Process Over Results

Stress will eventually wear down a body and impair a normally healthy immune system. Because this deterioration is cumulative over time we often choose to ignore it when we find it inconvenient. However, once the damage becomes evident our habits are formed and it is very difficult to change our life style. So begins a cycle of managing the increasing variety of painful and often debilitating symptoms. Yet we need not treat our self in this fashion and we can change our behavior if we wish.

Those of us that are aware of how destructive stress is have made a new start time and time again. But all too often habit wins out over resolve and we are repeating the same behavior that has over time proven harmful for us. One reason for this is that our habits have been with us for a lifetime, they are stronger than our resolve unless we change the life style that continues to empower them. To change the result we must first change the habit and to change the habit we must address the cause.

Stress, anxiety or worry is often the result of our fear of the outcome. We have become so accustomed to focusing on our desired results that we have become wedded to them. Even the possibility that the ends will not mirror our desires causes us stress. Often we use this anxiety to manipulate the results, which in turn causes further physical deterioration. If instead we changed our focus to the process, if what we are doing and how we are doing it dominated our activities, if our heart was invested in the doing instead of the result, we would have little to worry about. Not that we should abandon our desires but we need not give them precedence over the process. We can control the process, we can devote our self to excellence and this is the reason we awoke in flesh and bone this day. It is our attachment to the results that enslave us stealing our heart, clouding our mind and racking our body.

We need not wait another moment. If we wish, we can resolve this minute to devote our heart to process. As human beings, creatures of habit, our focus will inevitably wander  from what is helpful to the one born of habit. As often as our attention drifts from the helpful to the destructive, we can refocus. Over time we will change having gradually formed new habits.  As a result, our body will mend, our heart will become more vital and our soul will become more fulfilled.

Let us this day, resolve to become dedicated to our activities, one at a time, devoted to excellence in what we do. Such devotion is not out of reach and excellence is not inaccessible if we employ it moment by moment and act by act. The only danger we face is losing heart in the battle to change.

May God bless you and awaken in you the joy of being part of the process for which He has breathed life into you. 

ABUNDENCE

When a soul empties itself of faith, fear naturally flows in to fill the void. Fear then is expressed in many forms, one of which is the feeling of lack or insufficiency. A feeling of lack obscures our vision until we are unable to distinguish our wants from our needs. The direct result of this is a form of blindness we call greed. When acting upon greed, satisfaction is not possible because fear tells us what we receive is never enough.

Because greed is a form of fear it diminishes our capacity for wholesome living. Eventually it damages the mind and the body as well. Further, one of the dangers of greed is what we will do to obtain the many things that will never satisfy a fearful heart.  There are many examples of extreme greed in the world around us but when we are held in the grip of greed we become unable to see it in our self. Even when we suspect our actions may be influenced by greed, we may excuse them by accepting insatiability as a helpful form of motivation.

Fear of lack will never lead to those of fulfillment and a life spent in pursuit of more will never find enough. Because our greed becomes obsessive eventually it leaves less and less room in our life for hopeful and helpful activity. Under such circumstances we risk becoming bitter and impoverished no matter how much we possess.

How do we deal with the greed around us? Not by direct confrontation for this will only stimulate the selfishness we are trying to turn back. However greed can be transformed to gratification in the presence of genuine fulfillment. If we are willing to be the force for good, to transform fear in to faith we can as living examples change the hearts and minds around us. Feelings of fulfillment are possible only when we focus on what we have as opposed to what we lack. Fulfillment will sponsor an attitude of gratitude which will light up the world where we find our self. When we are fulfilled, satisfied with our self, the glow we cast illuminates the lives of those we touch. We may never know of the lives we influenced or how many found their way by the light we shown but we will have changed the world for the better.

A wholesome attitude is ultimately irresistible by those around us but if we wish to change the world in which we find our self, we must be willing to persist for as long as it takes to transform them. Let our actions ever flow from a feeling of gratitude and speak eloquently of our beliefs. And let us remember the greatest miracle we can perform in this lifetime is through our actions to make a miracle of someone else.

ONE STEP AT A TIME

It is not in the goal we are aided but in the direction. Our goals in life should supply us with benchmarks, targets along the way. Instead some of us become so obsessed with arriving at our destination that we miss the entire journey. A life well lived is a process and not a conclusion. In the end it is our stride rather than our swiftness that will ultimately win the day.

An artist focuses on one stroke at a time and a craftsman on a single effort in the process. Neither of them invests their devotion to the conclusion but to the means at hand. When Michelangelo was painting the now famous ceiling at the Sistine Chapel, Pope Julius II repeatedly asked him over a 4 year period “when will you make it end,” to which the artist continually answered “when it is finished.” The magnificence of this work came about one single stroke at a time. The artist planned extensively but it was in the execution that the plan became a reality. If Michelangelo was devoted to the conclusion rather than the process, as was Pope Julius II, one of the most breathtaking works of art that has ever existed may not have come to fruition. The artist did indeed have lofty goal but to him the completion of this work became a direction toward which he devoted himself.

Much stress in life comes from our focusing on the ends at the expense of the means. Real satisfaction is achieved in our devotion to process. If we wish to accomplish anything of lasting value we must first gain the expertise required, plan well and execute the plan. Planning must precede execution and both should contain our dedication to excellence.  If we rush the process or try to skip steps we will have surrendered the opportunity for excellence. When we awoke in flesh and bone this day it was not to experience tomorrow but today, one activity at a time. When in pursuit of our goal we manipulate the result at the expense of the experience fear and anguish will result.

A body in continual stress will break down and suffer a variety of illnesses. Yet it is not necessary to continue in this direction. We can change our course but it takes constant effort. We may over time have developed the habit of creating stress in our life. Consequently changing this requires our constant attention. Each and every time we fall back on old habits we must respond with new ways to express our self. Yes we can change right now but we will find we must do so each and every moment of the day. If we are addicted to stress it may not have developed in a single day, so it is unlikely we will change our responses instantly. But we can resolve in a moment to try every moment to devote our lives to processes instead of results. The world will change for us one moment at a time and when our mind cries out “when will it be done” our heart will answer “when it is finished.”

HARMONY AND HEALING

How often do we do what is right simply because it is right? Kindness, friendship, patience, forgiveness, loyalty, generosity, these are available to us every waking moment yet we choose to withhold them for one reason or another. These six qualities are always appropriate and we should require nothing in return to express them. When we choose to withhold any of them for any reason we impoverish our own soul. The incredible beauty that passes through us each time we express any of these attributes is indescribable.

It is truly bewildering why we would require others to earn what we so urgently need to express. It is unlikely we have not from time to time expressed any of these 6 qualities and we should remember how fulfilling they were. Yet we continue to oppose what we know from our own experience to be a life changing and healing experience.  To continue to withhold any of these attributes is like our refusing to eat because someone else wasted their food.

Illness is the result of discord where we are out of harmony with the pattern of perfection we embody. Healing is the restoration of the life forces within us as a result of harmony with the source of life. Kindness, friendship, patience, forgiveness, loyalty and generosity are those very forces that promote and maintain health. There is no middle ground here we are either adding to or taking from the life that sustains each of us. What other justification do we need for expressing those things that will sustain and lift us up?

The night may be long and the light dim but the dawn awaits each and every one of us. As the sun peeks over the horizon the angels sing with joy because we have chosen to be the light. May we not let our light dim but shine in the lives of those around us. For it has been commended into our care and if we are faithful to that trust we will be the very force for that healing for which we pray.

We may not see the connection between our activities and illness but there is indeed one. There is spirit, mind and matter and we are the connection for all three. They all meet within us and through our actions we create a symphony or a cacophony in the world around us. Let us fill our glass with kindness, friendship, patience, forgiveness, loyalty and generosity to be poured out upon those in our life. And is so doing may we be healed every bit this day.

FAITH IN ALL THINGS

Always new; always fresh, faith is an underlying principle that breathes life in to all of our activities. Faith flows fresh and new every moment from the seat of Tender Loving Kindness and it is ours in whatever quantity we wish. We do not possess faith we instead embrace it so we cannot tarnish, deface or abuse it in anyway. Faith is infinite so there is no shortage or lack of any kind. Finally, faith expressed is not our belief in anything but our belief in all things.

Faith is imbued in all creation. Our Lord, the source and substance of faith believes in us beyond anything we can possibly imagine. Can we not believe in our God just a little? This is not to say believing there is a God is faith, but believing God is in all things, that His tenderness and His faith is the foundation from which all life is manifest.  There is nothing we cannot have faith in because there is nothing in which faith is absent.

We run in to difficulty when we require anything to simply accept the infinite faith that flows from the foundation of grace. Faith never responds to reason but to faith itself.   The only acts that can awaken faith within us are genuine acts of faith. How often so many of us have sought for assurance in order express faith, never realizing that we were seeking to be convinced not to be faithful. Faith can never be justified only awakened and if brought about any other way it may not be faith after all.

A faithful life is one lived with the awareness of God’s presence in all things; the understanding that all life is imbued with Infinite Loving Kindness. When we treat all things with the same gentleness, the same kindness, the same tenderness with which they are permeated we make God’s faith our own. In this way we can express faith in wholly original and personal ways.

Faith is not an accepting of conditions but a seizing upon the goodness in all things regardless of their outward appearance. It is acting in the knowledge that infinite mercy would not allow us to experience anything that did not have wholly redemptive qualities. Finally, faith is not something but it is ultimately everything for those in whom it has been awakened. 

Let us go out into the promise of this day and by our behavior awaken faith in those we encounter. In this may we resist the urge to convince anyone but through our acts of faith, to awaken the best in all those with whom we come in contact. We are children of incomprehensible goodness and our life rises from that inexplicable faith our Lord has in each of us. Nothing can defeat us because our faith is larger than anything that can possibly challenge it. When our focus is on the presence of God in all things no events can defeat us.