"Hear Ye Hear Ye"

"Hear Ye Hear Ye"

Day Twenty-Six of the Self-love 31-day 5-minute Challenge: Judgments

I invite you today to spend five minutes thinking about where can you judge less. When you find yourself having endless thoughts about another person's behaviors that you are judging good or bad, ask yourself this question as you are pointing out that behavior in other; Do I display this same attitude or behavior? Often, what 'irks' us in another is something in ourselves we need to address.
Below is an excellent article by Ram Dass I thought I would share. 💞Dolby Dharma

"Watch how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you’re not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgment means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.

The only game in town is the game of being, which includes both highs and lows. Every time you push something away, it remains there. The pile under the rug gets very big. Your lows turn out to be more interesting than your highs because they are showing you where you’re not, where you have work to do.

You just say, “Thank you for teaching.” You don’t have to judge another being. You just have to work on yourself.

When somebody provokes your anger, the only reason you get angry is that you’re holding on to how you think something is supposed to be. You deny how it is. Then you see it’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your own hell. When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought it would be, examine the way you thought, not just the thing that frustrates you. You’ll see that a lot of your emotional suffering is created by your models of how you think the universe should be and your inability to allow it to be as it is." ~ Ram Dass On Judgment of Others - Ram Dass."

The Mantra: I am a loving presence without judging right or wrong.

“Often those that criticize others reveal what he himself lacks.” ― Shannon L. Alder

"Let it Ride"

"Let it Ride"

Day Twenty-Two of the Self-love 31-day 5-minute challenge: Expectations.

A "BIG energy" expectations; we all have them, and they can rule over us if we let them. I believe the only way to avoid the dark side of expectations is to learn how to 'manage' our anticipation of people, places, and situations. An unfortunate Challenge of having high hopes; it can and does prevent us from enjoying the experience altogether.

Therefore, let's practice being open to life!

We are not going just to delete the idea of not having expectation(s), nor should we, having an idea, or wanting something in our lives and expecting it to turn out is natural, it gives us something to move towards. What causes the downside; is our attachment to the outcome. It can wallop us when we don't get the desired result. Most of us have experienced great disappoint at some point in our life.

When we hold steadfast to our ideas about how things need to turn out, we can't help but be disappointed, hurt and let down.

What can we do? We can practice having 'less' expectations, be open to more exploration, and trust the process, that life will throw us curve balls, people also what their way and situation don't always turn out the way we want!

But that doesn't and won't always change our disappointment. But if we can practice adopting a free-flowing attitude, and a knowing, that things don't always turn out the way we planned, we are meeting our expectations with an openness that allows us not to be so rigid and disappointed with our outcomes, but open to new opportunities.
This way of being affords us let judgments of ourselves and others.

There are amazing benefits practicing acceptance; most situations in our lives needs to be mindfully worked toward to set us free. Dolby Dharma

Today's Mantra: I Am open to unexpected outcomes!

“Expect the unexpected, believe in the unbelievable, and achieve the unachievable.” ~Ashley Fern

"What's LOVE got to do with it"

"What's LOVE got to do with it."

Day Twelve of the Self-love 31-day 5-minute challenge: LOVE

I invite you to take five minutes and think about a situation in your life where you can BE a loving presence, Give more love and Feel more love for Yourself. YES, this is about Self-Love.

Love is a universal word, but not a universal feeling, at least not to me. I have always thought of love as something indescribable, intangible and ambiguous in nature. The "L-word" is just blurted out, but it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone that is for sure.

Where to begin: Loving yourself first, in a healthy, NONnarrcistic way; that is having a reverence for humanity, wanting for others what you want for yourself.

Loving yourself is key to knowing what it feels like to have a quality connection to self and others. If you don't own it, or know what it feels like to honor yourself, you can't possibly know the depth of another, without knowing 'YOU' first.

The power in a 'love connection' begins with self-acceptance.

In our culture, we are too busy seeking someone to love us, take care of us to make us feel accepted, validated, whole and complete. Not for all of us, but for most of us.

On a subconscious level, we seek people to grow more, learn more, and work out our ancestor's generational downloads. These downloads have taken up residency in our body, minds, and spirit. We are not aware of it; hence ending up in crazy making relationships.

These collective generational dramas live in the cells of our bodies waiting to be fed. We all carry around all kinds of stories about ourselves, but until we address and gain an understanding of what our needs are, address the wounds, then we know that what we were seeking outside ourselves we had all along. Love is meant to be a compliment to each other, at least that is how I feel it. 

Receiving love from another always feels good, but the love I feel for myself allows me to have healthy relationships with others. I want for them, what I want for myself. 

The good news with this challenge, you get to spend five minutes opening to yourself and see where you can love yourself more.

Today get over to the mirror, gaze into the soul of your eyes and allow the floodgates of love to open. Spend those minutes looking for what is beautiful and loving about YOU. Receive it as you breathe in the life force of love that is your birthright. Open a little more, and take in all that is RIGHT with you, sip a little more love in. Love is never-ending and eternally flowing, all you have to do is practice this mirror work each morning. You will be glad you did, it sets the tone for a unordinary day of unexpected LOVE.

At the end of the day, it ALL boils down to LOVE. <3 Dolby Dharma

Today's Mantra: I AM a loving presence, love is my life force.

Love is more than what can be expressed in words, love is more than grammar and verbs. Love is compassionate and soothing, love can be painful and grueling, but only for growth. Love is not abusive, love is not vindictive, love is not selfish. Love will not leave you with a black eye and hating yourself. Love is the building blocks of creation, love is the substance from which we are made. From love, to love, by love. ~Muneera Rashida

Acceptance!

When I think of acceptance, I think of mindfulness. When we consciously accept a situation that we have no control over changing we change our course of action; the biggest change is our attitudes towards the unwanted situation.

When we can't change it, do we lean in or do we carry on complaining about the situation 'as if' that is going to make it more acceptable?

The practice is not to push against the undesirable, not to tear it apart, but to become mindful of our existence to whatever it is that we can change and change what we can, quietly, without notice.

Acceptance helps us stay in the balance, stay healthy and steady. It raises our vibration and affords us the stability to make changes that can benefit us and everyone.

Pushing against life is what throws us off, and ultimately makes what we don't like worse than it already appeared.

By accepting life, it is to experience the rawness, the unaltered moments, to meet life as it is, feel the experience and make changes if acceptable. Some things in life cannot be altered, and that is our greatest moment of accepting 'what is,' and let go of the struggle.
Acceptance is Mystical, Powerful, and healing. It affords us peace within our hearts for ourselves and others. Dolby Dharma

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 
― Lao Tzu