Hi

All words are symbols and the word ‘God’ is a big is a big one – meaning that when we unpack all the attributes that the word points to it can be overwhelming. Mostly we tend to mistake the map for the territory or the word as being the thing is only points to.

When you use the word God what is it you picture? Something outside yourself, something withing, both? Many approach god as if he/she/it is a alien being with powers to punish and reward – I don’t recommend that approach

We are bigger the big and smaller the small….the human being is not merely a drop that can merge with the Ocean, but a drop that also contains the Ocean. Every divine attribute is latent within the human heart, and by the cooperation of human will with divine grace these attributes can be awakened and manifested.

We human beings contain within ourselves the potential to experience completion, to know our intimate relationship to the whole of Being in such a way that we reflect this completion through ourselves.

My favorite form of prayer is listening.

“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.  Joseph Campell”

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”― Joseph Campbell

Hi Rosie I’m not sure what you mean by the word ‘passionate’. Its my opinion that the ‘self help and becoming’ movement have created a lot of unnecessary angst by creating unrealistic ideals with regards to passion, purpose and meaning all of which are connected.

I like what Joseph Campbell said about Passion or Bliss “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. (Passionate Life) I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

The experience of being Passionate for career or what have you is just that a experience that exists not as a object to hold by a moment of being to experience. In a given day, week or month if we expect to the Passion for what we do in every moment were going to be disappointed. To a large extent we are the stories we create. as such having a Passionate career is a choice.  This has been my experience. There have been moments that I dislike what I do for a job and moments when I feel very passionate about what I’m doing. I am greatfull for the moments I experience passion for what I do.
―

Hi prudence

Do I understand correctly that he ghosting you for three months and that for those three months you continued to call him everyday?

The question I might ask myself if the above is true is why I don’t think I deserve to be treated better then that?

Hi Nelum

Viewing the world through the lens of social media is bound to distort what you see.

The personas we create are not fake but the means in which we engage with the world. How you relate as a son to your parents is different then how you relate to a stranger, friend, boss… as it should be.  The mistake happens when we mistake our identity’s and others identity’s as being a persona. We are more then the sum of our parts.

To get to know oneself and others one needs to engage, develop trust and drop the guards we put up to protect ourselves. I get the feeling that the observations in your post could be your way of justifying a desire to stay safe and disengage. I say that as it’s a tactic I have used in the past. If everyone is being fake why should I engage with them, better to keep to my introverted self. End result…. loneliness.

Advice for what its worth is to avoid these types of judgments and measuring standards. Focus less on what you imagine others are thinking about you or what you imagine they want you to be and instead be yourself. Engage honestly with people that interest you and eventually if you are courageous in refusing to hide behind your wall of fears, you will find your tribe.

Hi Belle

I know that for my sake (more than his), that I have to forgive, forget and move on. But my rage boils over sometimes

Forgiveness is an art that most of us practice badly. Most people feel that when they forgive they are also giving up on asking for accountability from the person that hurt then and so they must forget as in never remember the event of being hurt. If you think about it, such a perspective likely creates resentments and anger.

Forgiveness does not remove accountability. You can forgive someone and hold them accountable. By forgiving in this way, forgetting is a decision not to dwell. You become mindful when you are dwelling on the past hurt and taking a breath to let it go.  Let it go is not in pretending the hurt didn’t happen but realizing that when you dwell on the hurt it only intensifies. The practice of ‘forgetting’ is to notice and allow the experience to flow vice damming it up. Other attributes to forgiveness are to forbear and forgo. We forbear as in we sit with what we are feeling, a time to feel what you feel without reaction or responding to it. When we forgive we also forgo desires of getting even and revenge. Revenge and getting even are not the same of holding those that hurt us accountable. We hold them accountable from a place of love. If I give you my key and you steal from me taking back the key is not done from a place of anger but accountability and love.

I suspect your right that much of your anger is coming from a place with the feeling of a loss of personal power and control.   If such is the case the practice of mindfulness might.

“But I still love him”

I suspect your learning that love does not mean that relationship will thrive or last. That you can love someone even as you end a relationship. Perhaps even that Love requires that a relationship end.

Responsibility, accountability, discipline, meaning, growth… are all attributes of the experience of love.  Love requires that we hold those we are in relationship with accountable and sometimes that means the relationship must end. Ending not because you do not love but because you do love. Love continues even if a relationship does not.

Hi Greenshade

I like what L.B. Smedes said about shame

If you persistently feel you don’t measure up, you are feeling shame—that vague, undefined heaviness that presses on our spirit, dampens our gratitude for the goodness of life, and diminishes our joy…. Most shame we experience and take on is undeserved.

“Shame is heavy; grace is light. Shame and grace are the two counterforces in the human spirit: shame depresses; grace lifts. Shame is like gravity, a psychic force that pulls us down. Grace is like levitation, a spiritual force that defies gravity. If our spiritual experience does not lighten our life, we are not experiencing grace. . . .

“The lightness of grace does not lift all the sandbags that drag the spirit down. It lightens life by removing one very dead weight in particular—the weight of anxiety about being an unacceptable person. Grace gives us courage to track down the sources of unhealthy shame, see it for the undeserved pain it is, and take steps to purge our lives of it completely. It sets loose the lightest feeling of life; being accepted; totally, unreservedly accepted. . . .

“I believe that the only self I need to measure up to is the self my Maker meant me to be.

“I believe that I am accepted by the grace without regard to my deserving.

“I believe that I am accepted along with my shadows and the mix of good and bad I breed in them.

“I believe that I am worthy to be accepted.

“I believe that grace has set me free to accept myself totally, and without conditions, though I do not approve of everything I accept.

“I believe that nothing I deserve to be ashamed of will ever make me unacceptable.

“I believe that I can forgive anyone who has ever infected me with shame I do not deserve.

“I believe that I may forgive myself for anything that I have ever done to shame myself or another person.

“I am gratefully proud of being who I am and what I shall be.

“I believe that the grace heals the shame I do not deserve and heals the shame I do.

Hi coconut
Read this mornings feature article and thought you might find it helpful.

I hope you find a way not to be so hard on yourself

https://tinybuddha.com/blog/you-dont-suck-at-life-how-to-stop-believing-your-inner-bully/