The Simple Gift of Giving To Those You Love Today

When a person passes away, it is a normal tradition to send flowers or prepare food out of respect and to show your love for those that were closest to the deceased. When you attend a funeral, you may see all of the flowers and wonder why they didn't send them while they were still living so that they could stop and smell the roses.

Just the simple act of being around living flowers can quickly and easily brighten a space, lift a person's mood or even improve one's health and well-being.

Giving gifts of love not for a specific reason or a specific date but because an individual is part of our life can be truly rewarding for both parties. The kind act of a gift or a flower can represent many different things including friendship, courtship, love, romance and so much more. It also produces feelings of being liked, being thought of and feeling special. The person giving the gift can receive simple joy and happiness from the act of giving and a person that receives it as a surprise can experience love, joy and bliss.

I encourage you today to thank those individuals that are part of your life with a simple smile, a hug, a phone call, a kind gesture or even by sending them flowers. Tell them how much they mean to you. You may be amazed the relationship that opens up from this simple acknowledgement.

Who will you acknowledge today?

Die While You're Alive

In your imagination, contemplate the death of your physical shell: Visualize it lying there lifeless, and observe how you, the witness, aren't identified with this corpse. Now bring that same attention to your body as it gets up and goes about its daily tasks. Nothing could harm your human form when it was dead, and nothing can harm you now because you are not that body - you're the invisible witnessing essence.

Remain in this realization, knowing that you've experienced the death of your earthly container as your primary source of identification. In this new awareness, you're impenetrable and free. Here's how Leonardo da Vinci expressed the message of this verse of the Tao The Ching: "While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." Do this now, while you're still alive.

- Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Living as an Immortal: Tao Te Ching Verse 50

Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.

- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu

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What Do You Want To Do?

This is a common question. It could be discussing what you want to have for a meal, discussing evening plans or even trying to figure out what color appliance you want to purchase. What I want you to think about is what did you want to do when you were a child? What did you want to be? What do you want to be today? Who do you want to be?

It is not a question where you have to determine to be someone else, it is a question that you can ask your core and listen to what answers. Allow yourself to be, to be your true self and remove the filters that say you're not able to reach your dreams. You can start today. Start making progress towards what you truly want to do and you will be rewarded in more ways we know of.

Ask yourself this question, "what 3 things must I do this week to make progress toward returning to my true self and doing what I love?"

Share with me in the comments below the 3 things you MUST do to move you one step closer to reality and your true self.

Being Playful In Life

By knowing yourself as awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self-seeking in situations, places, and conditions.

In other words: what happens or doesn't happen is not that important anymore. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form - no more and no less.

- Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

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Do The Tao Now

Vow to spend a day looking for opportunities to practice kindness in circumstances that usually provoke judgment. Notice what you think or say about a panhandler, a relative whom you feel animosity toward, or even a politician or TV commentator speaking in terms that send you off in a flurry of critical thoughts. That that opportunity to become a "noticer," decreasing your criticism while increasing the amount of courtesy and goodness in your world.

- Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Change The Way You Look At Yourself

If you pride yourself on having a fixed mind, realize that it relies on conditioning that generally shows up as prejudice. Instead, see yourself as flexible, since being open is the higher virtue. Pride yourself on extending your goodness and kindness to all sides, even when they oppose your preprogrammed learning.

Begin to see yourself as a person who notices instead of judges. Avoid taking on position and sticking to it no matter what the circumstances are; rather, be in harmony with all people, especially those whose opinions conflict with yours! And remember to include yourself when dispensing kindness and nonjudgment.

- Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

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Living Beyond Judgement: Tao Te Ching Verse 49

The sage has no mind of his own.
He is aware of the needs of others.

I am good to people who are good.
I am also good to people who are not good.
Because Virtue is goodness.
I have faith in people who are faithful.
I also have faith in people who are not faithful.
Because Virtue is faithfulness.

The sage is shy and humble - to the world he seems confusing.
Men look to him and listen.
He behaves like a little child.

- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu

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Transcending Ego

Karma's unalterable decrees govern human destiny only as long as man continues to live through his senses, in reaction to outer events. For such a person, moral reasoning is centered in ego-consciousness. Scriptural learning is centered in ego-consciousness. Self-pitying tears are centered in ego-consciousness. Ego-consciousness is the problem. The great its hold on the mind, the greater karma's hold on our lives.

Cosmic Law is no irrationally tyrant, however. Its judgments are not inflicted mindlessly on a cowering and helpless humanity. Every consequence ordained by Divine Law is right and just; it springs from deeper realities in human nature itself, and is meted out for deeds already committed. Is it not reasonable, indeed, that we reap the just results of our own actions?

Once the ego has been transcended in soul-consciousness, however, the realm of karmic law is transcended also. The soul remains forever unaffected, for karmic consequences accrue only to the ego. They are dissipated when no centripetal vortex is left to bring them to a focus in the consciousness of "I" and "mine."

In Self-realization, the soul is released at last from its bondage to karmic law. Even the good actions performed by great saints spread outward, like ripples of light, in blessing to all mankind.

- Karma and Reincarnation: The Wisdom of Yogananda, Volume 2 (v. 2) by Paramhansa Yogananda

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Good Karma

This life is like a movie, and just like in an exciting movie, there has to be a villain so we will learn to love the hero. If you imitate the villain's behavior, however, you will receive his punishment. It's all a dream, but ask yourselves, why live a bad dream by creating bad karma?

With good karma, you get to enjoy the dream. Good karma also makes you want, in time, to wake up from the dream. Bad karma, on the other hand, darkens the mind and keeps it bound to the dreaming process.

From a mountaintop, one sees clearly the whole country-side, and also the open sky above. From the heights it is natural to want to soar even higher, far above the earth. in the fog-bound valley below, however, the most that one aspires to may be only to climb a little bit higher.

- Karma and Reincarnation: The Wisdom of Yogananda, Volume 2 (v. 2) by Paramhansa Yogananda

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