My Latest Sandbox of Being

This evening, no single idea is inspiring a full post. Instead, I'm inspired to share some of the thoughts, ideas, and ways of being that have been speaking to me lately.

I keep a running note on my phone of possible blog topics. Some of these are my own thoughts and words that fall out of my mouth during coaching conversations, and many are from clients and others who’ve blessed me in conversation, books, and podcasts.

I share the few sources I can remember at the bottom, and I'm grateful to you, my readers and clients, for the inspiration that you are in my life. ❤️

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The poison of judgment taints the miracle of the moment.

Integrity is closing the gap between knowing and doing.

My goal is to see how many people in the rest of my life I can love, learn from, and serve.

It’s a lot messier in our mind than it is in the world outside of us.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Happiness is not an achievement, love is not an achievement, holiness is not an achievement. They are each a Grace. 

Happiness cannot be caused. It’s our natural state when we remove our inner barriers.

Knowing the wounds shows us the door. It’s up to us to step through it.

The spiritual is the most important kind of tactical.

We can’t change the past, only our relationship to the past.

What age is that emotion? ...that thought? ...that way of being?

It’s never too late to come back to love.

Our being is heard louder than our words.

We practice pretending and we end up with a life of pretending.

Where we’re coming from is a lot more important than where we’re going. 

Am I acting from a desire to be wanted, liked, and needed, or am I acting from a desire to serve?

I can entertain the insane thought of trusting the invisible.

What is, is what I have chosen to make of it.

Underneath all the perceptions that I can create about others, there is something radiant and shimmering waiting to be discovered.

If I can dislike and even hate someone I've never even met, then I can love them too.

All things in the human realm are either an extension of love or a cry for love.

Forgiveness means to release another (and oneself) from the perceptions I have been projecting.

Judgment always creates separation.

Consciousness is my sandbox, and I am creating castles.

Need, should, ought to, have to - remove these words from my vocabulary. I need do nothing.

It is time to step into ownership of my reality.

Some sources:

• The Way of Mastery

• Loving What Is

• The Ultimate Coach

• The Way of Integrity

• The Presence Process

• A Course in Miracles

Much Love. ❤️

Insights From a Back-To-School Photo

My wife posted to social media a back-to-school photo of me and our kids.

I cringed a little when I saw it. I thought (and felt!), “this is not a good picture of me!”

(According to that judgmental part of myself, most pictures of me aren’t good pictures.)

Then I remembered my practice - to tell myself in pictures and the mirror, “Hey, I love you.”

That’s how that cringe-worthy picture became beautiful to me - I decided to stop judging the man in it and decided to love him instead.

Here’s a question one might ask: Is it authentic to say “I love you” when I don’t really mean it?

Well, really mean it! Love isn’t a noun, something we have or don’t have. Love isn’t a feeling, something we feel or don’t feel.

Love is an act of the will. Love is a verb. Love is created from the most authentic part of ourselves, the Self.

The most direct access to love that I’ve found: generating it in my thoughts, in my speaking, and in my relating to others and the world around and within me.

In fact, judgment can be a gateway to love. Where I’m judging, I can release the judgment and love instead.

Judgment is a perception that we project onto the people and circumstances of our lives. Forgiveness is the releasing of that judgment, and love naturally moves in to take the judgment's place in our mind and heart.

First, notice the default, judgmental perception. Next, forgive or release it. Finally, create a loving way of perceiving.

When I looked at the picture, there was a default reaction in my mind (and being) that was judgmental and repelled by the image. I noticed and then allowed that reaction to move through, and then I created love in its wake.

For me, self-love has become a lifelong practice - it deepens my access to the love of others, since I'm practicing being loving both outwardly and inwardly. However, we can actually begin to powerfully transform the nature of our relationship to love in a single conversation.

During the 4-week intensive Engineering course I taught at Johns Hopkins this summer, I had a conversation with a group of curious students during lunch about my my life and soul coaching practice. At the end of the course a couple weeks later, one of those students came up to me and said this:

“I wanted you to know that since our conversation a few weeks ago, every time I look into a mirror I say 'I love you' to the person in the mirror.”

Then the student added, “I had no idea how much I really judged myself until I started this practice!”

Another student recently sent me this message:

"I wanted to thank you again for the group discussion we had about philosophy of life. It really moved me and inspired me to start living authentically right away. I've been loving a lot more and thought you'd like to know that conversation changed my life."

The power of a single, loving conversation. 🙏❤️

Uncovering the default and inherited stories and judgments we’ve got about ourselves and others - deep in our minds, hearts, and nervous systems - can be incredibly freeing and empowering. It needn’t be hard. It needn’t be dramatic. It needn’t be painful.

It’s called healing. It’s called integration. It’s called “returning to love.”

Why is it so easy to love our kids (most of the time) and our pets? Because we have few judgmental barriers between us and them.

We cannot love and judge at the same time. 

Choose.

The more we judge, the less we love.

The more we love, the less room there is for judgment.

Practice being loving, and practice being happy. Find your own inner trailheads into love and happiness.

It’s either that or judge.

It’s either that or live from fear and insecurity (which are the source of judgment, by the way).

Reach out to me and let's connect if you're having difficulty with this. It's the most important skill most of us have never learned.

Much Love. ❤️

Busy Missing the Miracle

“Dear Great Great Grandchild,

I wish I would’ve grown more love, peace, and joy in my life and the lives of others. I wish I would’ve done more to heal and take care of humanity and the planet. I wish I would’ve loved and enjoyed it all a bit more. I wish I would've lived more fully in touch with the miracle of life itself.

But I was just too busy…”

I stepped out of a building on campus today and was struck by how perfect and gorgeous the weather was. 

As I started walking to the next building, I saw four adults in front of me, each walking while staring at their phones.

“Busy, busy, busy,” I thought. “They are missing the beauty and fullness of life within and around them.”

Then, myself feeling busy, I pulled out my phone to check my calendar for the day.

Seeing the irony of pulling my phone out in that moment, and after so self-righteously judging them, I smiled, put it back in my pocket, and thought, “Busy, busy, busy!"

What I then almost did was judge myself for being judgmental, hypocritical, and busy. Instead, I forgave myself, appreciated those inner parts of myself, and reconnected to the beautiful day I found myself in.

(Do you want to know a secret about Judgment and Love? Every time we forgive, bless, or otherwise release a judgment, we fall in love with what it was we were judging. So, in that moment, I got to fall back in love with myself.)

When we’re busy, we have important things to attend to! Who has time to breathe, to feel what the body feels, to be with what the heart is experiencing, to bring intentionality to our every thought?

Who has time to honor the profound beauty and sacredness within each of us and within each and every moment when we’re so busy, busy, busy?

And that’s one of the reasons why we stay so busy: it lets us off the hook.

I’m too busy to be responsible for my own well-being. I’m too busy to give my kids and colleagues the attention they really deserve. I’m too busy to be honest, to slow down, to pay attention and respect to the sacredness of my life and of life itself.

I’m too busy to feel and handle my fears of not being enough. I’m too busy to reflect upon and thank the Source of everything. (Gratitude itself is one of the greatest prayers possible.)

And when we’re too busy to be responsible for our experience of life, we get to blame somebody else for it.

Busy isn’t a doing. Busy is a way of being.

Here are a few alternatives to being busy. Before I share them, though, I want you to give up the right to say you don’t know how to do it.

So here are a few alternatives to being busy with a full schedule:

• Being responsible for my experience of life.

• Being intentional and engaged about my attention and focus.

• Being curious.

When Jesus said, “Heaven is among you,” he didn’t add, “unless you’re busy.” 

When we stop using busy as an excuse, we force ourselves to get real about the true source of our experience. 

Usually, the true source of our uncomfortable feelings are fear, insecurity, and lack.

And now we’re really getting somewhere. When done well, confronting these inner barriers to joy and wholeness gives us access to transcending them. 

Transcending our inner barriers to peace, love, joy, and wholeness matters more than living our great cultural excuse of being too busy to live our best life.

Much Love. ❤️