Final Thought for the Day ~ 2023

Always do your best……..as this new day begins take a few minutes to reflect on the year. Make a place for yourself. Sit down and enter into your breathing. Don’t extol the virtues of anything or condemn the inadequacy of anything. Just sit. At the edge of the world and let things be as they are. See your journey over the last year, see where you were weak and where you were strong. Where you won and where you lost. Where there was joy, and where there was heart ache. See it all and as you do, make sure that you don’t lose the lessons that this year has delivered to you. Understand how you will make different choices and decisions based on those lessons, because that is the only way that our lessons become wisdom. We must be intentional about our lives. Renewing ourselves completely each day and doing it through thoughtful reflection and mindful meditation.

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Reflect on how you have navigated this past year. How you fell, and how you got back up and dusted yourself off and got back in the game. Allow yourself to feel the pain of a world tilted so heavily towards power, dominance, division, and war. Learn to sit with your feelings for a moment. As you do, instead of asking why do we do so much for so many around the world? Ask yourself if I lived in those countries what would I want the world to do for us? This is the pathway to shared humanity. Not division, not winners and losers, not I’m okay, its too bad what “they’re” experiencing. The world doesn’t need our pity, it needs our compassion. It needs us to stay out of judgement. Because we are all here for a reason, a group of souls who agreed to be here at this time. You are here to remind yourself and others to shine their light.

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In making that commitment to yourself and the world. You undertake the task of reducing judgement in the world. Judgement has taken over and it fuels the divisive nature that is so prevalent in our lived experience. We are judgemental in every walk of life. We have opinions about everything, and we willingly share them. To reflect on how often you are in judgement think about how many times a day you use the word should, because each time that word appears, you are in judgement. So, we must embody the light. We must become more aware of accepting people and allowing them to make their own decisions, instead of judging them for breaking our rules. Your rules are yours; you don’t get to impose them on others.

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Ancient wisdom teaches us that the quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. My wish for each of you is that you are able to find that quiet space where you can just be. In that space, you will be able to hear the calling of your soul. You will remember all of the gifts that you already hold. You will be fed by your higher self and in this way you will shine your light as brightly as is humanly possible. It will allow you to loosen your need for constant control of your life and it will let your soul lead the way. Notice how many of your ideas and beliefs about the world and yourself are the result of outside influence……you can question those assumptions. You can do better. Imagine the collective power if we all commit to doing our best, letting go of judgement, showing compassion, and finding our way back to shared humanity.

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I want you to be brave enough to sit in discomfort, to understand your emotions, and to choose your response with thoughtful reflection rather than the reactionary tone that our world has adopted. It isn’t too late. Time is not running out. You have a life, here and now and if each one of us is determined to always do our best, just think of the collective power. Because it’s impossible for us to go on as we have, we must go forward in love, peace, inclusion, and respect. We have an obligation to justice, mercy, and kindness. Let us come together in the name of humanity. And so, it is. Wishing you all love, joy, health, and peace for 2024. When we know better, we have to do better. Namaste.

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Pema Chodron said “When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently towards what scares us. In cultivating compassion, we draw from the whole of our experience, our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.

Only when we know our darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

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By Lisa Scott CEC