Daily Motivation 1-17-2012

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Today's Gift

 

There is no reality except the one contained within us. --Herman Hesse

 

Claude Gellee painted lovely pictures of the English countryside. Europeans loved his landscapes, with their blue hues and mild distortions. But when the people went for the carriage rides in the country, they were disappointed because it didn't look the way Gellee had painted it. Then someone discovered that if you held blue glass up to your eyes and looked through it, the trees and hills and sky looked just like a Gellee painting! Soon everyone was looking through "Claude glasses" when they travelled.

 

We often let others do our seeing for us. We get lazy and rely on the images of television and movies, instead of really seeing with our own eyes. Our world becomes distorted and we lose sight of the natural beauty that surrounds us.

 

Each of us carries reality inside ourselves, and as we grow stronger within, we discover that we can see clearest when we trust our own eyes. There is a glorious world, full and rich, just waiting for us to glimpse it.

 

Will I see the world through my own eyes today?

 

From Today's Gift: Daily Meditations for Families ©

 

 

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Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Keep It Simple

 

I feel we have picked each other from the crowd as fellow-travelers, for neither of us is to the other's personality the end-all and the be-all. --Joanna Field

We must look around at the people in our lives today, and know that we have something special to offer each of them, and they to us. We do travel separate paths together. We may need to learn tolerance; perhaps a friend's behavior pushes us to be more tolerant. Impatience may be our nemesis, and everywhere we turn are lines, slow cash registers, traffic jams. Our experiences with others aren't chance. Fellow travelers are carefully selected by the inner self, the spiritual guide who understands our needs in this life.

We are both the teachers and the pupils. We need both our friends and those we may label our enemies for what they can help us learn.

Action for the Day: I will carefully look about me today with gladness at the travelers I've selected to learn from.

 

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One Day At A Time

Freedom
. . . we will be amazed before we are half way through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone,
we will see how our experience can benefit others.
- Alcoholics Anonymous, pp.83-84

Thought to Ponder . . .
Within our wonderful new world,
we have found freedom from our fatal obsession.

AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
H J F = Happy, Joyous, Free.

 

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Daily Motivation

 

Live the richness

Stop focusing your thoughts on wanting things, because whatever you want, by definition, you do not have. Instead, put your thoughts, your energy and your efforts into more fully manifesting and enjoying what you already do have, which is everything.

When your thoughts are focused on want, those thoughts build a wall of separation between you and life’s immense abundance. As soon as you let go of the want, you begin to see, to feel and to make positive use of the very real connections between you and whatever you envision.

Quit telling yourself you don’t have it, and begin realizing that you can already start to experience it. Look at your most treasured dream not as something you hope to achieve someday, but as something that is already unfolding right now as a result of your actions.

Don’t let your highest vision for life become a source of frustration by merely wanting it. Allow it to be a source of inspiration, power, effectiveness and fulfillment by expressing it in whatever you do.

The path you are on today is connected to another path, which is connected to another path, and another. You have access to the whole of life’s abundance, and by walking the path, step by step, you experience the beautiful fullness of that abundance.

Remove the conditions you’ve placed on life’s richness, and see that it is here for you today. Go ahead, live that richness, and create more and more fulfillment as each moment passes.

— Ralph Marston