DARLINGS

What are the darlings in your life?  I’m not referring to people or things that you hold dear.  I’m referring to beliefs that don’t serve you any longer, sacred cows, that you’re not even sure why you keep around any longer.    

Killing the darlings is an expression writers use to do away with anything that doesn’t serve the story.  It’s a productive idea to apply to our lives as well.  It’s about doing away with limiting beliefs that hold you back.  Bury them, set them on fire if you have to, there’s no good reason to keep them around anymore.

When it comes to our  “people darlings”  - please don’t literally do away with them -  but if they’re not contributing or supporting your growth, then to the curb they must go.

PRECIOUS

Money simply is.  It’s just a tool.  There is nothing precious about money.  Yet in our society it has come to define a person’s intrinsic worth.  It is a grossly dysfunctional way to live. 

YIELD

We do so unconsciously perhaps, but as the summer winds down and we feel the first chill in the air, our mood changes to reflection.  It could be what affects us with depression at the close of the year that has less to do with the changing of the seasons and more to do with the disappointment we feel at the paltry yield of our year.

If we began the year with high hopes of making changes but find ourselves, nine months later, at exactly the same place we started from, then we stand atop a very slippery slope.

PERFECT

All this talk about being perfect doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do in the being better human beings department.  Being ‘perfect’ has nothing to do with being blameless, or that our every act is beyond reproach.  The reality is that while our spirits are perfect, our behaviour oftentimes, is not.

That’s the distinction between the perfection of loving ourselves unconditionally and the not so perfect choices we often make.  Our choices are not who we are.  Choices are changeable.  Our inherent perfection is not. 

REMEMBERING

Here’s what I have felt perhaps all my life but had no words to articulate until I was reminded of this.  In the Epistemology, Plato says that  knowledge (how we know things), is innate, we have always known everything that is critical, deep in our souls, and learning is simply an act of remembering.

If nothing else this is the definition of authenticity.  Of living an authentic life.  When we sit still and allow our spirit to remember what we have always known is most important, we are tapping into that innate knowledge. In fact our soul is trying to remind us of that all the time, it’s called instinct, it’s call a gut reaction.  That’s the knowledge that Plato is talking about.  

When we listen to what our instinct is telling us, from who we’re hanging out with to what we’re putting into our bodies, then we are remembering what is innate, we are listening to our soul.  We will always feel right and fulfilled if we remember this.

STARSTUFF

I believe this with all my ‘starstuff’ being.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”~ Carl Sagan, Cosmos

FEAR-RETARDANT

I find fear fascinating.  Particularly how it can be manipulated and be used to manipulate.  How quickly it can be stirred up and how resistant it is to dousing.  That it uses virtually no kindling at all, in fact it can be ignited by pure fiction and amplified by amateurs.  It has an egalitarian nature that is as affective en mass as it is on an individual.  It froths and lathers either equally into an unrecognizable inhuman thing.  

Like fire, that has no equal in terms of destruction, fear loses some of its power when it is understood.  Only by understanding the mechanics of it can we make ourselves fear-retardant enough to pass through it.