Be True to Yourself!

Have you ever traveled down a road where you thought you knew it well only to find yourself lost?  Have you ever trusted so much to find that the trust you gave was never taken seriously and all your convictions seemed tested beyond the threshold of your personal limits?  Have you ever wondered why God would want to take you to a realm you never wanted?  Have you ever questioned your worth based upon the personal acceptance of others?

Have you ever asked God why?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, then you have been engaged in the human experience to feel heartbreak and pain.  Of course, the level of anguish and despair will vary dependent upon the depth of our individual feelings and the capability of our hearts to really love.

Today, I write to announce to you, the one who truly has custody of your heart is you!

It is December 31^st, the after Christmas sales are winding down, store decorations replaced by all things Valentines Day.  For those experiencing heartbreak what an emotional jump, as tonight we long to kiss that special person on the cusp of the midnight hour and tomorrow January 1^st seems so empty compared to the anticipation leading to the turning of the calendar.  We feel older and experience unexplainable internal feelings of vacancy within our heart. This year brings with it a blank slate and maybe for this reason the New Year seems to carry with it an icy chill.  But wait!  Does it really have to be this way?  Instead with a full list of goals and daring do, maybe the turning of calendar can bring with it a new white hot heat of anticipation warming our souls, melting our pain, dissipating our memories and stirring up our imaginations.  We decide to live rather than to die, there is no reason for personal senescence, we must choose to detach ourselves from despair and choose happiness and life.

We cannot help the bad decisions of others, we must choose to live brilliantly!

Brilliant living is to choose to soar high above in the blue skies, to resolve to live free with great expectations.  It is to choose to know who you are, the best of who you are and to never let anyone stymie your plans, feelings or the acknowledgment of your capabilities.  Brilliant living is to choose to make new friends, to express the feelings of your inner soul and blanket your special friends with the incredible warmth of your love and to be your most expressive self.  Living a reserved life is for the timid, living a brilliant life is for the bold!  And today, of all days, you choose to be brilliant and bold!  Kiss everyone, why not!  Who says you can’t?  Only the foolish choose to live in a blind stupor of self imposed social morays that limit rather than expand our personalities. 

This is a good year to grow and become who you want to be by deciding to be that person now.  There is no reason to create a gap from where you think you are compared to where you want to be.  There is no reason to lie to yourself and feel you are unable to reach for what you desire.  You are capable, full of incredible talents and abilities, live an uncommon life, create personal momentum, and live an exciting life where of all people - you cheer yourself from one victory to another and no one is capable of stopping you!       
  

Whatever you want, whatever you desire is within the realm of possibilities. What do you seek in your life?  Peace of Mind, Health, Wealth, Love, Confidence, Happiness… It is all there awaiting you for your taking.  Choose to live freer, free from limiting thoughts, release yourself from the pain of the past and discover the newer improved higher version of you.  You are beautiful, wonderful, one of God’s greatest creations and He is so pleased.  When God sees you He smiles, and when you look in the mirror… you should too!

Today is a good day to pray!  Pray with shouts of joy, thanksgiving and praise.  Pray for release from hurt and pain, pray for personal strength, pray for others and ask Him to fill their lives with joy, peace and love.  Ask God to supply you with an extra measure of joy, peace, love, compassion, kindness, gentleness, humility, self-control and patience, and He will.  Ask God to bless your enemies, bless your friends, co-workers and family.  Ask Him to place His hand upon you and lead you and guide you to a new destiny, your personal promised land filled with milk and honey.  And rather than wander aimlessly, know you have already arrived.  Close your eyes engaging your imagination and feel the love of God invading your soul driving out all fear filling you with His love and the confidence that comes with it.

Today is your day, today is your life, the voice of your ancestors echo live now, persevere, live brilliantly, live boldly, love with total abandonment, be true to your soul.  This is your day, make yourself proud, do not fear, live with faith and be yourself.  If you are kind, sensitive and loving, be that way…. Live with passion, choose to grow, the only limit in your life is truly yourself.  Be everything God created you to be!    

Intimacy

What is it we all long for in our lives?  It is to be truly understood by another, truly loved, embraced, cared for no matter our condition, lot in life, challenges, or spiritual quandary in which we find ourselves engaged.  I believe in love, mutual understanding, caring beyond end, abandoning oneself , to be selfless , totally giving yourself to another and connecting spiritually on a soulful level.  I believe in acknowledging the sensitivity of your loved one’s heart, to be unafraid to share your vulnerabilities, to know it is okay to say you’re sorry and start anew.  Intimacy is embracing your friend’s soul by allowing them to see yours and to realize it is okay to share.

Intimacy is to reveal yourself, to live unafraid discovering a higher version of who you are and discovering the virtues of those you embrace.

   

Intimacy with God is very much the same.  He seeks to have prolonged times of communion with us, and even more so He seeks His presence to spill over throughout our days as a soulful connection into our hearts and minds.  If you struggle with a certain area in your life and need to know His thoughts upon the matter, find a scripture befitting the need, embrace His word and seek His authority. Suddenly your desires will change, and you will find yourself in a new place of communion, seeking God first, longing for Him and needing Him in a way when the remainder of the world is not enough.

We embrace our intimacy with Him through prayers.  He wants to hear our screams just as He listened to David.   He is always listening, always caring, always loving.  We may not always momentarily understand the consequences of our sin or the impact we have upon others or they us.  But He knows.  He seeks our praise, adoration, longs for our confessions, loves to hear how thankful we are for His grace and the gifts He bestows, and of course He daily listens to our needs, wants and desires.

Sometimes we scream out when it just seems He is not even listening, and in our anguish we scream and scream, and finally breakdown and we cry.  We cry as we selfishly acknowledge He is here, present in this very moment.  Jesus cares, He loves, He has us in His arms and He knows.   

Intimacy is to be unafraid to share God’s word and pray with your friend.  It is okay to realize we are here in this moment to truly love one another.  The world’s view is so skewed, we all act so timid, so sheepishly when it comes to recognizing we are to love each other.  It is absolutely not a sin to say to your friend, “I love you!”  Who are the fools in the world?  The fools in the world are those afraid to reveal themselves, closed up in private world, hiding themselves behind a veil of protection for the sake of self-preservation.  They fail to recognize in their private garden without true intimacy there is no real sunshine or cool rain and they deprive themselves of bounties of love.  These are the same who do not know truly how to forgive and in their lacking, they endlessly run from one to another.  If they would just seek help, if they would acknowledge it is okay to be helped then maybe with great adulation, their veils will be dropped and they can finally really live and really love.  And as the warmth of a new sun shines down upon them, maybe discover….  you.  And finally know without question or need of further evidence how real you truly are.  And in this knowledge discover not so much you were right, but how much you truly love.  Real intimacy is not to question. Real intimacy is to connect and love endlessly.  

Sustaining Love

Tonight, I am writing as the professor and the student.  If you were to know me, you know I love to learn about a broad variety of subjects.  And this evening, the topic is relationships.  I hope this will be as helpful to you as it will be to me as I learn much through introspection.

My ‘ole broken heart…. I do not always understand why those we love in our life sometimes believe the grass is greener somewhere else.  They think we are the ones who need all the work while they fail to look in the mirror and really contemplate who they are.  What makes a good relationship?  You and I both know there are 50,000+ books written on this subject, but seriously, what makes for a good relationship between a man and woman.  Obviously, I am no Dr. Phil and nor do I pretend to be an expert as I have yet to be able to sustain a long term committed relationship with a woman.  However, through trial and error, much reading, observation and listening to successful couples, I have learned a few things.

I think what makes a good relationship is two committed people who know how to first of all, always forgive.  If you cannot forgive, you cannot love.  I also personally believe both partners should be themselves, and be committed to individual personal growth, as well as growing together in a formal setting where there are other committed people who encourage them to be successful in their relationship. This setting is usually in a religious based environment. Recently, I was listening to Deepak Chopra, and he said there are several stages of relationships.  When people first get together there is the attraction, excitement of knowing someone new, finding similarities and traits you want causing you to hang more around them.  Then the second stage sets in where there is second attention, to always know what the other person is going to do and what they are thinking and feeling, you appreciate the other person, listen with the eyes of mind, eyes of the soul and flesh and feel love through caring.  The third stage is communion, where your soul connects with another soul based on equality, empathy, non-judgment, integrity and telling the truth. Then there is the possibility of intimacy where you totally lose your ego in that relationship, you feel defenseless, nothing to defend, no point of view to defend, where you expose your vulnerability, you go beyond time into timeless awareness being totally natural and you allow, no manipulation no control, no cajoling, no convincing, no seduction, and you become intimate.  The next stages beyond intimacy include surrender, passion and then ecstasy.

Ecstasy is the exultation of spirit!

Every day we should aspire to work on our individual selves, we need to take time to quiet our spirits, close our eyes ask a few questions to ourselves.  Here are the steps:   

First, quiet your spirit, then ask the question and then silently listen.

   

Ask yourself, who am I?

What do I want?

What is my purpose?

In doing this, we begin to know who we are, then, we will find ourselves attracting the people in our lives that we need.  We are able to match our hearts and souls to those that harmonize with our values, inner-spirit, and life goals. 

My personal reflection is the destruction of my relationships has been based upon others actions and my reactions which have not always been the most positive.  There are those in my past who have sought to control me, manipulate on some levels, causing me to be defensive, always seeking agreement to their point of view which sometimes I felt was contrary to my perception of personal truths.  When others do this, or we engage in this mode of relating, we are only expressing varying degrees of selfishness, rather than selflessness.  And honestly, why do we want to control others?  Why do we expect everyone to have to agree, it is not always productive, we should embrace our differences and realize it creates opportunity for growth rather than a platform for restrictive living. 

After years of growth my personality has evolved to allow others to be who they are, to embrace our differences, and to welcome their varying viewpoints.  We do not need to be in relationships where we are constantly challenged for what we do, believe, or with whom we associate.  This pattern of behavior is destructive and only leads to the death of a relationship. I do not know about you, but I am sick of seeing relationships hitting the skids because both parties are not enlightened enough to work on themselves and grow.  The self-destruction of relationships many times happen when one or both partners become so controlling as to prevent one another from evolving to a state of self-actualization in who they are. 

I believe we should support and sustain one another, encourage our partner’s personal and professional endeavors, show affection, give of ourselves, sacrifice for the other individual, express compassion and create a loving atmosphere of real concern, admiration and genuine selflessness. 

There will most undoubtably be moments of challenge in each of our relationships, so we must always remember the resources of God to get us past the difficulties.  We must always remember to accept the other person, love them and forgive them and continue to love them.  It may not always be so easy, but it absolutely worth the effort! 

A good way to start is to pray together every day and show appreciation in small special ways.  We must decide living in love which means to be forgiving, giving, showing and expressing our love as the best way to live a fulfilling, enlightened life and take daily steps to living a life of ecstasy.  The way to live a satisfied  grace-filled life is by removing all judgment, stopping our controlling, believing in one another and sharing our lives in the most simplest of ways.  Our hearts become eternally connected and together with our partner we experience true contentment and personal life-long happiness.  Our lives take on a feeling of indescribable joy found in embracing our partner for who they are and who we become with them. 

I sincerely hope for all of you who have read these thoughts, that you are able to find, create, sustain and enjoy the most wonderful loving relationship with the person of your dreams.

Faith

Maybe I am reaping the whirlwind of my sin?  Trials and tough times come and we do not understand it.  Everything can be fine in one moment and the next moment we are in heartache and trials.  We usually always ask why?  How can I stand up underneath this?   If we hang in there and see it through, we will have answers if we approach we an attitude of joy.  Reflect upon James 1:3-4.

“For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.”

God is speaking to me today, to teach me patience and provide an attitude of endurance.

Life sometimes goes along like a perfect trip.  Then sickness, heartache and economic depravation hits us and we ask why?  The reason is so we can lack nothing.  So we can become mature, God sometimes places us in trials so we build muscle, makes us stronger and grow us up.  Anytime we have a problem and difficulty we look up and God knows He has our attention.  He wakes us up so we lack nothing.

Sometimes we flunk his course and he makes us go through it again, and we wonder how we will get through all of this.  Reflect upon James 1:5-8.

“5If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. 6But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. 7Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.”

You may ask, “How can I survive the tensions in my life?”  We need wisdom which is knowledge plus application, we ask for wisdom in faith.  So how we ask in faith?  We kneel and pray and ask God, and tell Him I do not know how to handle this, and we ask in faith for wisdom.

We ask in faith with the Holy Spirit and we become double souled.

Sometimes we are like people who do not know whether to get on the bus or not, and it leaves and we stand there as the bus passes by and we live in our indecision.

In tough times, God is maturing you and me with wisdom.  We are crowned with life when we handle tough times this way, it is supernatural.

The success of a marriage and relationships is defined in how you handle conflict. 

In the toughest times, true love comes out. 

Let’s pray not just for strength, but wisdom not to waste what I am going through.

When we are in tough times, God knows that we are there, and He is surrounding us with love, and we are under His discipline and training, and we are subjected to God’s schedule and His timing. 

O’ Lord help us to not waste tough times as we go through them.  Trials build our faith! 

If there is to be healing, it begins with you and it begins with me.

I do not know what trial or burden you are facing today?  Maybe it is a serious illness in your family, heartbreak, abuse, a lost child, the mourning of a death or the ending of a relationship, or perhaps great financial difficulty, or maybe a multiplicity of these burdens at once.  It does not matter, we must remain in faith.  We may scream at God and wonder why can’t certain prayers be answered?  Why is someone the way they are, why are they unable to open their heart, why do they always runaway?  In the case of illness not be healed?  How long must we pray for a special someone in our life to be changed with revelation? 

I am sorry that I do not have all the answers why particular prayers are not answered with the end result we desire.  I am sorry and ask for forgiveness from those special people in my life who read this for the aggravation and hurt I have caused in your lives.  God is not so perplexing, what is perplexing is how we continue a cycle of sin which keeps us in a state of unrest.

I am sorry, and today feel inadequate in how to end this writing, except to say, if there is to be healing it begins with you and it begins with me.  Together we pray: O’ Lord, help us not to waste this moment and through whatever trial each of us is encountering, either known publicly or deep within our souls, please build our faith as we trust only in you.  Amen.

Dear Reader My Friend,

I love you!

The Story of Life

In the story of your life what chapter are you living, what chapter are you reading?  Is it the sad part, are you going back and re-reading prior chapters, is there something which has moved you, or is the suspense so grand you cannot wait to lift the next words off the pages and read on?

Life is a wonderful miracle and we should all be so happy to embrace each new day.  Who we are is our emotions, to deny this is to deny ourselves. 

Who is your true self?  Who do you want to be?  So many people judge us by a few words or an insane moment and there is this disconnect they fail to understand.  There is so much to your life, many mysteries in the undiscovered ocean of your soul.  To some this acknowledgement creates excitement, for others fear.  My friend, hold steady to your course, be true to yourself.

You know who you are, the passions you desire, and the undeniable love you possess.  Unfortunately, people lie to themselves, but not you, let them run away.  Let them run away from truth, no shaking or amount of love will change them.  It’s like pouring a priceless elixir all over the ground.  They are blind from ignorance, and rather than they stripping off the bandages from their own eyes, they blame you for their darkness.  Don’t let them do it, runaway from their sin, but I know you --- you will continue to love them.  Maybe one day they will rise out of their ignorance, maybe they will awaken to truth and a view a new reality and see vividly a clearer picture of you they never understood.

You cannot help who you are; generations of breeding have brought you to this point.  You are the best creation from the complexity of your bloodline. Those passed before you know who you are, your sensitivities, your caring, the strength of your emotions, your definiteness of purpose.  They wish they could be here, but they are not, they scream from the grave: ‘live brilliantly, don’t waste an ounce, stay true to yourself and live your course vibrantly!’

So here I stand.  Here I stand alone in this moment, in this chapter to know who I am.  I ask you in my questioning room, what do you fear?  What do you fear in me and why?  Why are you so afraid?  Are you afraid of a man who requires knowing more than the shallowness of your existence?  Are you afraid to uncover your feelings and reveal who you are?  I will not judge, I have no right to, I am a horrible sinner who has lived a life full of mistakes.

I choose now to live a sacred existence based upon faith and love.  Life is not meant to be lived in dichotomies, step over here and live brilliantly with me.  For you see, I love you and cannot help myself.  I just do.

Cast away your fears, let real love takes its course and together let us write a new chapter.  A chapter filled with light and happiness, a wonderful story based upon faith and the revelation of our brilliance.  Together, let us become resilient champions in the fight for our love.