How do you play your roles?

"What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are."

-- Epicetus

When we are basically unconscious, we live according to social roles. We perform as sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, employers and employees, as society expects us to.

As we grow in awareness, we gain the freedom to bring our own unique perspectives to these roles. We can express ourselves authentically and creatively, without letting our roles dictate how we should behave.

"Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."

-- Katherine Mansfield

Value the process

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear ... as it is, infinite."

-- William Blake

When we stop and pay attention to ourselves, we begin to see clearly the habits and patterns that have kept us asleep and confused and misled for so long. With awareness, we can choose to shift from the selfish and narrow outlook of our personality to the all-embracing generosity of our soul, simply by changing our perspective.

Change your mind and you'll change your world.

"You watch your mind to see who you are not. I watch my mind to gain a sense of its content, which has always been my pain. As I watch it, I get a sense of its impermanence. Thoughts come and go as part of a process. I see how content dissolves into process and begin to see the patterns in the process. Realizing it isn't MY suffering, MY pain, it becomes THE pain. I've gone from the tiny, the small, and the individual to the universal. I feel OUR pain. When we do, we go from fear to compassion. Fear is MY pain, compassion is THE pain."

-- Stephen Levine

Believe in magic!

"... for magic to happen in your life, you must believe in magic."

-- Grandmother, quoted by Lynn Andrews

"Most of the time, we fall in love but can't remain there. The world then calls the state we were in a delusion or infatuation ... But we merely lacked, or someone else lacked, the emotional skills to hold on to the magic when the morning came. ... In truth, we can go to the moon and retain its magic for a lifetime."

-- Marianne Williamson

"We think, sometimes, there's not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests ... What a pleasure to be wrong. Princesses, knights, enchantments and dragons, mystery and adventure ... not only are they here-and-now, they're all that ever lived on earth! Masters of reality still meet us in dreams to tell us that we've never lost the shield we need against dragons, that blue-fire voltage arcs through us now to change our world as we wish. Intuition whispers true: We're not dust, we're magic!"

-- Richard Bach

Dance through your day

"Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans: it's lovely to be silly at the right moment."

-- Horace

Today, we invite you to do the Take-Your-Time Tango. In his book 'Games for the Soul,' Drew Leder challenges us to dance through our days with the graceful, slow elegance of a tango dancer.

Slow down a notch," Leder counsels. "Do whatever you do in a calm and leisurely fashion. ... As much as possible, don't be driven by inner fear, external deadlines, or rushed companions to stumble through a speeded-up dance. Act as if you have all the time in the world. Come to think of it, you do: No one else has any more hours."

So stand (or sit) tall. Raise your chin as you gather your full concentration, dignity and self confidence to glide smoothly and beautifully through the day.

"We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life."

-- Martha Graham

-- Eric Allenbaugh  

The gift of joy

"Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. She gives most who gives with Joy."

-- Mother Teresa

Some people unconsciously believe it's not okay to feel more joyful than the people around them. Out of a mistaken sense of caring, they squelch their joy and tune in to the sadness of the one they are with.

In truth, joy is one of the greatest gifts we can give to people around us. Those who are unhappy need our joy, not our sadness.

"Never miss a joy in this world of trouble ... that's my theory!... Happiness, like mercy, is twice blest: it blesses those most intimately associated with it and it blesses all those who see it, hear it, touch it or breathe the same atmosphere."

-- Kate Douglas Wiggin

Do you engage in violence?

"There are three kinds of violence: one, through our deeds; two, through our words; and three, through our thoughts. ... The root of all violence is in the world of thoughts, and that is why training the mind is so important."

-- Eknath Easwaran

While there's plenty of violence in the world, not many of us engage in violent actions. But are we violent at times with the words we speak? How often do we think vicious thoughts?

We may assume our thinking is an internal matter that has no bearing on the quality of life in the world. Perhaps we need to think again.

"The ancestor of every destructive action, every destructive decision, is a negative thought."

-- Eknath Easwaran

"We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far."

-- Swami Vivekananda