Shrink the monster

As you focus on the experience of feeling healthy, joyful and sharing that, you extend this state of being.  When you focus on difficulties, you feed them, enabling them to grow.  Every unkind thought, word or self-criticism gives the inner monster energy and power over you. Buddha calls them 'anger-eating demons.'

How would your life experience change if you treated situations or people that evoke discomfort with love and kindness?  Imagine all the difficult people you encounter, those who mistreat you or trigger negative feelings.  What do they teach? People are often unaware of what they do.  Rather than get angry, why not view everything as a wonderful opportunity to laugh and grow? Then the world laughs with, not at you. 

What if the most difficult person in life is actually you? In order to learn to live with people who push your buttons, it is first necessary to gain insight into and grow more accepting of your true essence.  Then you realize how people relate to you does not always reflect how they truly feel.  Notice what happens as you show compassion, appreciate everyone as they are.  How you see shifts with your patience and kindness. 

Remember how to stop being your own enemy. Relax. Accept who you are. Knowing the causes of being difficult enables you to recognize how to shrink the monster within. You come to reailze difficult people are projections of your own rejection. Suddenly, difficulty is a figment of your imagination. As you come to understand true self, then nothing and nobody are difficult.  Be still and the source of irritation disappears.

Practice the Middle Way

The concept of the Middle Way arises as you do not completely deny your desires yet, you also do not succomb to all of them either.  As part of awakening, you rediscover how it feels to live in balance and harmony.  How often do you actually nurture inner being?

Finding that 'happy medium' is not about giving up dreams or ignoring who you are.  In fact, its about remembering how to be centred, patient and spiritually-poised when events run smoothly as well as when they do not.  Its about choosing to see the bright side or blessings in all circumstances.  Its about choosing love over the ego compulsion to be right.  Its about being aware of the compassion in your blood. 

Every choice you make emits energy vibration. As life unfolds, every cause has an effect. Some you choose to see and others you do not. How and what you perceive, any opportunities you notice, result from more than thought. Recognition reveals its Cosmic Synchronicity.

Be kind to yourself

When was the last time you truly noticed how you treat yourself? Listen to the words you use. Are you kind? Are you understanding? Do you accept, resist or reject what is happening? Do you get easily uptight? This is an invitation to care.

Open your heart.  Allow yourself to feel your way through the inner messages you are sending. What if every time you communicate to the world, you are actually inviting yourself to love more unconditionally? Laugh uncontrollably.

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” 

-Mother Teresa

What is emerging?

Even right now, you are taking action that itself makes that action more beautiful. People are conditioned to focus on what they gain on a physical level.  As you begin to awaken, you gain insight into nothing.  You come to feel its the nature of love to express itself, to make itself known and to work through what unfolds.  To feel the world you perceive is love in action allows self to expand.  How to  do it? 

One suggestion is to consider how your views on suffering invite change.  Any call for attention is also a gesture of love.  The love you are exists to expand, deepen consciousness and understanding of being.  When love is withheld, suffering is permitted to spread.  You stop taking for granted dreams can exist without dreamers. You shift to focus on how everything you do is a step to Transform your life.

Clarify the process

Notice the experiences that expand your perception and understanding of love.  What distracts you from the messages of compassion in a given situation?  Where compassion exists, love does too.  Only fear distorts messages of wisdom and compassion into a reason to suppress or ignore the core messages.  Identify the intention behind action.  Intention creates the consequences.  Find the courage to awaken, challenge and heal.  You may find it useful to keep a journal about why certain observations are especially meaningful.