I Found Myself Trying To Please You

The Truth and Nothing But The Truth...

"The Eagle's (Spirit's) gift of freedom is not a bestowal, but a chance to have a chance."
Carlos Castaneda

There is much tugging at the mind and heart of human beings these days. We have become a population wrapped in the trance of our own opinions. All the filters are in place and the projector is running overtime. We are powered by the super conductor of illusion, the smoke and mirrors of human interaction. Is it that it's just too hard to do the research to look for the facts? Is it too time consuming? Or is it that we really believe what we think is true?

I write, here on Hub Pages because I truly appreciate the right to put my opinions and my stories into written form, hoping others will want to read them. I sometimes think I have it all right, based on what that means to me. I can usually find someone, very quickly though, who will tell me if I don't, so I don't get to spend a lot of time there. I have to say I really like it there, though, so I see how it covertly draws me to it each time.

Reading and commenting on HP is a sort of art in itself. I occasionally get more from the comments than I do from the hub, including my own hubs. This is not because the hubs were needy, it is because the hub generated such an imaginative response.

Of all the experiences I draw to myself the ones I enjoy least have fear and / or conflict involved to a certain degree. I am willing to experience a small amount of that, but honestly, I believe the only way to repair a population gone awry is through higher emotions. If a person is committed to being the light for their own path as well as try to be the light for others, then what? Do you suddenly owe it to them to try to please them? Should your articles and comments become clones of someone else's? Part of avoiding being in conflict with others is to try to please them. I found myself trying to please you.

Everytime someone reads what I write it is "a chance to have a chance" with the reader. It is true, for me, that I am committed to the light. I want to feel like what I think, say and do make a beneficial difference in the lives of others. I want to both make them happy and give them value. People kind of like agreement, so that usually stands as one of the things people think will make them happy. Giving people value is more tricky. There is a fine line where awareness is concerned and I sometimes lose the way, myself, on this narrow road.  I realize that trying to make others happy, through my writing, is a futile undertaking. People either find happiness within themselves, or they do not. There is nothing I can ever do to change someone's happiness. I know, now, that it is not my place to try to make people happy. It is my place to be true to myself. So what that means to me is to make every attempt to bring value through who I really am in my own life.

If people who are reading this would leave me a note in the comments telling me what would make them happy, really, I would delight in knowing. Mind you, I think happiness comes from inside, but I want to know what you think. I am asking that you be truthful with yourself and us who will read this. Those who might not usually leave a comment, please step out of your comfort zone and leave one here. I can imagine reading these comments will bring value to us all.

International Love and Awareness Day

International Love and Awareness Day

April 15, 2012

The primary difference between those who are happy and those who are not, is they say so.
Lela Hayes

tales of power...

International Love and Awareness Day is

                   April 15, 2012

Be Happy For All Time...

You can start now, right where you are.

 

 

Think On These Things...

"Common sense is a collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

Albert Einstein

Many times in our lives we will have the opportunity to experience genius. It may come from us or it may come from another. Either way, we will know that we have been exposed to something outside our normal way of viewing things. We will be sitting next to someone in a restaurant or standing in line to check out in the market, and we will hear something so brilliant, so obvious. Yet until those words have passed our neighbor's lips, the possibility of the thing will never have crossed our mind.

My husband and I have been to Las Vegas often. For us the appeal is the golf mostly, the shows next and finally the restaurants. Many years ago we were staying at the Rio Hotel. One of their restaurants, at the time, was a gourmet restaurant above a wine tasting establishment. We had not been there before and thought we'd try it. We came down from our room at about 7 p.m. and were seated in a lovely semi-circular booth in the center facing a huge, beautiful, elegant and very organized kitchen. The restaurant was so noisy we could barely hear each other and found ourselves yelling just to be heard. About 30 minutes into our dining experience, everything and everyone became quiet at exactly the same time. Someone across the room said in a very loud voice, "You're either living on the edge or you are taking up too much room." I truly enjoy allowing my mind to analyze things and this gave me quite a bit to think about. For many reasons, I found this good advice. It caused me to stretch to see where the edge might be and then there was the marvel of looking where no one else was. Both gave me a thrill. I have thought much of that over the years and each time I do, I do the exercise I just mentioned.

One of my very favorite authors, ever, is Carlos Castaneda. He wrote a series of books about his experiences as an apprentice to a Yaqui native shaman. Carlos, who has since left this world, was an anthropologist, studying rituals of the native tribes of north America. He met a man he called Juan Matus, whom he later referred to, out of respect, as don Juan. Don in spanish is a term used for a person of great importance. He tells us that Juan Matus is not the real name of this native shaman. But, he will call him that to protect his identity.

One of his books is titled, "Tales of Power", and this truly was as advertised. It opened my eyes in such a way as to rearrange the way I saw reality. Don Juan teaches Carlos about the life of a warrior. He tells him that being a warrior has nothing to do with fighting others through war and conflict, he says that is just 'the folly of men', but what he says it is, is being impeccable (flawless) in our own lives, committed powerfully to something bigger than our petty grievances. It is our making war on the smallness we find within ourselves, so that we can be awake enough to see all the magnificent wonders of the world in which we live. This quote is from one of his books and speaks so eloquently of this state of being a warrior.

“If we don’t learn how to travel along the avenues of awareness, we will come to such a state of frustration and despair that humanity will end up destroying itself. Our options are the way of the warrior, or extinction.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

I have read all of his books numerous times. I don't mean just a couple, I mean more like ten times each. I was so impressed by the teachings of don Juan and in the extraordinary ways that he viewed the world. Carlos says this of him,

"Don Juan was, in my estimate, a being who lived his life professionally, in every aspect of the term, meaning that every one of his acts, no matter how insignificant, counted." "I was surrounded by people who believed that they were immortal beings, who contradicted themselves every step of the way; they were beings whose acts could never be accounted for." "It was an unfair game; the cards were stacked against the people I encountered." "I was accustomed to don Juan's unalterable behavior, to his total lack of self-importance, and to the unfathomable scope of his intellect; very few of the people I knew were even aware that there existed another pattern of behavior that fostered those qualities." "Most of them knew only the behavioral pattern of self-reflection, which renders men weak and contorted."

Don Juan once told Carlos, "...that warrior-travelers should have a romance with knowledge, in whatever form knowledge was presented."

It is at this point where I feel the need to make a distinction between opinions and the truth. Opinion, as defined by Dictionary.com means, "A belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty." So just to be clear, opinions have nothing to do with knowledge, which is defined as, "Acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation." What don Juan was continually demonstrating to Carlos was that to waste time on expressing our opinions was merely a self-indulgence. Opinions are only folly, they make no difference. Whether you like a thing or you don't like a thing makes no difference in the thing, itself. Try this experiment-- look at anything around you right now. Based on your affinity or lack thereof, say aloud to the thing either I like you or I don't like you. Then, look to see if it has changed in any way. Well, I think we know the answer to that inquiry.

So many people I have observed act as if they are going to live forever and feel taking time to express their petty grievances will somehow make things around them change. But, from what I have gathered, none of us is going to live forever. Do you really want to waste your life spouting opinions when there are so many wonders to witness? Do you really want to base the value of your life on what you do and don't like? Or, might it be worth finding something to stand for and using your life as a great expression of this?

"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."

Malcolm X

Happy For All Time...

Love And The Grace Of God

What I realize, this day, and every day is that I have a choice to make, and that choice for me has to be the light.

I watch people in their lives and listen to their commitments through what they say. What I hear much of is people's concerns. There is not a place in our educational system, that I am aware of, that teaches us the science of 'How To Have A Good Life'. But, I can't think of anything more useful than a course that discloses the physics or metaphysics of how what we say and what we do create.

We believe what we think is true, we believe what we say is true. There is no organized way, that I know of right now, to learn to distinquish between the facts and our perception of the facts - our opinions. From what I am able to glean looking out across our planet, what we are creating with our thoughts is our unresolved issues, both individually and as a planet.  Many of us are looking for happiness outside ourselves, where it cannot be found.  We are looking to those with perceived greater power than we, ourselves, to fix what is wrong with our world.  We think that what we say and do, do not make any difference, so we just continue to espouse our limiting beliefs about ourselves, each other and our home.

From a really wonderful book by H. Emilie Cady, "Lessons In Truth", I found this passage..."Hitherto we have believed that we were helped and comforted by others, that we received joy from outside circumstances and surroundings, but it is not so." "All joy and strength and good spring up from a fountain within one's own being, and if we only knew the Truth, we should know that, because God in us is the fountain out of which springs all our good, nothing that anyone does or says, or fails to do or say, can take away our joy and good."

I decided recently, within the last month or so that I must discipline myself to see only God in everything. The last few years in my life have been and still are filled with challenges, as everyones' life is. I am not religious in any way, but I am totally a spiritual being. I have prayed and I have meditated and I have cried and I have struggled with what I see in the world, and finally I have declared that I will be happy for all time. It is the only thing I can do to help a world in despair.

My intention is to write things that are uplifting and create thoughtfulness and joy among those who have been generous enough to follow and support me. I shall always support everyone I can who takes up the good fight, but I shall always, too, do all that is in my power to bring the energy of the people of our planet to the achievement of their highest goals through being the most positive force of energy that I, myself, can be.

On April 15th 2012, International Love and Awareness Day will be celebrated for the first time. The request is that on this day, you take 24 hours in which to promote only love and awareness in ourselves and in each other on our planet. It also represents the opportunity to 'Be Happy For All Time'. Please celebrate this day with me on April 15th 2012.
Love and light to you all.
Lela

Who Will Be The Voice Of Reason?

Recently, the House of Representatives voted on the current budget proposal. I appreciate the idea of reducing an out of control budget. The U.S. must stop borrowing foreign money to shore up our extravagant govenment wastes. What I do not appreciate is that the new Republican House has once again sold the American people out for big business. In case you did not see an article on the areas reduced and those that were not, please allow me to enumerate them. They passed bills to shield coal companies and oil refineries from environmental clean air standards. They barred the government from shutting down mountaintop mines, believed to endanger water quality in the areas of these operations. School nutrition programs were cut along with heating and housing subsidies for the poor. They also have hampered an overhaul of the financial services industry, the same industry which was almost single-handedly responsible for our current massive national recession. While this seems plenty, they increased the pentagon's budget by almost 2% and cut domestic spending by 12%. In almost every case the votes sided with big business and sided against the populace. Texas Republican, Ted Poe, whose district has more oil refineries than any other showed us once again that talk is cheap, but special interest is alive and well.

I, personally, consider myself an Independent. It seems to me that we really only have one party in office at present, and that is the Spending Party. The only difference between the two parties that I can see is what they vote to spend all our nation's wealth on. Fifty-four percent, $1,449,000,000,000.00, of our annual budget goes to the military. Another 16%, $420,000,000,000.00, goes to maintain the Federal Government, including salaries, maintenance of government lands and structures and benefits for non-military personnel. That leaves $790,000,000,000.00 for everything else. $200,000,000,000.00 of the military budget is reserved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is $3,850,000,000.00 per week, wasted on efforts we are told will thwart terrorism. If we offered One Billion dollars to anyone leading us to the capture of Osama bin Laden and the members of al-Qaida, I'm guessing one of their own would turn them in.

I believe that both our domestic programs and our military programs need to be trimmed back. We should stop funding more than 2 children born to any welfare recipient, as an example of cuts to a domestic program, but we should stop interfering in the affairs of other countries under the guise of hunting down terrorist, too. The programs that really are important are the ones that protect our environment from unscrupulous business practices, support for the poor (noone wants to be poor, and many of the poor are senior citizens), regulations for the out-of-contol financial industry, so that they cannot continue to rob us, programs that protect our children and support their educations, and military funding to keep our homeland safe. Our legislators keep putting Social Security on the table as a program that should be cut, but let's be clear, we all paid for our Social Security benefits, unlike our members of Congress who get pensions, paid for by us, and do not contribute to social security. Something I am pretty sure we will never see is members of Congress voting to reduce their pensions and other benefits.

It is undeniable that we need a strong military, but we do not need to interfere with the affairs of foreign governments. Most of the money we send to these governments ends up in the hands of the few government leaders, and it does not result in the people obtaining their freedoms. It does cause a large percentage of the population to resent the United States, though, and in some cases to increase their domestic military forces and retoric to try to defend against us. We could have the most secure borders in the world if we brought our military personnel home and stationed them at locations considered most at risk for terrorists' activities and drug trafficking. I understand the frustration that the average citizen in the U.S. experiences because it seems our hard earned money, in the form of tax payments, is just being wasted and given away to those who already have the majority of the wealth, but electing more bad leadership is not the answer. At this point, I don't know what is, but a good start would be to contact your Congressmen and tell them we will not tolerate the abuse any longer.