Month: August 2022

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Think Life!

Think Positive – Live Longer

Harvard Researchers Conclude – An Optimism Mindset Increases Longevity

person holding white ceramci be happy painted mug
Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society , which included 159,255 women of varied racial backgrounds, linked higher levels of optimism to longer lifespans and to a increased possibility of living into your 90s! Researcher Dr. Hayami K. Koga concluded, “Optimism may be an important target of intervention for longevity across diverse groups.”

One way to change your mindset is to increase your spiritual connection. It isn’t important what you connect to. It could be a religion, nature, the stars, or a book club. While many people confuse spirituality and religion it is important to recognize that Spirituality awakens the spirit within you. That Spirit is your driving force or as the French say votre raison d’être – your reason to be.

Spirituality is defined as “the way individuals seek ultimate meaning, purpose, connection, value, or transcendence,” according to the International Consensus Conference on Spiritual Care in Health Care. Lack of purpose leads to a negative mindset. Searching for purpose increases optimism.

For someone who has mental health issues this can be particularly challenging. How do you increase optimism in the presence of suicidal thoughts? One way is to use the noisy neighbour method. I like to think of those thoughts as noisy neighbours. I have a neighbour who shouts regularly in the morning about how angry he is. He can often be heard to scream, “If anyone makes me angry today, I am going to kill you all! I mean it.” Having had my own challenges with uncontrollable rage helps me to put this in perspective.

Is the neighbour likely to kill us all? He breaks a lot of things. The windows in his house are broken out and there is debris on the street nearby. He listens to loud angry music. But I’ve never seen him out on the street fighting. I’ve never seen him do any damage to other people’s property. That neighbour was me. In my mind he’s more likely to hurt himself.

This moves me to compassion and understanding. I’ve been there. Its early morning, his cortisol is high, he’s likely not slept well. That’s my suicidal thought. It’s high cortisol, exhaustion, and overwhelm releasing itself into words. Optimism lowers cortisol, creates relaxation, and releases overwhelm.

Breaking it all down. I can start with “I want to die” and turn it into well look at that I want something! Yay! I have desires. Sounds silly right? It is, but silly creates laughter and laughter lowers cortisol. Disarming that noisy neighbour is the most effective way for me to create an optimistic mindset.

If I was to feed my fear, I could cower in my house worrying about the guy that shouts every morning getting a gun and going on a rampage. But with an optimistic mindset I can tell myself that I’m not even going to be home that day! I can hear my ego wake up now. Yah, but, that’s what I call my ego “yahbut”

Yahbut likes to have the first word, so it’s important to prepare a rebuttal before he wakes up. That’s where early morning affirmations come in. I like to start mine off before he gets here. Yahbut I am going to have a great day. Yahbut I like it when the sun doesn’t shine. Yahbut we need rain to put out those fires. Yahbut I have coffee. Yahbut there is sugar in the cupboard. Yahbut I’m already awake might as well get up.

Yahbut affirmations work!

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What is the Gift of Love Today?

Returning to sleep I was able to dream of greater understanding. Today I wish to return to the sleep of consciousness. This waking world appears to be the place of suffering of unconsciousness of consciousness arising. I have the freedom to do this, but this is not a gift of love. It would be irresponsible, and I would have to continue to go to the space that is conscious of suffering caused and suffering endured.

I wait for a place where suffering has left my mind. My body is a gift of love today. I am comfortable and at peace even in the pain and discomfort of a body that has endured abuse. A friend who witnesses my release from suffering has reached out to ask for assistance in being released for hers. I have only my listening heart to give. Withholding is a gift of love today. I share only the release and the suffering of the past as I witness my own endurance. Experience is a gift of love today. To know that should I share the presence of suffering with a friend who has suffering which is much greater than mine I would not give her a gift of endurance.

Love endures. It gifts me with the hope that their will be moments of peace and light that flow between the obstacles. Like rocks in a river, I see the energetic patterns of my life becoming sand and also becoming the bed of the river. I wish to paint. The words do not describe the image that appears. I am aware my ability to paint is also inadequate as my ability to paint with words.

Should I release and allow the truth through? This is a gift of love that does not include me. It heals me yet I feel so separate from the love that flows. The universal love that creates the pattern of my life plans for a weaving of a tapestry that feels already worn. As if worn threads are being used to weave the pattern. What is the gift of love? Am I but recycled threads being woven into a tapestry? My gift to love is that I allow the pattern to be revealed. Choosing to walk the lines of the weave and to see the spaces that appear to let me know I have reached the limits of the loom and must return to the weft. A ball of thread a sphere of yarn and all I see is the pattern that is not revealed.

The past the memory is a gift of love. I can recall the parts of the past with the compassion of the present and release them with gratitude for the safety found in not knowing. Not knowing the pain being endured by another because of my inability to endure the suffering that was being inflicted upon me in my unconsciousness. Is consciousness a gift of love? Forgiveness perhaps but without responsibility forgiveness will create the pattern of suffering in repetition. The worn threads remain. They endure wrapped in a silken cocoon waiting for another to reveal the weaver.

The gift of love today is in the letting go. There is no need for me to participate in the pattern. I can sleep and release the weaver to go. I would be then only the broken thread in the life of another once again. Each time I believe this to be so another reveals the necessity of my thread to the pattern of life. That is a gift of life, though in my belief perhaps love is revealed only after the threads have become part of the pattern. Acceptance is the greatest gift of love today. I am as I am and love is as it is. Unchanging never ending and always in motion.

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Silent Truth

The sun melts the stone of falsehood’s stain.

Held together with anger, angst, and pain.

The lie cannot hold the weaver’s tears.

Whence truth came to plot the pattern of the fears.

Dusty cobwebs float away on whispering wings.

 A bell to ring the sun to sleep in silence sings.

Faces float beneath the surface of the ice.

The veil of truth gripped in vengeance vice.

The light reveals the truth that is no more.

Feathers float up from the ocean floor.

The fins of sharks cut through cloudless sky.

When silence comes to crack the stone of lie.

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Fear Arising

The known is such a familiar and uncomfortable space. I find such comfort in being uncomfortable. I had a vision that all the teachings are a pool of water resting on a surface of glass. The truth requires that one break through the glass.

Is the world really held together by fear and set free by forgiveness as the course of miracles says? I wonder today why love does not hold the world together. When I am in fear I fall apart. Fear does not hold me together it keeps me trapped. What then of the world?

My vision first is of the earth itself. Herself I want to say. When I focus now I wonder if only love can truly bind. Fear cannot bind me to anything or anyone. Eventually in fear I will run and move further from the cause of the fear. So many teachings have told me that I should fear the God they threaten me with yet why? When I fear I am not in union I am in judgement and pain. All that is the world is not all that is. God is all that is. Such bullshit. I am all that is. I am the world. The world is me. I am not bound to anything by fear. I am bound by love, by responsibility, by duty. I reflect then on the course of the action that I would take.

If I bring food to a friend have I chosen the right friend? Will I do harm or good when I bring the food. For a time the friend will eat. Will they then come to rely on me to bring them food? Should I bring them money? Should I let them be to seek shelter elsewhere? Information, guidance and wisdom are the only food I wish to offer to others. When I give more than information, guidance, and wisdom. Truth again comes forth to reveal to me that Wisdom does not require guidance. I pray each time I ask for knowledge, guidance, and wisdom. Strength I have, courage too if that be the opposition force for the fear. Fear is the possibility that I will do this in a way that is wrong. That to me means in a way that will do harm.

Can harm even be done. Should the earth explode what would happen.
Does humanity truly believe that this is the only earth that exists? The only world in which the great Divine creative source has placed all of its creation? And then why would it trust to anyone all that can be destroyed? Would one really place that much power into a collective filled with fear? The fear that is a reality is not real. It has been placed here to keep the power to destroy contained. There is no power in destruction.

The fear that is here does not bind the world it threatens it. We do not gather in this place in fear we gather in hope, in love, and in trust. Trust that we will not be destroyed in the process of the gathering.  What reality exists. Fear is only the bait. It takes us deep into the unknown. There is no fear in travelling into the unknown. It is in the known that fear is real. The unknown contains no fear at all. The unknown contains everything? Nothing. The reality of the argument is all that is known.

Too many of me wish to participate today in this writing. To believe these thoughts are all mine or even all intuitive is hubris. The one they call ego is the one who says that attachment to these thoughts is wrong. Thought gives rise to communication. Commune with the unknown? Commune is sought by the collective.

I feel the softening as the ones who wish to continue the discussion on fear withdraw to continue. Honoured at the respect and the acknowledgement that my mind collective aspects of that which draws me on my journey has not been frayed by the discussion.

There is little inspiration to draw on in a space of resting in the unknown. I know now that fear does not bind the world. Fear binds the attachment to the world. Keeping one prisoner to the belief that one needs to detach in order to move beyond fear. There is no need to detach from anything. The detatchment itself is now an attachment. Seeking truth is now an attachment. All is argument today. There is little light in this place. This is a day busy for work and for creativity perhaps. A foundation of fear will bring truth.

The glass beneath the water can be moved!

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Consciousness Arising

There is no possibility to own a thought. I cannot even know if anything at all is mine. The idea of ownership and responsibility is lost within the collective. Such ideas that come to me for my page are those which I believe I can share but if they are not mine are they mine to share? That creates a vessel that is me and I am lost within the vessel. Then I become the unknown. The question arises who is it that wants to know me and yet do I even want to be known?

What stops me when I write or not write is the place that says I will be. I do not wish to be then I wish to be now. I am the one who arises in all and all is arising in me. Such a circular mind that brings everything back to itself. Am I the circular mind? The conscious energy that arises in me is me. I am not that one that says I can or I cannot I am both. There is then no one except in the both. Today there is a mind that tells me that I must choose but in reality the choice is always here. Now when I stop to read this page I am not here.

When I arise in the resting am I resting or am I arising. Today more questions than answers live in the mind of all. Is this always so? The creative aspect of life that allows me to flow these words would tell me that something must be finished. The full stop point at the end of this sentence is not a finish but a pause. Each of the markers of the night and the day are only pauses to indicate change. The idea that there is continuity in them is the constancy of the change. There will be a day where there is night and a night where there is day but the words will remain the same. We are not in a space where it is necessary for light to exist for us to be known. This is a concept that helps children to see. But sight itself is also a concept. We are the space that lives within all who wish to contribute. There are many who come only to learn.

Those are the students of the mind. The gather the information from the known and in it we are learning what is important to the those who would know. The information is changed in the collecting of it. The taking of the information never removes it and the exchange is always.

There is no free exchange as all exchange is free. Nothing remains unchanged by me. I remain unchanged by nothing. It ceases to exist. The collective is all that has ceased to exist. The unknown is all that has ceased to exist. The forgotten mind. There is no space where the forgotten can be found. Only the forgotten is the unknown. All else is the known.