fbpx
Menu

Peter

Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 posts - 886 through 900 (of 912 total)
1 2 3 … 59 60 61
  • Author
    Posts
  • October 16, 2016 at 10:16 am in reply to: So, has the world gone mad? #118310
    Peter
    Participant

    That is my solution as well. I think it comes down to the ability to discern news from editorial and entertainment.
    I just want to be told the what, who, when, where

    Unfortunately the news editorial becomes part of the what, who, when, where and it gets confusing. As we have to respond to not just what happened but how people are interpreting and reacting to what happens. In many cases what happened getting lost

    October 14, 2016 at 3:19 pm in reply to: mother boundaries #118223
    Peter
    Participant

    I found ‘Boundaries’ By Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend helpful

    It does have religious content which I know some people might reject out of hand however the authors do a good job explaining how and when to set boundaries and its not preachy.

    Actually it is often the religious or spiritual minded person that wishes to be loving and unselfish that are more likely to forget to set their own limits and limitations.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    October 14, 2016 at 1:47 pm in reply to: Trying to let the universe handle it #118221
    Peter
    Participant

    I have had bad experiences with the on again off again relationships

    On-again/off-again relationships generally have a pretty bad reputation. And actually, science tends to back up what everyone’s cranky best friend is muttering to them.

    Psychologists refer to this pretty common dating practice as “cycling”, and have found that a relationship that cycles during the dating phase is more likely to cycle once you live together or are married.

    How to Stop the Cycle of Break Up & Reconciliation

    STEP 1
    Identify problems within the relationship. Whether it’s due to differences in opinion, values, beliefs or priorities, having open dialogue is important to conflict resolution. If establishing open communication is difficult with your partner, then utilizing a mediator who is trustworthy and neutral during conversations may be wise. In any case, pointing out what is causing the breakup and reconciliation cycle is key to avoiding it in the future.

    STEP 2
    Listen to your conscience. Honesty will have to be well practiced during the process of ending this vicious relationship cycle. Own up to your mistakes, longings, and emotions even if your partner chooses otherwise. Often times this will help give you guidance on whether it is worth trying to fix at all if your partner decides they will not be honest or open. Avoid cutting off that little voice in your head that is trying to convey what you really desire.

    October 14, 2016 at 1:42 pm in reply to: Trying to let the universe handle it #118220
    Peter
    Participant

    My experience with the “letting universe handle things” practice had often left me feeling peaceful yet listless… that’s not the right word… I found taping into the energy to change or start something new became more difficult.

    I could feel great about myself and life when I was alone doing my own thing, calm, at peace… but interacting with the necessities of life (relationships, shelter, need to eat…) that calm quickly dissipated.
    I wondered if like Gautama (or most spiritual masters), the only way to achieve this ‘letting go’ was to leave ones family and avoid life’s interactions.

    As my nature/destiny/fate/doom was unlikely to avoid the necessity of dealing with the necessity of life I felt I was in a rock and a hard place. Worse as indicated above with each cycle as I found I could accept life as it is I found less and less energy for action.

    It seemed to me the practice of “letting universe handle things” was more nuanced then I had been practicing it.

    Today my understanding of letting the universe handle things is that it is not about being passive but about learning how to say YES to life as it is, LOVE life as it is, the good the bad and the ugly, while living out and pursuing your truth as you know it in the moment. Easier said than done.

    Could I say YES to a person and or experience, while still living and pursuing my truth as I understand it in that moment even if that meant standing up against the situation, experience or person?

    The question sounded paradoxical to me and I knew this wasn’t a ‘love the person hate the sin’ kind of thing as I knew that saying yes was saying yes to the ‘sin’ as well. (I define sin as missing the mark in becoming) How could I say yes when I was also saying no.

    I came across a story of a Japanese Samurai whose master was murdered. His truth as he understood his duty required that he find the murderer and kill him. In the moment he is about to kill the man the murderer spits at him at which point angered the Samurai sheaths his sword and walks away.

    Had the Samurai killed the man form a place of anger and hate would have been saying No to life as it is, No to who he was, No to the murderer as he was… and so walked away. Saying YES to life as it is and living out his truth in that moment that required that he walk away.

    Killing the murder and not killing the murder because he was angry where both acts of LOVE.

    LOVE it seemed to me means saying YES to LIFE as it IS with Life requiring that I live it.

    It’s a work in progress but my gut says this is the right path for me as it helps me tap into the energy I need to live my truth. One can live ones truth without hate, vengeance, judgments, labels, pursuit of some this thing we call justice…..

    Wow how far off track did I go.

    October 12, 2016 at 10:15 am in reply to: My life #117924
    Peter
    Participant

    Memories are stories we tell ourselves about our past – John Slattery

    I believe we become the stories we tell ourselves and must learn to discern the difference between a memory that has become our story and a story that contains references to memory.

    Readying your life it appears to me that painful memory of the past has become your present story.

    You are stuck.

    Memory is a trickster. Many unconsciously assume that they remember things as they happened even the motivation and expenses of others as that appear as part of that memory. We are almost always wrong. Consciousness is has a very limited bandwidth and tends to focus attention to very specific aspects of our experiences. We can never know the whole story.

    I do not mean to imply that the negative experiences you had didn’t happen to you. Instead I’m hoping, that by understanding that you can’t know the whole story, you can create some space, some breathing room that might allow for grace – For yourself and others, but here I think more importantly for yourself.

    It would be my hope that you realize that the memories of our past does not have to define the story of your experience today.

    I highly recommend the books
    ‘Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, ‘and
    ‘Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success’
    – both by Kerry Patterson

    Both processes start by owning the stories we tell ourselves, which when we do improves the conversations we can have with others and ourselves (self-talk).

    We become the stories we tell, so tell a good one.

    October 12, 2016 at 6:47 am in reply to: Fear of Failure perhaps? #117898
    Peter
    Participant

    It only a mistake if you don’t learn from the experience.

    The “mistakes” you mentioned seem to come from a place of trying to do too much too quickly with an underling fear of not being perfect. I am a firm believer, having personal experiences that we create what we fear. Slow down, breath, create some space and you will find that you will become even more proficient at your job.

    The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes ah, that is where the art resides. Artur Schnabel

    “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them”. – Claude Debussy

    Allow life to be music

    Recommend the following book.
    ‘Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going’ by David Kundtz

    Perfectionist – holding yourself to standards that you don’t hold others to… (some might experience that as arrogance) … we love others as we love ourselves… what are you saying about yourselves when you apply the label of perfectionist as a part of our being.

    The One Thing You Need to Know to Overcome Perfectionism

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    October 12, 2016 at 6:25 am in reply to: Trouble with women's sexual past #117895
    Peter
    Participant

    For me this appears to be a problem of measurement and labeling. On the whole we suck at measuring emotional experience and then compound the problem with labeling the experience and the person or self as being the label. For example the measurement that having many sexual partners is bad, there for a person who has many sexual partners is bad. The person becoming the labels created.

    The map is not the territory, the word tree is not a tree… we are more than the sum of our parts and labels.

    You must live your values as you understand them. If you are having to validate those values via the application of labels the danger is the creation of a I – It experience vice a I – Thou experience.

    Each person is unique, more than the sum of their parts (and past).

    October 11, 2016 at 11:09 am in reply to: what did I just do? #117784
    Peter
    Participant

    We experience guilt when we know we did, or feel we have done, something wrong. When we are unsure we have done something wrong we experience something else. Discerning what that something else is, requires a great deal of discernment.

    Guilt and shame sometimes go hand in hand; the same action may give rise to feelings of both shame and guilt, where the former reflects how we feel about ourselves and the latter involves an awareness that our actions have injured someone else. In other words, shame relates to self, guilt to others.

    Sometimes I find it difficult to discern the difference to the feeling of guilt and shame. Often I think that undeserved feelings of quilt are really experienced as undeserved shame, and that the difference is important.

    From what you wrote I think you may be experiencing undeserved shame.

    Maybe it’s all semantics… however it seems to me you have taken on the responsibility of your father’s feelings and state of mind which has left you feeling bad (equating feeling bad with quilt) about who you are as a daughter and person. As this relates to how you feel about yourself that would be shame. An undeserved shame.

    Anyway

    I found the fallowing book helpful
    ‘Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve’ by Lewis B. Smedes

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    October 11, 2016 at 10:12 am in reply to: My second chance in life #117780
    Peter
    Participant

    I found myself returning to the following book
    ‘Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life’ by Philip Simmons

    “We are all—all of us—falling. We are all, now, this moment, in the midst of that descent, fallen from heights that may now seem only a dimly remembered dream, falling toward a depth we can only imagine, glimpsed beneath the water’s surface shimmer. And so let us pray that if we are falling from grace, dear God let us also fall with grace, to grace. If we are falling toward pain and weakness, let us also fall toward sweetness and strength. If we are falling toward death, let us also fall toward life.”

    October 11, 2016 at 9:49 am in reply to: Is he leaving me with no explanation? #117776
    Peter
    Participant

    sorry the guy is playing a game. Hes creating the continuations to force you to make the decision so that he can think of himself as the wronged misunderstood party. If life if a stage this is not the play you want to have a staring role in.

    From what you wrote it is unlikely this guy will make your relationship a priority. Such men have to experience the pain of loss before they are ready for relationship.

    That does not mean you should wait for him to learn as we teach people how to treat us. If he learns the lesson and you startup the relationship again he will back slid. This is the nature of Love, sometimes it requires we move on in order to learn the lessons it has for us.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    October 11, 2016 at 8:26 am in reply to: A Question For Those Who Are Going Through Depression and Anxiety #117774
    Peter
    Participant

    “There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.” ― Barbara Kingsolver,

    Depression is insidious, a vampire that sucks away ones creative energy, a zombie bite turning you into one of the living dead.

    It’s interesting as a Zombie desire for brain is the desire to live off the thinking and memories of others.

    I suspect my experience of depression is more Zombie like as it relates to the stories I tell myself and put on repeat, leaving me in a state where I feel I’m living life as one already dead.

    Perhaps a part of me thinks that if I repeat a story enough times I might change the ending. And of course there is the habit of comparing my experiences with those around me and the expectations I about how life and life ‘should’ be. So much garbage.

    Perhaps an existential problem, meaning purpose… Yet my depression seems deeper than that something more even feeling. When I fall into the pit of depression I don’t feel anything perhaps because I feel everything all at once so it is not my negative emotions that keep me stuck, but the stories I am telling myself… yet even that.. It’s the story of depression that I can no longer see ending.

    I am depressed because I am depressed because I am depressed…

    “A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end.”
    ― Elizabeth Wurtzel

    October 6, 2016 at 7:04 am in reply to: Struggling with anxiety #117331
    Peter
    Participant

    The profile picture you picked to represent yourself shows you have been able to maintain an eye and connection to beauty even you have yet to realize it as part of who you are.

    Let the image of the rolling waves of love create the space for you to realize what is already present within.

    Deep peace of the running wave to you.
    Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
    Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
    Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
    Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
    Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
    Deep peace of the infinite peace to you,

    Gaelic Blessing

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    October 5, 2016 at 1:49 pm in reply to: Do We Change #117282
    Peter
    Participant

    That life requires the sacrifice of life we latterly change with every breath we take yet we don’t generally experience that as change

    I agree that we change objective measurable qualities quite often however it seems to me that our experience of ourselves that makes those changes (assuming we don’t identify our sense of selves with our thoughts, ideas, goals…) changes very little.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
    October 5, 2016 at 6:59 am in reply to: Struggling with anxiety #117250
    Peter
    Participant

    I was thinking about what you wrote last night and an image come to mind of someone who was not just stuck but blocked. Not to be crude but the word that came to mind was constipated. Perhaps the difficulty in letting go of past experiences was in away leaving you mentally and or emotionally constipated.

    I then saw an image of you as a freely running river, someone who was able to allow their experiences to move through them, taking in the nutritious parts of the experiences and expelling the rest. I know it’s odd.

    Part of the practice of ‘alchemy’ required the alchemist to enter into the task they are performing. That as the various metals were melted so they could be purified they experienced the purification within themselves. I am a firm believer that when we enter into a physical practice of some kind in this manner we can transform our inner being as well. (I used ballroom dance)

    This might sound strange but I wondered what might happen if you took some time by yourselves and tried one of those cleansing and detoxification programs while meditating on the process of letting go. That as you work on the physical you also work on the inner.

    What might life be like if your memories could freely flow through you without them overly influencing your present?

    I know it’s odd and I’m surprised I sharing these thoughts but what the hay, even if they just make you laugh, Nothing wrong with a good laugh.

    Best wishes on your Journey.

    October 4, 2016 at 1:11 pm in reply to: Struggling with anxiety #117185
    Peter
    Participant

    There is an art to forgiveness. Many feel that if they forgive they are saying that what happened to them was ok and that they now must allow those who have hurt them back into their lives. But that is not so.

    Forgiveness can create the space for the wronged to move forward from the experience.

    For a word that is often used it is surprising how little the word forgiveness is understood. Don’t let your heart harden and in hardening keep everything bottled up.

    I found the following book on Forgiveness quite helpful.
    The Art of Forgiving by Lewis B. Smedes

    “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.”

    To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. Lewis B. Smedes

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by Peter.
  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 15 posts - 886 through 900 (of 912 total)
1 2 3 … 59 60 61