Morning Reflection: An ocean of stillness, despite the storms around me
An ocean of stillness, despite the storms around me.
Growing up in a coastal town in England, a love of the ocean has been a part of me for as long as I can remember.
For me, the ocean is spiritual. The raw power, majesty and timelessness gives me a sense of perspective that nothing else brings.
For the ocean is an ocean, regardless of anything else. Yes the moon may pull it, but it still beats its way relentlessly to the shore. Patient, the ocean works tirelessly, at its own pace. Its song is the heartbeat of the world, calming, soothing and reassuring.
The ocean teaches me that persistence is a key part of life. While I am pulled, buffeted, lifted and dropped by the ravages of time, life and the incessant trials of humanity, the ocean bids me to remain calm, to stay my course, to succeed.
The ocean teaches me respect, in that it holds the secrets of life, but can be underestimated in its power and destructive capacities.
The ocean teaches me stillness in the face of storms, persistence in the presence of time, and the never to be forgotten truth that life is fragile, temporary and worthy of respect.
When I need to be grounded, balanced and restored I allow my mind to drift to the ocean.
And I am renewed.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
Beauty and Majesty
Morning Reflection: We are our choices, not our circumstances
We are our choices, not our circumstances.
No one gets to choose their start in life. We are all born into circumstances. Some great, some good, some difficult, and some very painful. Although these can affect us, they do not define us.
Sometimes, through no fault of our own, we find ourselves in difficult circumstances. Poverty, divorce, loneliness and even sometimes addiction are circumstances outside of our control, especially when those circumstances are created by the bad acts of others.
But our circumstances no more define us than do our race, or the color of our eyes.
All of us have the unique power to make our own choices. Our choices are the truest definition of ourselves. Even when we make wrong choice, if we can but learn one lesson, then the choice has proven of value.
The greatest of all choices are the ones we make in humility, when we put aside consideration for ourselves and act in the best interest of others. Those choices define us in ways that nothing else can.
We are told that actions speak louder than words, but our choices are louder still. Show me a person’s choices and I can tell you who that person is, especially when they chose not to act.
Even though we sometimes choose for reasons that are not clear to us, as we examine the reasons behind our choices we will more fully come to know ourselves, and in doing so, we can better ourselves to serve others.
Your ability to choose, in your heart, in your mind and in your soul, is the greatest power you have. Guard it well, for in your ability to choose is the way to peace, fulfillment and joy.
Choose, learn, grow and become.
It’s all there for you.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
The Jump to Success
Morning Reflection: Why do I fear?
Why do I fear?
Where did my fears come from? When I try to trace my fears back to their source, I often realize that a fear, or a limiting belief, has been with me for a long time. Longer than it needed to be.
Often, our fears grow out of our childhood, when we were afraid of things that seemed so painful to our childlike hearts and minds. Maybe it was fear of unkindness, such as that inflicted by a caregiver whose own demons stopped them from showing up in our lives in a way that would have been supportive and empowering. Maybe it was fear of ridicule from our peers, which to our childlike souls was so painful as to be nigh unto death. Maybe it was fear of abandonment by a parent simply because you had an opinion that ran counter to their own.
Whatever the genesis for your fear, it often took root after an experience that your younger mind took to mean something life threatening, but which through your adult eyes could be viewed very differently. To our young eyes, the fear, and the patterns of behavior that you adopted to counter those fears, seemed reasonable, necessary and vital.
When was the last time you took your fears for a walk, and looked them over with the eyes and mind of an adult? Chances are it’s been a while. Although our logical mind, our frontal lobe, operates near our maturity age, our emotional mind, the limbic system, still operates at the level of a child. The fears which served us as children are often detrimental in our adult lives, yet rarely do we confront these fears head on.
Growth as an adult usually involves facing fears learned as a child, and those can be the most terrifying to us. There is freedom on the other side of fear, but you cannot walk backwards through your fear to find freedom.
You have to face it, and move through it.
But once you do – it falls away.
The mature mind can stride through the trials that the childlike mind once shied away from.
It just takes a willingness to overcome….
And a desire to take the next step on your journey.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
The Strongest Chains
Morning Reflection: Why am I stuck?
Why am I stuck?
As a new year begins, most people resolve to change something. For me this year, I have set no resolutions. Rather, I seek to go deeper, and understand why I have not done things before.
I seek to understand the areas of my life in which I have not yet manifested the outcomes that I want. There are many of these areas, and I must move into each of them as I try to understand what holds me back.
Mostly it is fear. Fear that I will be laughed at, fear of failing, fear of a loss of sense of purpose, or fear of pain. But these fears are not created in a vacuum. There have been experiences that have created these fears. Experiences that were probably misunderstood, but accepted as truth, and that generated patterns of behavior that I still follow today, even though they are patterned on a falsehood.
I wish to understand why I have chosen to live a life that is not in congruency with my dreams, because these actions have been my choices. If I accept they are choices, I accept that I can chose differently, and create different outcomes. If I accept that they are MY choices, then I also accept the responsibility to change them, and also accept the belief that I can.
There is no place more valuable than the graveyard. In the graveyard we find all the hopes, dreams, ideas and purpose that was never realized during that person’s time on earth.
My wish is that I do not take my dreams into the graveyard. My hope is that I can find a way through my fears, and become the person who I think I was born to be.
It is time to accept, to live and to manifest a different level of purpose.
It is time to act, to move, to believe and to begin.
It is now. I am here. I am beginning.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
You are enough.
Morning Reflection: What do you do when too much is never enough?
What do you do when too much is never enough?
Have you ever known someone who acquired so much of something, and was never happy? I was one of those people, but my acquisition was food. No matter how much I ate, it never seemed to be enough.
I realize now that I used food as my drug of choice, to try to dull the pain I was feeling. The pain of self defeating beliefs, of loneliness, of frustration. The pain of being a flawed human being.
But no matter how much I ate, it was never enough.
In life, we sometimes seek to acquire something that we think will make us whole, complete, adequate or enough. Usually though, what we are chasing is external, and can never make us truly happy. Often, we think that acquiring enough of something will make up for a huge lack we feel in one of our essential needs, and believe that we will be happy then.
True happiness comes not from knowing that you are enough, but from knowing that you don’t have to be.
True peace comes from letting go of the comparisons that beset us, and instead listening to the truth from inside of us. That is difficult because it requires us to make peace with ourselves, but how will we ever have peace with the world if we have it not in our own heart.
Listening to our own truth requires humility, dedication, courage and above all, quietness.
Just know that you don’t have to be enough. You are, and that is enough.
Just be.
Here.
Now.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
How does your soul sound?
Morning Reflection: When the world around you is quiet, what do you hear?
When the world around you is quiet, what do you hear?
The more silent the world outside becomes, the more I can listen to the noise from inside. That noise varies from day to day, but as I try to find balance and stillness in my life, I find that I become more aware of the cacophony inside.
The noise from within my soul is the sound of my fears, my dreams, regrets and desires. Also, sometimes that sound is measured with compassion, concern and courage.
I have discovered recently that expectation is often the greatest cause of discordance within my soul. Expectation, whether from a sense of entitlement or expectation after an effort has been expended, creates for me more soul-noise than anything.
Expectation, I have found, is the enemy of gratitude.
Self expectation, expectation of others, expectation of deity. All of these coalesce into a roaring maelstrom that defeats my desire to find peace, which I think may be cloaked in gratitude and compassion.
Expectation is essentially self focused. So as I seek to understand myself, I seek to find out why I have these expectations, and if they are reasonable or something else. I try to understand which of my needs these expectations satisfy. Often, I find that the expectation meets several of my needs, which is why I am so addicted to these expectations.
I suspect that the more I move away from expectation, the greater peace I will find, and the greater compassion I will discover.
So in my attempt to find stillness in my soul, I have to learn to let go of expectation.
And that is not easy.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
Morning Reflection: Could you turn it down please…
Could you turn it down please…
Prior to the advent of headphones, I heard this a lot as a child. Then as headphones became more popular, the sound got quieter, but the noise got louder.
I live in a world today with a lot of noise. Some comes from my soul, some comes from the drama of other people, and some from what a teacher of mine refers to as ‘human problems’, by which I think he means that inescapable fact of being a person, alive in this universe.
But recently I have noticed that I use the noise of others to drown out the noise of my own soul. That comes from my wants, my needs, my beliefs and my fears.
Over the last 10 years I have allowed other people to become my distraction. What looked like dedicated service, or great kindness, was often a way for me to avoid the sound of my own soul.
Too many of us now live in a world of distraction, noise, entertainment and the ever present soundtrack of headphones, devices and clicks.
When do we take time to be silent, and allow the whispering of our soul to become pre-eminent in our lives. How often do we sit in silence and solitude, allowing the universe to unfold before us.
No, we use the noise to avoid the silence that introspection requires.
And that noise stops us from living out our lives authentically, honestly and vibrantly.
Life requires balance, and noise is oscillation.
To find peace, seek silence.
And listen.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
Morning Reflection: What are you listening to?
What are you listening to?
I heard something yesterday that forever changed my perspective, and hopefully will change me going forward.
My wife was opening a present that I had given her. Inside was a gift certificate I had purchased for her to do something that she wanted to do.
Her reaction, in a moment of honest joy, was a simple two word phrase….
“You listened”.
As she hit me with that beautiful smile that I fall deeper in love with every day, those two words resonated in a powerful way deep in my soul. For her, the gift of what she wanted to do was really secondary to the gift I had given by paying attention, and by knowing her, noticing her, valuing her and learning who she is. By listening to her, I was really saying that I loved her, and that her happiness was important to me.
Too many times in my life I listen to the sound of my own soul, my wants, my needs, my opinions, my judgments.
How often do I listen to the sound of someone else’s soul? Their wants, their needs, their opinions, even if they are diametrically opposed to my own.
For me, I don’t listen like I should.
So I need to be better, be quieter, pay more attention.
And listen.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
Choose your direction now.
Morning Reflection: Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Where you are is nowhere near as important as where you are going. Where you have been cannot determine your future.
Past experiences are just that – past. The direction you choose today, this hour, this minute, will determine your destination and destiny.
Sometimes it may seem that we do not have choices, that we are constrained by life and our responsibilities, but often we ignore that we have choices, and are refusing to make them.
When we take responsibility for our choices, even the ones that we feel we don’t have, then the world opens up for us at a new level, as we take ownership of our lives.
You have been given time as your birthright, intelligence as your heritage, freedom as your endowment and courage as your compainion. What you choose to do with these is your own responsibility.
Yes, life often throws us curveballs, and yes, there is injustice, unfairness and inequality, but life in all of its varieties and complexities is yours for the taking.
You just have to decide where you want to go.
And begin.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
Here and Now
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Morning Reflection: When are you?
When are you?
That question feels wrong doesn’t it?
We are very adept at thinking about where we are, but rarely do we think about ‘when’ we are. Are you now, or then (past) or to be (future).
Our focus determines our reality, and the only focus that can truly bring peace is NOW. We can learn from the past, and we can anticipate the future, but our emotional state is securely focused on the now.
Try feeling overwhelming joy from something that happened a long time ago… doesn’t work does it. Now try feeling joy and peace for something you expect to happen in the distant future… doesn’t work does it.
Our emotional time range is fixed truly in the now, but our focus on other things can destroy our peace in the moment.
If for this moment, you are warm, safe, fed and secure, then you can find joy in this moment.
Yes, tomorrow might bring heartache, and yes, yesterday might have been tough, but if you can let go of those moments, then you can find peace in this moment.
Today’s focus is simple…
I am
I am here
I am now
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings
A Single Point of Light
Morning Reflection: A single point of light
A single point of light.
Have you ever wondered why we use light and dark to signify good and bad, happy or sad?
Partly because we like the simplicity, because we don’t have to think about the details. Again, we are binary creatures, and we like things that fall into a simple analogy.
But I think we also use light and dark because it accurately describes how we process our sense of sight.
In the presence of light, we can see all around us. In the presence of darkness, we see very little.
While this is true in the physical world, this is also true in the emotional/spiritual world.
There are people in your world who light your way, who help you see your very best self and realize who you can become. There are also people who darken your way, bring you down from the best you can be, and make you question who you are, and what you are worth.
Each of us has the choice to be a point of light for someone, or a mist of darkness for someone.
It’s your choice. Regardless of your circumstances.
Today, I choose to be a point of light.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings