Self-Honesty

Understanding how we experienced certain life events gives us greater knowledge of ourselves and more detachment from our self-destructive patterns.

When we refuse to remember the pain of early experiences - projecting it onto others and making it about them, rather than sitting with it and feeling it ourselves - rather than resolve the problem, we compound it.

This is one way that we pass on pain through the generations.

In our inability to sit with our own pain, we ask others to contain it for us through dynamics such as projection.

It is identifying in someone else what we should be identifying in ourself.

Displacing a painful feeling by dumping it onto an unsuspecting receiver does not allow us to do the inner work we require to be whole and healthy, and it crosses another person's boundary in an unfair, unhealthy way.

Our greatest potential for learning is in studying ourselves with honesty and openness.

The wish for healing has ever been the half of health. ~ Seneca

Accomplishment

We do not need to move mountains in order to experience a sense of accomplishment.

We only need to keep our minds clear and our goals well grounded.

There is nothing like a true feeling of accomplishing real day-to-day objectives to produce a sense of well-being and eliminate the need for grandiosity.

Genuine accomplishment is its own reward, the good feeling it produces makes life worth living.

Genuine accomplishment allows the energies of soul to flow through us and find expression in simple, real ways.

If we can only experience accomplishment when we overachieve, we will miss the beauty of what a sense of accomplishment is all about.

When we put our hearts into our actions and perform the duties of our lives with love and devotion, we move closer to soul.

Take pleasure in simple daily accomplishments.

Barriers

Our task in life is to work with ourselves sincerely and honestly.

To remove the emotional and mental obstacles that are in the way of our personal well-being and soul experience.

Soul is. It is what we put in its' way that keeps us from experiencing it.

Our anxiety, depression, sense of meaningless-ness and purposelessness can also be seen as loss of soul.

By being willing to own and grapple with personal pain, we act on our commitment to deepen our relationship with soul and to open our hearts to love.

Love and fear are two primary feelings. We can identify with either.

Fear is not only fear of another, but fear of our reaction to another - which is fear of ourselves.

We can work with our fear of life, of loneliness, of existential boredom so that we can release them and move through our inner barriers that block our experience of love.

Today I will work with my inner pain and fear.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~ A Course in Miracles

Surrender

Allow yourself to let go today.

So much grace and beauty enters our lives when we can get out of our own way and let life work out.

When, on the other hand, we try to force circumstances to be a certain way, we are unable to be present in them as they are.

Each day probably has the potential to work out if we can only let it, if we can learn to move with the natural flow rather than try to control and manipulate the events of our lives.

Like the weather, our lives have a natural rhythm. When we are in sync with that natural rhythm, things run more smoothly.

Today have faith, trust that if we allow our lives to unfold and if we stay present and alive, we will come to understand how to live.

Trust in your ability to live your life well.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Maturity

Lets keep ourselves in perspective.

We have been around the block with ouselves many times. We know where we get snagged up, we know where certain relationships or circumstances will lead us. We are familiar with how we react to various circumstances.

Just for today, avoid going down a street that we know is filled with potholes and take a street that runs some other way.

Why should we deliberately set ourselves up for disappointment when we can just as easily avoid it?

Why should we do what we know will not yield high returns?

If we know and understand ourselves, then it is our responsibility to put that knowledge to good use, to allow it to steer us through our lives in positive and pleasant ways.

Our lives work better when we are able to witness ouselves in action, knowing that we can enter in by choice rather than compulsion, feeling free to act as we choose, to tailor our lives to suit us.

To act with maturity.

Maturity consists in no longer being taken in by oneself. ~ Kajetan von Schlaggenberg