Grasp the scope of suffering

To connect more deeply with people, common Humanity, and to better understand thyself, it's useful to deepen understanding of the scope of suffering.  What types of suffering do you notice or overlook? How do you react? With emotion? Indifference? Compassion? Now what?

1) Mental & physical pain: This includes everything from the stubbed toe and toothache, back pain and arthritis, to discomfort and restlessness.  If you overindulge in something, like food, or exercise, you may know physical pain. Most people seek to medicate, to heal if possible, and to move beyond pain psychologically and otherwise. You may not know that believing in or dwelling on pain gives it life. What if pain is actually illusion that you devise, bring on or exaggerate? Notice what you observe, the story you tell. Do people magnify their sense of suffering to cling to the past or something else unreal? What about yourself?

2) Financial pain: You may find it easier to empathize with someone who experiences poverty than with someone living in apparent prosperity. Yet, suffering is a perception, state of mind, that can be linked to every condition. Why distinguish someone as being better off than another? Is this not a way to perpetuate illusion of separation and suffer yourself?

3) Emotional pain. Temporary pleasures have an underlying nature of pain or loss.  As you grasp nature of overuse and impermanence in anything you experience, you can gain insight into the power of resistence, temptation and the potential difficulty of adapting to what you have when it differs from what you desire. Dissatisfaction is a feeling you may find yourself grappling with on some level.  Notice when emotions control you and you, them.

4) Conditioned pain. People are constantly being influenced by cause, conditions, and events beyond their control. This kind of cycle can create a sense of suffering. You may become susceptible to undesirable experiences which alienate you and convince you that you must feel discomfort. You may also sense helplessness because you're unable to control the actions and reactions of other people.  Rather than take steps to control the uncontrollable, be open to gain insight into yourself.  Expand your awareness of suffering.

Consider the benefits of moving beyond a superficial understanding of suffering. Your sense of peace and contentment would not falter. As you interact with people then, you could imagine painful situations, and yet, not be controlled by them.  Instead, you remain grounded in  inner nature.   As you grasp meaning behind your actions, you'll effectively remove yourself from conditioning and expand how you see and connect with people.

Accept that suffering includes more than what you think you know.  As you expand your vision, you'll understand better suffering means more than what one has or has not.  Deficiency is a human invention.  Perception differs. We have much to unlearn.

"Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all." -George Lichtenberg

BEE-lieve you can make a difference

Whether we achieve personal goals and dreams during our lifetime is perhaps less far-reaching than seeking to understand how every creature is connected to us, our health and well-being. Caring for other creatures, seeking to grasp and relieve them of their dilemmas,is thought to be something that would help human-beings. Consider how many of us depend on other people and creatures who may not specifically be motivated to help us. Yet, we all perform roles that influence others.

A curious report is drawing attention to the unexplained disappearance of millions of bees in the United States (U.S.). Beekeepers are at their wit’s end. A bewildered Congress is examining this critical situation facing a key insect, that is essential to the stability of national agriculture. Cornell University studies indicate these industrious insects pollinate crops valued at anywhere from 12 to 14 billion dollars. Bees could mean the difference between success or failure of life-preserving crops.

According to the newsflash, initial signs of an enigma emerged just after Christmas in Florida, when beekeepers discovered bees had vanished with no trace. Since then, the syndrome which experts are describing as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), has cut U.S. swarms by over 25%. Where have all the bees gone and what can we do about it?

Daniel Weaver, president of the US Beekeepers Association, stated over half a million colonies, each with nearly 50 thousand bees, are lost. He urges people to recognize this phenomenon has already affected 30 of the country's 52 states. Curiously, in many cases, the mortal remains of the bees have not been found. In fact, the situation has been compared with stories of the Bermuda Triangle.

Scientists explore many hypotheses. One theory is pesticide may have caused bees neurological damage and altered their sense of orientation. Other scientists blame drought and highly-used technology such as mobile phone waves. Widespread bee disappearance as a symptom of large-scale environmental destruction has not yet been seriously explored. Attributing localized blame for negative consequences is more prevalent than seeking concrete solutions. No one admits they know exactly what triggered this syndrome or when it will end. How do you bee-lieve you could make a difference to a disappearing species? Which life choices might affect it?

Learn to remember

Success is a concept that is linked with what is happening to each of us, through us and for us.  You might not have thought about it before in this way. Instead, you may have been conditioned to think success is a thing you must reach out and create through your own efforts. Why have you created an expectation that success is something you 'get' rather than experience? This mindset may tempt you to disregard other meaningful possibilities. I would invite you to think again.

Whether or not you initially realize or understand it, all choices you make are for your benefit. At times, you may convince yourself that you're challenged or suffering yet, what is that meant to tell you about your fears? The issue of whether you learn from your choices and the perceived results determines if you recognize you are the cause of your own sense of success or sense of something else. What if you came to believe nothing happened against your will, and your perception evolves to interpret success as that which you would accept once you're willing and feel ready to face it?

Since you may focus on success in varied forms in your present and future, consider how the life you lead can be seen as a tool or vehicle that enables you to experience how things happen. Imagine that no event unfolds, that no person you meet enters your life unless you invite them in with your hopes and desires. It's been said pleasure isn't truly understood without experiencing what pleasure is not. In the same way, it's been said that success isn't truly understood before a person experiences the opposite. This is how our points of reference emerge.

Before you grasp how you experience success in the 'here and now,' you may need to learn why you disbelieve this. What might cause you to create a mindse that dwells on failure or the idea that success, in desirable forms,seems forever out of your reach? Deal with your negative thoughts first and then, seek to understand the life experiences that may have caused you pain.  The nature of your awareness determines whether you feel a need to be healed. Success takes forms of self-realization, acknowledgement of errors, forgiveness of yourself and others, learning and embracing thoughts that enable you to move forward.

Look instead at success as the truth within translated by your thoughts and feelings. As you evolve to view success as evoking what you already know inside, you'll come to realize its up to you to learn to step back from what people and society define as success. What you see and hear can lead you to clarify your ideas. You can choose to perceive and learn from the world around you without always assuming forms of success you see are precisely what you seek. They can also act to represent the things which your sense of success is not. In fact, they may exist to help you realize you feel disconnected from your inner self and compel you to re-connect.

Pre-paid funeral madness

You may dream of organizing everything about your life so that it’s neat and tidy. Some people, regardless of age, like to think all details they can control will be covered, and this includes pre-organized funerals. Thus, that eventual happening can go on schedule, according to specifications of the deceased.

Consider that with over 200,000 cemeteries in the United State, many cemeteries operate through volunteer boards of directors and one or two employees. There are also about 25,000 funeral homes, where the vast majority of cemeteries and funeral homes (~87%), are small businesses and family-owned operations.

Fraud runs rampant in the prepaid funeral business. The government has issued warnings to protect the naive, the elderly and anyone who might think they're a good idea. Many companies sell services they never intend or don't have the capacity to make good on, and prepaid funerals, along with pet cemeteries, have become highly-suspicious. Do your homework. If 9-11% of Americans polled purchase prepaid funerals and over 2,000,000 people die in the U.S. per year, this can lead to a considerable amount of money. What research have you done?

Even if you choose a legitimate firm, a prepaid funeral doesn't necessarily make financial sense. Consider the numbers. The average pre-paid funeral costs $5,000. If you that money and invested it at 9%, in 17 years that could become over $20,000. If funeral companies claim interest made from prepaid funerals offsets inflation, just think what you could be doing with that money yourself.

Buying a prepaid funeral package locks you into the exact funeral arrangements stipulated in the contract you sign up for. In the meantime, life happens and things change. What if you move? Why lock into your funeral arrangements with certainty when you embrace your live now with its unknowns? Perhaps now is the perfect time to review life on your terms. Consider your age, financial situation and your priorities.  If your estate is put in order in a written will, you can redefine what it means to be in the land of the living.  No need to rush prepaid funeral decisions.

Uncharted territory

We all develop a sense of success to the point where we understand whether we experience that or not and what we did to get there. You may desire to repeat what you’ve done already to achieve those positive feelings again, and to avoid choices that had undesirable results. Then again, some of your less than ideal outcomes may cause you to take new approaches in the same direction and become even more determined in your future quests. Rejecting everything about your past wouldn't permit you to improve on what you now know or make new progress. 

During different initiatives, I've experienced both a sense of success and a sense of failure. One of my most greatest lessons is that I have opportunities to gain insight from all experience and I realize what I initially understand as failure can also be seen as a blessing. Much depends on how I choose to see my circumstances and how much I desire to grow. I’ve come to realize why it’s useful not to take perceived failures too seriously or permit them to control my frame of mind. It’s wise not to permit ego to inflate about successes either. Remind yourself that nothing lasts forever and resting on your laurels doesn‘t get you very far. I enjoy a sense of success, and learn from that, too, and move on to apply my new knowledge to new and uncharted territory.

What's vital throughout our life experience is that we choose to keep improving from wherever we are and however we perceive our baseline. No matter where you are in your life, keep honing your skills. Keep striving to discover and develop your abilities. Don't let the low or slow times hold you down. Choose instead to seek meaning in everything, from your current conditions, hopes and fears to the difference between your expectations and the results of your efforts. How you perceive determines what you believe you can do.  Are you willing to examine and bring about change in your beliefs when you discover they hold you back?

Learn from your freedom of choice to change parts of yourself. You could alter your attitude toward and about the world around you.  How would this affect your understanding of success? Dare to develop the courage to reach new heights of self-awareness and a sense of self-worth. You’ll know when you’re ready to explore new paths and opportunities that you think could work.   At that point, you’ll trigger your own revelations and continue to weave your future.