Life = Risk

This is a very inspiring video. Please watch.

Finding Real Meaning In Our Lives

Tuesday afternoon I had a lengthy conversation with a friend who is also a therapist.   We talked about meaning, fame and success; all important themes in my life.

For most of my life meaning and success have meant cause and effect; there is no meaning without success.  Because success’ currency in our society is fame and fortune, I for many years felt my life unimportant.

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Why Are We Burning The Quran?

September 11 is just a few days away and while most people around the world and especially in this country will remember it as a day of horror others will try to add their own kind of misunderstanding.

I’m not a religious person and seldom get passionate about arguing religion.  I’m more interested in discussing that which brings us together and not what pulls us apart.  My life’s interest is to try to listen and respect other people’s opinions even if they drastically differ from mine and in return receive the same.

It is conflicting to me when a man like pastor Jones of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, discusses burning the Koran.

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Learning To Make Decisions Without Fear

Life is not cast in stone.  It is cast in sand.

That’s what I told my fifteen year old niece when talking to her on the phone today.   She was feeling insecure about the classes she had chosen to take this semester.  She said “I want to make the absolute right decision.”   I tried to explain to her there are no certainties.  We make what we think is the best decision and then we move forward with certainty.

I also tried to tell her life is ever changing and having the ability to let go of the past and live in the present was more important than making the absolute right decision.

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How To Nurture A Dream

I just read the below post on the Huffington Post and wanted to share it with you.  The way the writer, Tara Sophia Mohr, describes the process of creation reminded me of when I was a performance artist.

Many years ago, when I first landed in NYC, I used to create multi-media performances that utilized sound, music, movement and visuals.  The language of each performance was unique and therefore I had to create a whole world for it.

My process started with just sitting and listening to music – that helped create the emotional environment I needed – and then just let my mind wonder.  I spent many hours, days and weeks just allowing my imagination to run freely.  Once satisfied with the world I created I would then start working on how to turn my creation into reality.

That’s how Tara describes the process of nurturing a dream.

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Finding Balance Between the Opposites

“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”  – Rumi

Being human is complex.  Within each one of us there is a whole world of rights, wrongs, beautiful, ugly, attractive, sad and happy.  We form ideas; “this is the way being right is”, “this is the way being wrong is” and we become rigid in the word we create.

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Finding Connection In A Complex World

We live in a world of many points of view.  We are a planet of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheist and many more.  We are Republicans, Democrats, Anarchists, Independents, Libertarians, Green and Apolitical.  We are men, women, gay, and transgender.  These are the things that set us apart.  What bring us together are love, compassion, understanding, happiness, courage, integrity and decency.

If we peel the onion of segregation we find an all-encompassing heart.  Underneath it all most of us want the same things; food, shelter, safety and love.

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Turning Our Lives Into Master Pieces

The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.  ~Joan Didion

So many of us let life happen as if we are passive bystanders and have no say in what and how life transpires.  Instead of making choices we live a life of reacting.  On the other hand making decisions on how we want our lives to develop demands responsibility but offers in return self-respect.

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Ingredients For A Life Well Lived

There are some ingredients that are really important for us to develop if we want to have a chance for a more fulfilling life.  The list is independent of race, age, gender or socio-economic status.

1 – Our ability to let go – Living in the moment requires releasing control of any outcome.  We are here in this moment and in this situation.  Where the future goes it’s not so important.  Where we are is.

“Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” -Anais Nin

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A Wednesday Love Poem – 1

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms,

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.

Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,

risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride,

so I love you because I know no other way than this:

where “I” does not exist, nor “you,”

So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

So close that your eyes close and I fall asleep.

-Pablo Neruda

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