LESS EGO / MORE SOUL

“Any experience which makes you feel like such-and-such a sort of person is by default an ego-based experience as it is something which traps you within a cage of self definition.”

- Unknown

We are all one…therefore:

‘All judgement is a form of self judgement.

and

All criticism is a form of self-criticism.’

– Dalai Lama

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

- Marianne Williamson

“In an relativistic universe you don’t cling to anything. Instead, you learn to swim.”

- A Watts.

“It is very important to know that I have scattered parts of my body across the world. I cut my nails in Rome, my hair in Holland and Germany. I saw my blood moisten the asphalt of New York and often my sperm fell on French soil in a field of vines near Tours. I have expelled my faeces into rivers on three continents, watered some trees in Spain with my urine and spat in the English Channel and a fjord in Oslo. Once I grazed my face and left some cells attached to a fence in Budapest. These small things – created by me and which I shall never see again – give me a pleasant feeling of omnipresence. I am a small part of the places I have visited, of the landscapes I have seen and that moved me. Besides this, my scattered  parts have a practical use: in my next incarnation I am not going to feel alone or unprotected because something familiar – a hair, a piece of nail, some old, dried spit – will always be close by . I have sown my seed in several places on this earth because I don’t know where I will one day be reborn.” - Paulo Coelho

“The inspector says I’m free. I’m free now and I was free in prison too, because freedom continues to be the thing I prize most in the world. Of course, this has led me to drink wines I did not like, to do things I should not have done and which I will not do again: it has left scars on my body and my soul, it has meant hurting certain people, although I have since asked their forgiveness, when I realised that I could do absolutely anything except force another person to follow me in my madness, in my lust for life.

I don’t regret the painful times; I bear my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and smile, even when that smile is dimmed by tears.”

– Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

There is an old saying in Japan where rather than asking ‘how are you?’ – they ask: Have you half-eaten today?

Such a beautiful reflection of the truth…

If you eat too little you are hungry and distracted.

Eat too much and you are lazy and tired!

Just enough and you are ‘very well thankyou’

I remember when I was a kid, my dad telling me the truth:

“You always have a choice” he said.

At the time I protested. I saw the fact that our actions have consequences and that “sometimes those consequences can be so ugly that it’s best to avoid them” as a not-choice.

My father and I argued about this for a little while; I just didn’t get it.

But now I do:

We always have many choices. Not all are so obvious.

Sometimes we are afraid of what staying true to ourselves – being authentic – will mean.

But narrowing down one’s possibilities – due to the prediction of an ugly outcome - is a choice too.

It’s okay, and perfectly reasonable to  back away from some possible choices, but we should also recognize that our minds are programmed to automatically narrow down our options to make decisions easier. This is both a gift and a curse; something to keep in mind when you are faced with making an important decision.

Sometimes it is important to explore these ‘not-choices’ a little more closely…other times it is not necessary. But either way, it’s good to be aware.

And even in situations where your options are narrowed – when you feel out of control or cornered and obliged into doing a particular thing – you still have a choice.

However, the choice is not always as simple as to-do-or-not-to-do.

Rather, the key to your happiness shifts from

what you do

to

how you think of what you do.

This quote sums it up nicely:

“Suffering is a matter of choice. I think that we do not have to suffer anything in this life…

[Even in jail] I was still free.

Free to hate the men who were torturing me,

or to forgive them…

And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

- Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts

One evening toward the close of her life, instead of cooking her evening meal, Trudi climbed onto her bicycle and rode out to a dilapidated mill that had not been rebuilt. There, her preceding night’s dream of her loving and ever-supportive father, recently dead, came back to her.

It hit her s0 strongly, that she crouched right where she was and brought her arms around her middle. The scent of chamomile enveloped her, and as she looked down, the tiny flowers were right in front of her, their yellow centers ringed by white petals.

The closer she looked, the more she saw, and the more she forgot herself and her pain and became part of something she couldn’t define, as if, by getting closer to a smaller world, she had found a larger world.

How many times had she longed for a world where she knew she belonged? How often had she imagined living on the island of the little people. Yet all she had needed was here, already here.

Pia had been right — this was where she belonged. Despite the horror of war. Because of its horror. Working with the underground and the fugitives had taught her what it was like to belong. That you could initiate it, built it, be it.

– Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi

Walked in on the end of one of my dad’s workshops the other day…even though I’ve heard him talk about simmilar things my life over, his words were not lost on me.

He spoke about the majority’s fear of failure. About, how we can be reluctant to put our wildest dreams into action – because then if we failed – what would we have left to dream of?

It is true, some experiences are best left to our imagination, but in question of what to do with one’s life – why not be wild and chase the dream?

In finding the courage to do so, he suggested we ask ourselves this simple question:

“If I wasn’t afraid I would…?”

The Zahir – Paulo Coelho