A NEW FLASHLIGHT

I need  a new flashlight.  This little light of mine doesn't always shine deeply enough for me to see my innermost self, my true being.  Too often I can't see through my ego to see my soul. I guess what I lack at these times is what is called insight. In the darkness I can't distinguish my desire to "right" from the truth about who I AM. Whatever is going on outside of me is often so bright it distracts me from my internal focus.  For starters: this long series of 100 degree days, a government that can't get its act together, the plight of the economy, worried people all around me, wars and rumors of wars, violence and character assassinations, unconscious and loveless people, etc.  Maybe I don"t need a new flashlight, but need to more consciously let "the Light of the world" shine in my depths and beyond. John said, "He came into the world to bring life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it."  So I have enough light after all.

GOTTA SAY SOMETHING

Even though I surrendered my clinical therapy credentials ten years ago, I still trick myself (in some conversations and relationships) into thinking I need to "help" someone with what I think their problems are. They need to be straightened out. They need to know what I know and they don't. By my need to be right, I make them wrong. I gotta say something to change their mind or behavior. I gotta say something when I should be quiet and attend to them as the persons they really are. Only be keeping my mouth shut can I see and hear who the really are.  They are usually not at all what I conceptualized them to be. This is a prejudice problem in the sense of my judging them before I really know them. But it is an understandable mistake since all if us are deep down much more than we appear to be. Each of us are conditioned to think and behave in ways that conceal our real selves. It is only possible to know the essence, the innermost being, of one another. We must get past what they have been conditioned to look like.  For that I need to be still and drop all my preconceived notions about the others including my diagnoses of what I think they need to change. Only then will I be able to see them and love the genuine soul before me. Ironically, with this kind of love and acceptance they often change what really needs to be changed.