Growing ourselves

“The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what
direction we are moving.”

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

We are all on a life-long journey. It is a search for who we are and
why we are here. It is a journey that expands our consciousness.

There is an urge within each of us to move forward in life. It is an
urge to become more whole, to find more meaning, and eventually to help
others. It is human nature to strive for a sense of well-being.

We all go through the same growth cycles, though our experiences may
appear entirely different. By understanding the process of personal and
spiritual growth, we can work more effectively with the process, instead
of fighting and resisting it.

“We can learn to be the catalysts for our own change.”

-- Sarah Ban Breathnach

[caressa]

Changing consciousness

Why should we care about raising our consciousness? When we set an
intention to change and grow, we begin a journey in which we move from
coping, to learning and finally, to the enjoyment of living.

Here are some of the shifts we move through:

From dependence on the clock, to charting a direction, to
moment-to-moment guidance from intuition.

From doing things right, to doing the right things, to being your true
self.

From lack of self discipline to having personal willpower to serving
divine will.

From being out of control, to being in control, to trusting and letting
go of the need to control.

With each step, we experience greater freedom, fulfillment and joy.
Worth going for, don?t you think?

?Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience,
independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human
freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.?

-- Stephen R. Covey

[caressa]

Awareness through love and fear

“There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first
consciousness of love -- the first fluttering of its silken wings -- the first
rising sound and breath of that wind which is so soon to sweep through
the soul, to purify or to destroy.”

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Our inner journey takes us through the following stages relative to
love and fear:

1. UNCONSCIOUS LOVE: When we are born, we exist as pure love but we are
not conscious of our love.

2. UNCONSCIOUS FEAR: Our souls have set the stage for our evolution. As
we grow, unconscious fears arise in our personalities that draw
experiences to us that wound us.

3. CONSCIOUS FEAR: Our wounds bring pain and suffering that enable us
to become conscious of our fears.

4. CONSCIOUS LOVE: When we've suffered enough pain, we are motivated to
move through our fears to consciously experience the love that
supports all.

“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in
the recognition.”

-- Alexander Smith

[caressa]

Heal the past

"What you bring forth out of yourself from the inside will save you.
What you do not bring forth out of yourself from the inside will destroy
you."

-- Gospel of Thomas

We can transform painful memories by re-imagining them from the soul’s
perspective of love and meaning.

Andrew Schneider says that all experiences have the purpose of serving
the soul. An experience in the past blocked us because our fear at the
time distorted our perception of what happened. To transform this
limiting experience, we must bring what was then unconscious into the soul’s
realm through consciousness.

We can do this by following these steps:

1. RECALL the past experience that might inhibit us.

2. OWN the experience (no judgment, blame, etc.).

3. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for it and the consequences (i.e., the
experience was determined by my subjective perception of what occurred, dictated
by my lack of wholeness -- specifically my fears).

4. GIVE IT MEANING (the soul was attempting to gain some kind of
mastery or skill, but we didn’t know that at the time).

5. RE-IMAGINE it from the perspective of soul consciousness (showing
its higher purpose).

"Letting go of our suffering is the hardest work we will ever do. It is
also the most fruitful. To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way
-- in the newness of each moment where all is possible and nothing is
limited to the old."

-- Stephen Levine

[caressa]

Journey home

"Everything seeks its source."

-- a universal principle

Our spiritual journey unfolds through 2 stages.

1. THE PATH OF PERSONALITY - We arise from the one source of all, to be
born as individuals in a world of form. In this physical world, we
experience separation and limitation. This is a time of immersion in a
world of effects, form, ego, distortion, illusion and pain.

2. THE PATH OF SOUL - When we have experienced enough pain, we find our
way back home to our spiritual source. We let go of the illusion of
separation to embrace unity and wholeness. We work with cause instead of
effects. Paradoxically, it's only with a strong and healthy personality
that we become capable of expressing soul.

WHERE ARE YOU ON YOUR PATH? Are you struggling to do more and have
more? Are you aware of your soul challenging you to open to the bigger
picture of life?

"Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego,
garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden
spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or
attended to - you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide."

-- Sogyal Rinpoche

================================

Change

"I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with
better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is
easier than change."

-- Jim Rohn

"Slowness to change usually means fear of the new."

-- Philip Crosby

?Just as the tumultuous chaos of a thunderstorm brings a nurturing rain
that allows life to flourish, so too in human affairs times of
advancement are preceded by times of disorder. Success comes to those who can
weather the storm.?

-- I Ching No. 3

?If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become
different yourself.?

-- Norman Vincent Peale

===========================================

Believe in your own success

"What you believe yourself to be, you are."

-- Claude M. Bristol

Do you believe, deep down inside of you, that you can succeed in what
you want to do?

Beliefs are strong, and they have the power to attract what is believed
to us. If we doubt our ability to succeed, if we in fact believe we
WON'T succeed, then sure enough, that?s what will happen.

What do you believe about yourself? You have the power to change your
beliefs, and that will change your outcome. Set goals you believe you
can accomplish. Your beliefs will shape your actions. As you achieve
these goals, you'll begin to believe you are capable of succeeding and of
doing even more.

"It is better to believe than to disbelieve; in so doing you bring
everything to the realm of possibility."

-- Albert Einstein

"Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really
believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution
paves the way to solution."

-- Dr. David Schwartz

[caressa]

Why do you want money?

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”

-- Henry David Thoreau

Money is nothing more than a medium of exchange. While we may want more
money to get out of debt or to have more cash to play with, we want to
set goals that represent more than just making money. And so we might
ask, “What do I want money to do for me?”

Look to the values beneath money. What is happiness to you? What
things, qualities, service, purpose do you value in life?

"If all the gold in the world were melted down into a solid cube, it
would be about the size of an eight room house. If a man got possession
of all that gold -- billions of dollars worth -- he could not buy a
friend, character, peace of mind, clear conscience or a sense of eternity."


-- Charles F. Bunning