Personal Meditation no. 210

“It’s not all in your mind but if you don’t control your mind, then the rest doesn’t matter.”

Embrace the Within.

I figured that after the past fourteen days folks would know better than to get wound up about the media coverage of anything BUT a lot of folks returned to their normal outrage programming. I am not going to join you there. I cannot go back to that emotionally exhausting way of living. Too much work has gone into getting where I am today for me to go back to caring about what the news cycle teams put together.

I am also not going to get baited into arguments about your obsessions with the news. I am going to agree or disagree and go on my way. I am not going to get pulled into lengthy arguments or discussions about your opinions or my opinions. I have been in too many of those pointless conversations thinking I was going to help folks understand anything. I think I am going to stick to analogy and metaphor and go about my day.

As I said, I have put in too much work to go back to the rut I used to call normal. Yesterday I not only drank a gallon of water BUT I far surpassed that part of hydration. I look forward to getting there again today. I broke the mark for this month’s push ups yesterday and I am going forward with more today. I am going to play the first game of volleyball in years today. I finished the book of Deuteronomy yesterday. I am moving forward with my health. So, going back to the days of politics and division and news are not for me anymore.

I am going to keep getting healthy. I am going to keep reading and listening and learning. I am going to keep focused on what I can control. I am going to work on me and my land. I am going to keep planting the seeds and see what happens. Some of those seeds may never grow. And some of them are approaching time for harvest. You never can tell what you’ll get from a seed.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin

Personal Meditation no. 209

“Your beliefs are your actions. What you say is just what you think.”

Embrace the Within.

I really hate my plan being questioned. And after two decades of teaching, there is always a cadre of students every year that question my plan. And that does aggravate me at times. The audacity of a student to question whether the teacher knows what they are doing. BUT then I look around and see a lot of teachers that have been doing this for much longer than me that do not have a plan so I totally sympathize. I need that perspective at times to realize that sometimes it is good to question whether someone has a plan or not. It can even be helpful to question if the plan is a sound plan. BUT I cannot expect to understand the plan if I don’t plan myself. Just like I cannot expect that students get where we are going to be in June when they come into my class in August.

BUT I think a lot of us like to question the Almighty’s plan just like that. We come in with a very limited perspective of what the end goal is and the steps along the way to get to the end product and we start to question the plan. We start to question the motives and methods of God. We start to believe we have a better plan. We start to believe we have a better way. And we end up with the world as it is. All these great plans made by humans have let us arrive exactly with the world we see today. And we are allowed to keep trusting in our plans or to put trust in the plans of the All Knowing.

I have only been doing this for a few decades and I wonder at the questioning I get. How much more audacious are our questions of God’s plan? How much more bold and proud are the ideas that our plans are going to be better than God’s? Nothing is more humorous to me than looking back at the plans I had for my life and seeing where I am today. I have, on so many occasions, thought I had this whole life thing figured out. I had a plan and a direction and a goal and I was sure it was going to work out that way. BUT God has a plan that I tried to ignore. I tried my best to question. I tried my best to change. And look where it got me? Right back on the plan that was intended.

And I think a lot of my problems and probably a lot of yours as well come from fighting God’s plan for us. We think we have better ideas. We think we have a better plan. We think we know what is best for ourselves and our world. BUT we are just like that student who lacks the perspective to see the big picture. I take time to make sure that I plan with the end in mind. Do I believe that God doesn’t plan with the end in mind? Do I think I have a better perspective than God?

And I think we might do a little better to work on questioning our motives for wanting the plan to change. I think we might do a little better to think about the limitations of our own minds and our own perspective. And I think we might do a little better asking for directions more than imposing our will.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain #EmbracetheWithin