Today's Meditation:

"People who soar."  Oh, how I'd like to think of myself as a person who soars!  Far too often, though, I find myself to be a person who slogs--through the mud and the grime and the swamps of the world.  And while it's tempting to believe that down here in the mud is where I'll find those who really need my help, the question must be asked:  can I help more people by providing a role model of someone who soars through life, or by trying to pull them out of the mud that they've mostly chosen for themselves, especially if they're neither ready nor willing to leave the mud?

We can find many excuses for not soaring through life in a state of joy and abundance.  We're afraid of heights, we don't want to leave others behind, we don't know how to soar, we're "needed" where we are.  Sometimes we just accept that life's unfair and let our circumstances keep us down because we're afraid to go after the changes we'd need to help us to soar.

When I look up into the sky and see a bird soaring gracefully with the wind currents, I think of how nice it would be to let the currents carry me effortlessly through the air.  And I realize that it's not impossible for that to happen, as long as I'm willing not just to face change, but to invite change and allow it in and to welcome it, and then to take those actions that change demands.  Soaring isn't difficult for one who has learned to fly, but it's impossible for one who has elected to stay chained to the ground.  Life can't keep us down--we must allow ourselves to stay down.

Questions to consider:

When do you soar?  How might you be able to teach yourself to soar more often?

Why do so many people fear the idea of taking off from the ground (in a metaphoric sense, of course!)?

Can visualizing really give us the key to soaring in all we do?

For further thought:

Time is a flowing river.
Happy those who allow themselves
to be carried, unresisting, with the current.
They float through easy days.
They live, unquestioning, in the moment.

Christopher Morley

Today's quotation:

People who soar are those who refuse to sit back,
sigh, and wish things would change. They neither
complain of their lot nor passively dream of some
distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualize in
their minds that they are not quitters; they will
not allow life’s circumstances to push
them down and hold them under.

Charles Swindoll