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RE: A Message from my 90-Year-Old Self to Myself Today
If it makes you feel bad: get rid of it.
I hope to do this soon in the future. I am pretty sure your 90 year old self is very wise. I am striving to stop doing the things that make me sad or upset or just get rid of the negativity but somehow, life keeps challenging me to keep my cool. Maybe I need to try meditation. Sigh Thanks for the advice 90 year old Cori! <3
I know the feeling . . . unfortunately our society and culture fosters negative thinking, and on those occasions when we do manage to leave it behind, and to feel really good, we are often made to feel as though we are being unrealistic or that there is something wrong with us.
The heck with them. WE are meant to master our thoughts.
I strongly recommend Byron Kate's book, "Loving What Is," and Eckhart Tolle's book "The Power of Now." I wish I had found them decades ago; I would be MUCH further along in attaining those goals which are most important to me.
These books are both profound and practical roadmaps to staying in the present moment, releasing negative thoughts, and realizing that they are illusion anyway, no matter how real they seem at the time.
And this is in no way belittling those thoughts, or anything that is happening in your life, but instead realizing at the deepest level that it is our judgments of events that give them power over us, and create our suffering.
When we remove our judgments, and accept that we really can't know everything anyway, it is very freeing.
And even though I've been traveling this path for decades, in many ways I am still a neophyte, just as in other ways I am already a master. As are you. You have yet to learn how very much you already know, innately, deep within, but these books can help you get there.
The books you mentioned sound amazing. I will try to look them up so I can deal with my issues easily. Maybe the books can help me in some way. <3 Thank you so much! :)
You're welcome, @reewritesthings!
I went to visit a friend last night, and she just bought "The Power of Now," so we're going to make a study of it on a weekly basis, the better to "get" the concepts on a deeper level.
I've introduced Byron Katie's "Loving What Is" to her as well, so we may do that next.
Marek has listened to both audio books, and told me that a few days ago, in keeping with Eckhart Tolle's teachings, he told his conscious mind that he was going to meditate, so it could take some time off, as it would simply be bored. And he said he had one of the best meditations in his life, without his monkey mind constantly butting in with unneeded thoughts.
Who knew it was so simple?
As for meditation, I highly recommend it, and can say without hesitation that it has helped me immeasurably in my life. It may well have saved my life, more than once.
I started meditating when I was seventeen, thanks to a class I took with my mom, and in addition to allowing me a place of calm within the proverbial storm, it has also given me the ability to gain a more realistic - and helpful - perspective than anything else I've tried. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Jose Silva, of The Silva Method, initiated a study in the 1960s, where they got a group of people to meditate on peace at specific times over the course of a month or so. Sure enough, the crime rate in their city dropped measurably over that period of time.
They did another, with the cooperation of NASA, where they got a group of people to meditate on slowing the orbit of a satellite, again at a specific time, and once again there was a measurable change.
The human mind is far more powerful than we've been led to believe, especially when we work together. ;-)