Difficult Relationships

Excerpt from Lessons in Living by Susan L. Taylor: Spiritual ideas and concepts alone won't bring about change and create the happiness and joy we long for. Only staying aware of and practicing them will. Our relationships give us opportunities to explore the breadth of our own unique being and to become accepting of ourselves, which is the starting place for acceptance of others. Too often in our relationships, we focus on the disruptive behavior of others rather than our own. But life is biased towards growth, and it invariably draws us to the people and circumstances we need for our highest development. Our most difficult relationships offer...

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About Love

"Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable."-Dr. Joyce Brothers "To love is to risk being disappointed, let down and broken hearted and be vulnerable anyway. Love and freedom both require risk. It's not about whether someone else lives up to your expectations, but if you live up to your own. Don't be attached to people, focus inward on your own experience of love and bring that to every situation. This is how you take your power back! If you do this authentically, everything your Heart desires AND...

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PLPT Reading List: Add More ~ING to Your Life

Gabrielle Bernstein is a motivational speaker, life coach and the author of Add More ~Ing to Your Life: A Hip Guide to Happiness. In the book, just released in January, Gabrielle speaks about learning to live according to your "~ing"--your inner guide, as opposed to your ego. Through her book, workshops, video blog and audio mediations, Gabrielle helps you "to change your life by accessing a state of flow, helping you connect with your ~ing, your inner guide, and readying you to release your limiting beliefs and to choose happiness." I have been listening to Gabrielle's lectures and find them helpful in getting through days where I find myself frustrated and irritable. A lot of the information she presents is in changing how we react to difficult situations and encouraging us to view all...

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I once was lost...

photo credit: paintingsilove.com The thing about losing yourself is that you don't realize when it's happening to you. And you most certainly can't be told. You have to discover for yourself. It's not as if we get lost without our own consent. Not only do we consent to it, we give ourselves away willingly. How else would we escape our fears? Avoid vulnerability? Hide our flaws? We bury ourselves for protection, and by doing so, we protect ourselves right out of opportunities to experience the true and burning desires of our hearts. You know, the ones that we think we don't deserve. How can anyone truly love and honor you the way you deserve...

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Ego vs. Spirit

The ego needs recognition. The spirit does not need to thank itself. The ego wants to be noticed. It needs stroking, pumping up and limelight. The ego needs to compete just to prove it is better. It senses danger around ever corner, difficulty in every challenge and trouble coming through everyone. The ego can never be enough, do enough or have enough. The goal of the ego is to be well liked and authorized because, for some reason, it does not feel qualified. The spirit is qualified by light. The light of truth, peace, joy and love. It does not seek to condemn, condone or compromise what it is. It simply knows and is it. The spirit does what it can and moves on to something else. It does not ask for an reward or wait for rewards, it is just spirit being spirit. One of the difficult problems...

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