Seeing Life through New Eyes~

[Guest guest]

1. Allow yourself to feel and experience what is happening in the

moment, to become aware of yourself through self-observation.

 

2. Stop coping in habitual ways. Begin to change old patterns. Be

creative.

 

3. See apparent incongruities -- such as between gifts and hurts, or

love and pain -- as separate but not contradictory or paradoxical

events. This lets you appreciate the possibility that these different

events can be connected in time and space and yet, more often than

not, separate in terms of significance and implication. Try not to

create a fixed meaning out of paradox. Leave uncertainty into the

answer.

 

4. Stay with the discomfort of moving past old meanings and reactions

to life's new experiences.

 

5. Acknowledge your unmet needs and meet them for yourself, as you

would for your best friend. Be your own best friend. Perhaps your

greatest calling is to meet your own unmet needs. Perhaps they were

purposefully not met in order that you might begin the journey of

reclamation. It is often the crack in our psyche that lets in the

light.

 

6. Face your shadow, reclaim your disowned parts, and discover all

the hidden faces of love. It is essential to bring your most

cherished gift into balance with its opposite. It is also important

to realize that the hidden gifts within the hurts can become

addictions and obstacles to intimacy.

 

7. Find security in both aloneness and togetherness. This will give

you choice: the choice to react in an old manner, which at times may

be appropriate, or to opt for a new and different response.

 

8. Offer yourself in service to others, not out of fear or the need

for approval, but from the outpouring of a heart in overflow, from

the fullness of having met your own emotional needs.

 

9. Begin to live in partnership, seeing yourself as a mirror -- not

only with your mate, but with all of life. We were all born

dependent, and must live in continuing interdependency. With renewed

awareness, dependency is no longer seen as weakness, but as an

opportunity for shared joy, intimacy, healing, and

interconnectedness. Co-create with life in life.

 

10. Breathe! Allow both pain and joy in and out as rapidly as

possible. To cling to either joy or pain creates suffering. Breathe

deeply, feel what it is to be human, and watch for the moment-to-

moment clues that lead you to the next step in the journey of life.

Life is a treasure hunt.

 

11. Practice " outrageous containment. " To be outrageously contained

is to feel as if life experiences were created just for you. Live

your Insights. It is a balance between radical aliveness and healthy

boundaries, between living in joy and living with compassion.

 

12. Create and sustain an attitude of gratitude (or, as we like to

call it, " great fullness " ). Gratitude is the key to the door that

opens the heart

 

Once you begin to practice these ways of being, the signposts that

point the way toward your unique gift to life, your calling, will

start to become more evident. Remember: Life meets you where you are.

 

When you have begun seeing through new eyes, it might still appear to

others that nothing about you has changed. However, you know inside

yourself that everything has changed. A Zen proverb says: Before

enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop

wood, carry water.

 

There is even more to life than enlightenment. Life is process. Life

is purpose. Life is service. Life is play. Life is painful. Life is

joyful. We are a " work in progress. " Today's solutions can easily

become tomorrow's problems.