We got 4 inches of snow overnight and when my husband came out of work to get in his truck to come home, someone had shoveled a path beside his truck making it easier to get to. This certainly was an act of kindness that didn’t go unnoticed. Others in our community at times have left extra money for coffee for the next person or plowed neighbor’s driveways – all spreading kindness around.

Suzie, blogger of The Abundance Highway, wrote a post a couple of days ago on random acts of kindness when she talked about picking up litter from the beach. We could take that to our own home towns and pick up litter on playgrounds or parks. It made me think of other acts of kindness my community has received and experienced in the past year and a half.

On Sept 27, 2006, our Rocky Mountain community changed when a gunman entered our high school holding 7 girls hostage and killing Emily Keyes making national headlines. Her last words text messaged to her Dad were, “I Love U Guys”. As a result of this horrendous incident, the community rallied around the family and law enforcement and came together for healing with support showing random acts of kindness in honor of Emily. Instead of bitterness and hate came love and it was not only demonstrated by businesses, neighbors, and teachers but more importantly by the students.

We saw people planting flowers for others and students cleaning up yards, $20 was left at a café to buy sodas for the next 20 customers, people showing up volunteering and helping with food for law enforcement officers during their investigation. Healing comes from reaching out to others in love and kindness. There is kindness within us and is being offered everyday around the world. We don’t need a tragedy to remind us how important life is to be valued and what part we can play to make it a better world. It starts in our homes and communities and can spread.

I’m reminded of the powerful and moving 2000 movie Pay It Forward where a junior high school boy takes a challenge seriously of an assignment from his social studies teacher in making a difference in the world. He decides to help 3 people without anything in return except for them to pay the kindness forward to 3 other people. His thinking was that if we all took our part this would spread exponentially around the world.

In an interview with the author of Pay It Forward, Catherine Ryan Hyde, she describes where this idea for the book came. Her car broke down one night and caught on fire and 2 men came to her rescue helping her and putting out the fire. She wanted to repay them but she was told, “Don’t pay it back to me.” “Pay it forward to someone else”. She goes onto say in the interview, “Then I spent the next 20 years wondering what kind of world it would be like if an idea like that caught fire.”

Imagine what kind of world it would be like if we each, like Suzie at Abundance Highway, our mountain community, or Trevor the junior high student, found a way to spread kindness. Maybe, we could leave extra change for the next person coming through a toll line or scrape off the windows of the car next to yours when you scrape off your windows. Help an elderly person living in the neighborhood by offering to get their groceries once a week to name a few.

It’s not just when the need arises that kindness is important it’s when it comes unexpectedly and unprompted. It touches your heart and makes you feel that maybe the world isn’t so bad after all. Most times, little does the person know that what they did may have not only saved your day but saved your life?

From the kitchen table – Pat
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This post was hard to write, and yet important, as I wanted to be sure I was writing it clearly. I’m still processing this myself so please be patient with my explanations. This quote, “Strictly speaking, you don’t think: Thinking happens to you.” struck me as I read it in Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61)(Paperback). It was something that jumped out at me and got my attention. He says:

“The statement “I think” implies volition. It implies that you have a say in the matter, that there is choice involved on your part. For most people, this is not yet the case.”

But, in fact, Tolle says: ““I think” is just as false a statement as “I digest” or “I circulate my blood.” Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.”

This was a different idea that I had to consider. The choice comes when you’re conscious of your thoughts and if they have purpose, not just fear or judgment – something that the ego would use for its empowerment.

In my last post, Developing Awareness – What’s Going On Behind the Eyeballs?, I give some ideas on how to develop awareness to awaken to our true lives releasing the grip of the ego and our thoughts play an important role in that. It’s a different perspective to consider that our thoughts are processing automatically because they seem so personal. This is because I had identified with my thoughts as being who I am.

When we identify with thoughts that is when we have made a choice to respond, react or judge instead of just observing them and letting them go. Identifying with our thoughts does not mean defining them it means giving them our identity. We then own whatever our thoughts present to us when we don’t distinguish them. Letting them go detaches you from the outcome and the influence of the ego. I had heard and read many times that “you are not your thoughts” but I really didn’t understand what that meant until now.

I always felt responsible for the thoughts that I had and felt they were a reflection of me. I’m only responsible for them if I identify with them. That is the key. They are just there and they come from our conditioning in the past and influences going on in our environment but I should in no way feel responsible for the thoughts themselves. This sheds a whole new light on my approach to developing my own awareness.

As I learn, I will be paying closer attention to the thoughts that pass through and I’ll forget sometimes, more at first, until I become more proficient at observing rather than identifying. What about you? Have you ever noticed your thoughts and considered them operating just as your heart and blood circulation? Why do we add “I” to thinking? It’s something worth considering in order to be a part in the awakening of humanity and put us back on track to saving us and our planet.

***Oprah Winfrey is having a free 10-week teleclass on Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61)(Paperback) that started last Monday, March 3rd. You can still get in on it if you’re interested in reading this book and participating in this class.

From the kitchen table – Pat
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Most of us are familiar with physical awareness and some have developed a keen sense of what’s going on around them. But, physical awareness is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what goes on inside your head and heart, your reactions and feelings. Are you aware of that? Can you recognize a thought and then identify its purpose?

Eckhart Tolle in his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61)(Paperback), talks about a transformation of consciousness that is happening right now where we’ll awaken to life by becoming aware of how thoughts are being used by ego.

BEINGNESS – OUR PRESENCE
There is more to us than body and mind. There’s an every present beingness looking out from behind the eyeballs. Tolle calls it, “the Presence”, our oneness with God. It’s silent now, just observing, as we go about our busy day. When we become conscious of how our thoughts and ego play out their roles, affecting our daily lives, we will then allow our Presence to emerge awakening us to the life we were destined to live.

UNDERSTANDING THE PURPOSE OF EGO
To understand the ego and its purpose we have to know how it operates within us. It’s not something you fight or battle against. In fact, that only strengthens it. It’s not a devil sitting on your shoulder and the angel sitting on the other shoulder, each talking in your ear. It’s an unconsciousness that we have bought into that is very much a part of the dual world we live in.

It relates to us in form and structure and here’s the key: when we IDENTIFY with a thought of form or structure, it (ego) “edges God out” and our Presence waits. Identifying with a thought that you’re a “loser” because you lost your job (form) means you own it. You own the belief that you’re a loser and then you attract what comes with it. Identifying with the thought that you want (structural) more money and more things, only after having them you’re still not fulfilled, means you’re chasing after an illusion that can never satisfy you. It only reinforces and satisfies the need for ego to be dominant in your life. Tolle explains it further by saying:

“Since you cannot find yourself through having, however, there is another more powerful drive underneath it that pertains to the structure of the ego: the need for more, which we could also call “wanting.” No ego can last for long without the need for more. Therefore, wanting keeps the ego alive much more than having. The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.”

“Unease, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, dissatisfaction, are the result of unfulfilled wanting. Wanting is structural, so no amount of content can provide lasting fulfillment as long as that mental structure remains in place.”

We all have dreams and desires and wants and I think that is different from what we have been talking about here. In what context is the wanting or the need for more – are you ever satisfied or fulfilled? If not, that’s where you can see that the ego has been in command here.

DEVELOPING AWARENESS
1. The key component is being aware of our thoughts and understanding from where they are coming. Are they coming from a story or a fact? If you lose your job – that’s a fact; being a loser because you lost your job is a story coming by way of thought from ego. Respond to the fact not the story. Take action and do what is necessary to handle the fact.

2. Start paying attention to your thoughts and what you’re identifying with. This is important and it will free you up and allow Presence to operate in your life. If you react and emotions stir up, more than likely you have identified with a thought triggering something from a form or a structure and it originates from ego. Feelings follow thoughts. So, if you have a lot of thoughts about something that is bothering you, the emotions will begin to emerge. Catch yourself and just allow Presence to observe and be okay with it. Tell yourself, “It’s an old conditioning thought from the past.”

3. Realize that we’re all one created by the same Source, no one is diminished in Presence. Understand that we are all evolving and consciously awakening and those others who may have treated you despairingly are on the same path.

I love this quote Tolle mentions from Ram Dass, “If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.” Our interactions with one another reveal how much work there is still needed to be done. To become aware is the secret to our spiritual development and well being. To pay attention and observe the thoughts within checking what we identify with and allowing others the freedom to evolve at their own pace will be the catalyst in changing the face of humanity and the awakening of a New World.

From the kitchen table – Pat
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I’ve been thinking of this half of the day and I’m not quite sure how to write about it. So, I ask for your patience on this and I’m asking for spiritual guidance so as to write this with consideration and compassion honoring those of you out there touched by similar situations.

My daughter called and asked if I would baby sit her almost 23-month old tomorrow as she was going to a funeral for a 2-month old twin who had just died that has the same name as her child. It struck me and stayed with me a good part of the day thinking how quickly we come into this life and then pass back out again. Life is a gift and it’s especially realized as precious when a baby leaves.

It also made me wonder what it is about our mortality that shifts us from the daily routines to a tender, deep part of the soul and gives us a glimpse of a world we had forgotten. There are difficult times we all face as we live our lives and what I’m reminded of is that no matter how difficult the times LOVE is our strength and our comforter transcending all time and dimension.

Dr. Wayne Dyer talks more about LOVE being our strength in his book Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling. He says:

“On the fateful day of September 11, 2001, what stuck in my mind were the cell-phone calls made by the people on the ill-fated planes. Every single call was made to a loved one, to connect back in love or to express final words of love. No one called the office or asked their stockbroker for a final appraisal of their financial status, as relationships that weren’t loved based didn’t enter the thoughts of those who knew they were leaving this physical world. Their top priority was to be certain to close out their lives in love: “Tell the kids that I love them.” “I love you!” “Give Mom and Dad my love.””

How many times do we go about our daily routines not giving much thought on how quickly things could change? Would we be more conscious? We can’t dwell on death, as it would paralyze our every move and every thought and drive us crazy. But how can we honor our lives every moment, every day, as precious? Alex Blackwell owner of the blog The Bridgemaker writes a post called In the Blink of an Eye where he talks about the seriousness of his wife undergoing surgery and their love. He reflected on their lives together and the sweetness in the little things they do together and share. It’s the LOVE that is there in our daily routines and it’s the LOVE that carries us through the unknown.

Dr. Dyer, also in Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling talks about the healing power of love in desperate times in recalling an article he read called “The Rescuing Hug” detailing the first week in the life of a set of twins where one was not expected to live. He tells it like this:

“The babies were in two separate incubators, but nurse Gayle Kasparian fought hospital rules to place them together in one. When Gayle did so, the healthier of the twins threw an arm over her sister in an endearing embrace – at which point, the weaker baby’s heart rate stabilized and her temperature rose to normal.”

“Even as tiny infants, our spiritually based instincts tell us to love one another. It’s such a simple message, yet it’s so powerful.”

In life’s fragility we are touched by a LOVE that goes beyond our thoughts and our physical senses and it is at these times, when our souls show us the way, that we finally appreciate how precious life is!