The Daily Guru '08

[caressa]

Value just being

"To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious."


-- Samuel Butler

Many of us have been taught to believe that we are valued for what we
do, not just for who we are. ‘Doing’ is important, but to keep life in
balance, we also need time to just ‘be.’

Henry David Thoreau expressed this so well in Walden Pond:

"There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the
present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand.

"Sometimes, on a summer morning, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise
till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and
sumacs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my
west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

"I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far
better than any work of the hands would have been."

[caressa]

How are you sabotaging yourself?

"If you play it safe in life you've decided that you don't want to grow
any more."

-- Shirley Hufstedler

How are you sabotaging your potential for change?

We unconsciously use defence mechanisms to shield us from situations we
perceive to be scary or painful. A part of you may want to grow and
change, but another part may be resisting because change always moves you
into new territory in your thinking and emotions.

If you find you are getting anxious, fearful, angry, frustrated,
dismissive or unmotivated, then defence mechanisms are at work. Watch for
them and know them to be signs of fear that wants to hold you back. Then
courageously move through them.

"I have never been contained except I made the prison."

-- Mary Evans