Are you standing back and judging?

To see, to experience, and to honor is to participate in life instead of standing back and judging it.
Michael A. Singer ( the untethered soul (2007) New Harbinger/Noetic, page 177)


Once again, I come here not knowing what to write about...allowing whatever wants to surface to surface. 

Today....I guess I am talking once again about suffering and happiness.  I cannot stress enough the major point of all my rantings: The outside world, what happens to us or around us is not responsible for any suffering we may experience.  It is our own mental response to it that determines if we suffer.

When Life throws you a curve ball what do you do with it?...That determines if you will be so called "happy" despite or if you will suffer because of it.

So what do you do when you lose your job, your partner, your reputation, your health or all your material belongings because of some outside force?

• Do you spend months, years or decades feeling angry or blaming and attacking something out there or do you quietly assess your responsibility in what has  happened?
• Do you seek ceaselessly  to get it all back believing you are nothing without it or do you question quietly Who am I without this thing I lost?  Does it define me? Does it make me?  Can I "be" without it?
• Do you fight, struggle and resist the parts of  it you have no control over or do you quietly sigh and say to yourself , "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference?"
• Do you use it to determine how your future will be, and create walls and defenses to prevent it from happening again or do you stay peacefully and naturally open to whatever life gives you?
• Do you stay stuck in the story of it and therefore in the past or do you live in the moment without the story interfering?
• Do you look at this very moment, at life   with trepidation or do you embrace it  with awe and curiosity?
• Do you cling to these event or let them go?

Just something to think about.  All is well.