Listen to your heart

"To know how to choose a path with heart is to learn how to follow intuitive feeling. Logic can tell you superficially where a path might lead to, but it cannot judge whether your heart will be in it."  -- Jean Shinoda Bolen

"When you have compassion and surrender to your own heart, you are surrendering to the hidden power in your heart, God. You are surrendering to love, because God is Love, the cohesive force of the universe that connects us all. Surrender is not just a religious concept; it's a power tool for listening to the voice of your spirit and following its directions. When you surrender your head to your heart, you allow your heart to give you a wider, higher intelligence perspective. Remember the phrase, ‘The real teacher is within you.�?Very simply, that teacher is to be found in the common sense of your own heart." -- Sara Paddison

"Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything... even when you can not foresee the outcome." -- Deepak Chopra

Know Yourself and Grow Yourself -

The degree that you know yourself defines the degree to which you grow yourself. Know yourself in depth. Answer in detail ‘Who am I?�?Your starting place for spiritual and personal growth.

Refuse to be a victim

"We focus on the negatives, losing ourselves in the ‘problem.�?We point to our unhappy circumstances to rationalize our negative feelings. This is the easy way out. It takes, after all, very little effort to feel victimized." -- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Nothing and no one can make us a victim. We do it to ourselves when we allow external circumstances to hold power over us.

Although we have no control over what happens to us, we ALWAYS have a choice in how we respond. We hold our power when we accept complete responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and actions.

"A man may fall many times but he won't be a failure until he says someone pushed him." -- Elmer G. Letterman

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." -- Steven Biko

Know Yourself - The degree that you know yourself defines the degree to which you grow yourself. Know yourself in depth. Answer in detail ‘Who am I?�?Your starting place for spiritual and personal growth.

Become clear through self discovery.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart And try to love the questions themselves. --Rainer Maria Rilke

Patience with ourselves may be the first step toward patience with others. In getting to know ourselves, we don't find what we have expected. If we did, we would only be proving what we already knew. Sometimes growth comes in surprising ways. It may be in acceptance and learning to love what is unsettled or unclear within. Some of us men want to rush through our learning and push our growth too fast. Others of us want to have a strong sense of confidence in our relationships with others but always feel vulnerable. Some wonder why their fears suddenly rise without warning. Another longs to know why certain things happened to him in his youth. Our growth is not our invention. When answers come, they are gifts, and we do not control them.

In part, self-acceptance is to say, "Yes, I am a person with this question, this unsettled feeling. Being alive is to be actively engaged in knowing and loving my questions even when I find no answer."

God, grant me the peace that comes with loving the unfinished part of me.

From Touchstones: A Book of Daily Meditations for Men ©1986, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.

Nurturing Ourselves

Many of us have been so deprived of nurturing that we think it's silly or self-indulgent. Nurturing is neither silly nor self-indulgent; it's how we show love for ourselves. That's what we're striving for in recovery - a loving relationship with ourselves that works, so we can have loving relationships with others that work.

When we hurt, we ask ourselves what we need to help us feel better. When we feel alone, we reach out to someone safe. Without feeling that we are a burden, we allow that person to be there for us.

We rest when we're tired; eat when we're hungry; have fun or relax when our spirits need a lift. Nurturing means giving ourselves gifts - a trip to the beauty salon or barbershop, a massage, a book, a new jacket, or a new suit or dress. It means a long, hot bath to forget about our problems and the world for a few moments when that would feel good.

We learn to be gentle with ourselves and to open up to the nurturing that others have to offer us.

As part of nurturing ourselves, we allow ourselves to give and receive positive touch - touch that feels appropriate to us, touch that is safe. We reject touch that doesn't feel good or safe and is not positive.

We learn to give ourselves what we need in a gentle, loving, compassionate way. We do this with the understanding it will not make us lazy, spoiled, self centered, or narcissistic. Nurtured people are effective in their work and in their relationships.

We will learn to feel loved by ourselves so much that we can truly love others and let them love us.

Today, I will nurture myself. I will also be open to the nurturing that I can give to others and receive from them.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation. All rights reserved.

Discover the treasures inside

"You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace. That is already around your neck!" -- Jalal-Uddin Rumi

Peace, joy, health and well-being can only be found inside us. They exist within us now, waiting to be discovered. Yet we tend to look to the outside world to satisfy our needs and longings.

Our outer life reflects back to us the way we think, feel and behave. The outer world is all effects. Go to the source inside for all of life’s treasures.

How are you searching for peace and contentment outside of yourself?

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." -- Denis Waitley

"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere." -- Agnes Repplier

Know Yourself and Grow Yourself - The degree that you know yourself defines the degree to which you grow yourself. Know yourself in depth. Answer in detail ‘Who am I?�?Your starting place for spiritual and personal growth.

Reflections on effort

The anxious student asked the Zen master how long to enlightenment. The Zen Master answered a long time, at least 10 years. The student said, "Well I will work twice as hard." The Zen master said, "Then it will take 20 years." "No!" said the committed student, "I will work three times as hard." "Well then," said the Zen master, "it will take 30 years."

Do you need to work at being spiritual? No. You already are spiritual. Do you need to work at being human? No. That’s just who you are.

The spiritual path doesn’t require us to get anything. It’s a process of opening to new dimensions of who we already are. It’s a process of awakening to our own truth. It’s a process of allowing ourselves to be authentic.

"It is not by your actions that you will be saved, but by your being."  -- Meister Eckhart

"People ask what must they become to be loving. The answer is ‘nothing.�?It is a process of letting go of what you thought you had become and allowing your true nature to float to the surface naturally."  -- Stephen Levine

Access your own inner wisdom by tapping into the unconscious and intuition. Release stress, blocks and negative emotions, and spark imagination and greater vision. Go deeper�?Reach higher with Journaling for Self-Empowerment.

Become more calm, clear, creative, caring, connected and conscious?

Levels of consciousness

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind." -- William James

Here is one perspective on levels of consciousness and some descriptive words to help us identify the differences:

Not conscious - instinctual, follower
Subconscious - habitual, robotic, reactive
Conscious - aware, intelligent, conceptual, reflective
Superconscious - intuitive, guiding, truthful, loving, universal

Reflect on how you typically move through your day. As we use our minds more consciously, we open up to the superconsciousness.

"Utilizing your conscious mind to direct the subconscious mind to enter into communication and harmony with the universal mind is the secret of personal power."  -- Delfin Knowledge System

Personal growth can be a long hard journey. At Higher Awareness you are never left alone.

On freedom

"Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us."  -- Stephen Covey

A Greek myth can help us understand the freedom that comes with power of choice.

In the Underworld, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a large stone up a hill from which it always rolled down again. Realistically, he was trapped in an endless cycle of rolling the stone. When he perceived himself to be imprisoned by the curse, he was a victim.

At one point, however, he turned the tables -- he changed his mind and decided to CHOOSE to roll the stone up the hill. In doing so, he empowered himself and defused the curse.

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."  -- Jean-Paul Sartre

"One cannot make a slave of a free person, for a free person is free even in a prison." -- Plato

Watch yourself shift from the self-centered, controlling behaviours of the ego to the power, love and wisdom of the soul as you Grow Your Iner Self.

Space to explore

"No one can find his work, what he really wants to put all of himself into, when everything he does he is made to do by others. This kind of searching must be done freely or not at all." -- John Holt

We all need space -- free from demands, deadlines, expectations and judgments -- to explore who we are and what life is all about. Free time, with absolutely no agenda, is rich with potential. How can we grow if we have no space and freedom to dream?

"Deny children -- or anyone else -- the chance to do ‘nothing,�?and we may be denying them the chance to do ‘something�?-- to find and do any work that is truly important to themselves or to someone else."  -- John Holt

Create space in one area of your life and it affects other areas of your life.